Chapter 92: Meeting Judge Vance [1]

After the spar, Damain returned to his lazy old self and stayed beneath his duvet. He only got Judge Vance’s number on Thursday, and he texted her almost immediately, making his identity known from the very beginning.

Damain was not surprised when she responded quickly, and from there, the two of them hit it off with ease. While the conversation unfolded naturally, he was also going through the personal information Clara had managed to scrape together within such a short window of time.

Judge Vance was a forty three year old mother of three, locked in a healthy twenty year long relationship. Damain had been surprised to discover that her personal life was every bit as polished and glamorous as her professional one.

However, that did not deter him in the slightest because he had already come to understand something about humans.

Humans were flawed creatures who would almost always give in to temptation. He had seen the way she looked at him in court, and he had also felt the longing reverberating within her very soul.

By evening, Damian invited her to a café owned by Twenty’s cartel. After speaking with Twenty, the place had been emptied for them and tightly secured to prevent paparazzi or any unwanted eyes from intruding on the meeting.

Only after being assured that the location would be completely empty did she agree to show up.

“Apostle Cafe, Friday Morning”

Judge Helena Vance stood outside the café for a moment longer than necessary, her phone still in hand as she stared at the dark blinds drawn neatly over the tall front windows. From the street, the place looked closed. The sort of place no one would glance at twice before moving on.

She exhaled softly and stepped in.

The bell above the door gave a muted chime, though even that sound felt swallowed by the hush inside.

The café was small but elegant, intimate in a way that felt deliberate rather than cramped. Warm amber lights glowed from hanging fixtures overhead, painting the polished wooden tables in soft gold.

It was empty.

No customers. No barista behind the counter. No low murmur of conversation. No clinking cups beyond the distant noise coming from the kitchen.

Judge Vance slowly closed the door behind her, her heels sounding sharper than usual against the floor. For some reason, that only made the stillness feel more intimate.

“Mr. Hill?” she called, anxiety tracing her tone.

No answer came at once, only the sound of cooking.

Her brows drew together slightly, and she lifted her phone. The call barely rang once before it connected.

“Judge Vance,” Damian’s voice came through, smooth and warm, threaded with the faint crackle of a pan in the background. “You made it.”

She turned slowly, scanning the empty café again as if he might somehow materialize from the shadows.

“I’m inside,” she said. “Mr. Hill, where exactly are you?”

Before the last word had fully left her lips, the kitchen door swung open.

Damian stepped out wearing a black apron over a fitted dark shirt, with the sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms. In one hand he held a broad ceramic plate loaded with eggs, sausages, crisp bacon, and slices of toasted bread arranged with surprising care. In the other, he held his phone away from his ear, a slow smile already spreading across his face.

“Right here,” he said.

For a moment, Judge Vance simply stared. It was her first time seeing this face outside the courtroom, and she had to admit he was every bit as stunning as ever.

The apron should have made him look ridiculous, yet somehow it only made the sight even more striking. More human. More charming.

Damain ended the call and slipped the phone into his pocket before setting the plate down at one of the central tables.

“I hoped you didn’t mind breakfast at a café,” he said. “I figured if I was dragging a judge to a suspiciously empty café after work, I should at least feed her.”

That finally broke her stillness. A small laugh escaped her before she could stop it, softer than the ones he had heard from her in court, more real.

“Well, this was certainly not what I expected,” she said as she approached the table.

Damian pulled out a chair for her and responded with a smile.

“That was the plan.”

She sat, smoothing a hand over the skirt of her outfit as her eyes drifted over the food. The smell hit her properly now, warm and rich and buttery, carrying a kind of shameless comfort that made the whole place feel less like a secret meeting and more like something she had been missing without ever knowing it.

A smile touched her lips, this one impossible to hide.

“You cooked?”

“I did in my spare time. But I mostly ate out,” Damian admitted honestly.

At present, he rarely ate unless he was out in public or his wives were excited enough to cook for him. But before then, eating out had practically been his entire life because Candice was a horrible cook and he had barely had any time with the crushing workload he used to carry.

That earned another laugh from her, this one a little brighter.

“We all do. I would argue that’s the life of anyone in the professional space, unless they have a housewife or husband.”

“And we both know no one was willing to take up that role in the twenty first century.”

They both laughed warmly. On text, the conversation had flowed easily, but she had been afraid it would feel different in person. However, she seemed to have been wrong.

Judge Vance leaned back slightly in her chair and looked at him more openly.

“You were full of surprises in court, Mr. Hill, but this may have been the bigger shock.”

Damian rested one hand lightly on the back of the chair opposite hers but did not sit yet.

“A good surprise or a regrettable one?”

“A very good surprise,” she admitted, then caught herself and added with a little more dignity, “I meant, it was thoughtful.”

Damian smiled as if he had heard the first answer far more clearly than the second. He found it cute watching the old lady play hard to get.

“Thoughtful was exactly what I was aiming for.”

When she got no response from Damain beyond that deep stare of his, one that made it seem as though he had gotten lost in her eyes, she quickly lowered her face, nervously brushing her hair back before turning her attention to the breakfast again.

Damian grinned mischievously, then turned toward the counter.

“Coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

“With or without milk?”

Judge Vance paused for a moment to give him another look. Maybe it was the way he had been looking at her, but there was something oddly intimate in the way he asked it. It was so simple, so ordinary, and yet in that empty café with the blinds drawn and the city shut outside, it felt as though he had asked something much more personal.

“With milk,” she said quickly, composing herself.

He nodded once.

“Sugar?”

“One.”

“Reasonable. I respected that,” Damian said with a nod of approval.

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