Chapter 3 — Pearson Hardman
Harvey's Lincoln Town Car made the trip back to Midtown in twenty-two minutes, which was either a miracle of traffic or a consequence of the way Harvey drove — with the quiet authority of someone who expected red lights to reconsider.
Martin spent most of the ride fielding Harvey's half-compliments, which arrived wrapped in enough plausible deniability that you could never quite accuse him of being encouraging.
"The children hugging you was a bit much," Harvey said.
"It was genuine."
"It was theatrical."
"In a courtroom," Martin said, "those are the same thing."
Harvey said nothing, which Martin had already learned was as close to touché as the man was capable of.
Back at Pearson Hardman's offices on the forty-fifth floor of a Midtown tower, Martin ran a gauntlet of handshakes, shoulder-claps, and raised coffee cups from colleagues who'd apparently already heard how the Kowalski hearing went. The firm's internal gossip network operated at a speed that would have impressed the NSA.
By the time he reached his office — a compact glass-walled room at the end of the associate corridor, sparsely furnished, still smelling faintly of fresh paint — Martin was ready to be alone.
He set his briefcase down, dropped into his chair, cracked open a bottle of water, and drank half of it in one go. Then he loosened his tie, leaned back, and let out a long, slow breath that he felt like he'd been holding since eight that morning.
First case. First win.
He allowed himself exactly thirty seconds to feel good about it.
In his previous life, Martin had spent three years as a paralegal at a small firm in D.C. — a place so far removed from Pearson Hardman that comparing them felt like comparing a community theater production to Broadway. He'd organized discovery documents, fetched coffee, proofread briefs at midnight, and dreamed, in the abstract way you dream about things you're not sure you'll ever actually reach, about standing up in a courtroom and making an argument that mattered.
He'd never quite gotten there.
Then he'd woken up twenty-three years ago in a world that was, as best as he could determine, a patchwork quilt of every prestige American TV drama ever made — and he'd decided that if he was going to be stuck here, he was going to do it right.
History major at Columbia, 3.9 GPA. 175 on the LSAT — which, with his inexplicably perfect retention, had been almost embarrassingly easy. Three years at Harvard Law for the JD, two more for the JSD. An internship semester at the UN Office of Legal Affairs in Geneva that looked extraordinary on paper and had mostly involved reviewing treaty annexes, but still.
And then the offer from Pearson Hardman. One of the four most prestigious firms in the country. The kind of place where the paralegals had Harvard degrees, where forty-plus Fortune 500 companies kept them on permanent retainer, where the firm's name appearing on a filing made opposing counsel quietly reassess their weekend plans.
He'd known about this firm before he'd applied. He'd watched the show it came from — Suits — in his previous life, sprawled on a hand-me-down couch in a one-bedroom apartment, eating cereal at ten p.m. and thinking man, I should have gone to law school.
Now he was here.
His starting salary was three hundred thirty thousand dollars a year, increasing by thirty thousand annually. His consultation fee — which went directly into his own pocket, not the firm's — was four hundred an hour, the Bar Association minimum for a licensed JSD. By the time he made partner, which he fully intended to do, those numbers would look quaint.
He'd already mentally earmarked his first paycheck. The question was whether to go with the Porsche 911 or hold out for a Dodge Challenger Hellcat, which felt more appropriately American in a way he found oddly appealing.
He was in the middle of this very important deliberation when a shadow appeared in his doorway.
"Post-adrenaline crash?"
Martin looked up.
Jessica Pearson was leaning against the glass door frame, arms folded, watching him with an expression of calm amusement. She was wearing a charcoal blazer over a silk blouse, her posture carrying the particular ease of someone who had been the most powerful person in every room she'd walked into for the past fifteen years and no longer needed to announce it.
The Pearson in Pearson Hardman.
Martin was on his feet before he'd consciously decided to stand. "Jessica. You didn't have to come down here — I would've come up."
"Sit down." She waved him off and took a seat on the small office sofa like she owned it, which, in a meaningful sense, she did. "First time I can remember Harvey giving a new associate an A-plus. That warranted a visit."
Martin blinked. "Harvey said A-plus?"
"Harvey said, and I'm paraphrasing minimally, that you were 'not a complete waste of a Harvard education.' From Harvey, that's a standing ovation."
Martin sat back down slowly. "I want that in writing. Framed. Above my desk."
The corner of Jessica's mouth moved approximately two millimeters — which, for her, was a laugh.
"There's a reason I came down personally, Martin." She crossed her legs and looked at him directly, the way she looked at everything — like she was simultaneously evaluating it and deciding what to do with it. "Normally, newly licensed attorneys spend six months in a supervised probationary track before they're assigned independent client work. Harvey is recommending we waive that for you."
"And you agree?"
"I'm sitting in your office, aren't I?" She tilted her head. "Starting next week, you'll have your own client assignments. They won't be the marquee cases — not yet — but they'll be real work, real clients. Get ready. The pace here doesn't ease you in."
Martin nodded. He already knew that.
"Now." Jessica glanced around the office. "This space needs work. You've been here four days and it still looks like a storage room. Go down to the administration office and pull some pieces from the gallery acquisitions — they rotate in new artist work quarterly. Clients notice an empty office. An empty office says you're temporary. You're not temporary."
"Understood."
"Team configuration." She moved on without pausing, which he'd already noticed was her rhythm — agenda items delivered like closing arguments. "Every associate at the partner track is assigned a paralegal. We're currently running short — Harvey doesn't have one, you don't have one. We're sending both of you up to Cambridge next month to recruit from the current Harvard Law graduating class. You'll each pick someone."
Martin kept his face neutral while his brain quietly accelerated.
Harvard Law. Recruiting season. Harvey picking a new associate.
He knew exactly how this scene played out in the show. Harvey would end up in a men's room at a hotel during an illegal poker game, and walk out with a kid named Mike Ross — a college dropout with a photographic memory and no law degree, whose entire arc would become the moral engine of the next nine seasons.
Martin considered this.
He was not going to complicate his first month at the firm by getting anywhere near that situation. Let Harvey find his own stray genius. Martin had enough to manage.
"Sounds good," he said. "I'll be ready."
"Secretarial staff." Jessica continued. "The firm requires a bachelor's from an accredited university — Ivy preferred. If you have someone in mind, flag them now. Otherwise, HR will pull from the current pool."
Martin had been waiting for this.
He'd thought about it on the ride back from the courthouse. He'd thought about it, if he was honest, in the back of his mind since his first day, when he'd walked past the paralegal bullpen and immediately recognized the particular organized chaos of someone who was doing four people's jobs without a single complaint and somehow keeping all of it straight.
"Rachel," he said. "Rachel Zane. Is there a process for requesting a transfer, or—"
Jessica's expression shifted — not surprise, exactly, but recalibration.
"Rachel Zane," she repeated.
"She's currently in the paralegal pool. I watched her manage the Hartwell document review on my second day — thirty-two hundred pages, cross-referenced and tabbed in about six hours. She didn't have a law background, which means she built her entire organizational system from scratch. That's not trainable. That's just how someone thinks."
Jessica was quiet for a moment. "She's been trying to get into law school for three years. Failed the LSAT twice."
"She's not going to be my law clerk," Martin said. "She's going to run my office. Those are completely different skill sets, and she's exceptional at the one I actually need."
Another pause. Jessica Pearson did not arrive at decisions without running them through a fairly thorough internal process first, even small ones.
"I'll speak with her," she said finally. "It'll be her choice."
"Of course."
Jessica stood, smoothed her jacket, and glanced at the bare walls of his office one more time. "Paintings, Martin. By end of week."
"Yes, ma'am."
She left without looking back, heels precise on the hardwood, the kind of exit that didn't require a closing line.
Martin leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.
Rachel Zane.
In the show, she'd been Mike Ross's love interest — smart, driven, a little guarded, perpetually frustrated by the glass ceiling she kept bumping her head against. The actress who'd played her had, in Martin's previous-life timeline, ended up marrying a British prince and becoming a Duchess, which remained one of the more surreal footnotes in Hollywood history.
In this timeline, she was twenty-six, working as a paralegal at the best law firm in New York, and about to be offered a job as his secretary.
Martin stared at the ceiling for another moment.
Then he sat up, straightened his tie, opened his laptop, and started reviewing the three client files Jessica's assistant had forwarded during the car ride back from court.
The Porsche-versus-Challenger debate could wait.
There was work to do.
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