Sophia Rinaldi was starting at my law firm today. My heart was pounding out of my chest. She’d interviewed with us a week ago, and Jackson and I hired her on the spot. She had the qualifications even though she was quite young. Only twenty-four, but already a lawyer for a year when she moved out west. I had studied her C.V. (curriculum vitae) before she arrived for the interview and it was impressive for someone so young. She’d gone to college in Italy, then moved to the United States to study at the University of Chicago Law School. She graduated with high honors, passed the bar, and was only twenty-two at the time. The law firm of Hoyt, Wells and Michaels scooped her up. She lasted there just a year when a rumor of an affair with Leonard Hoyt began and had been too big to squash. She adamantly swore to us that it had been just that, a rumor, exacerbated by none other than Hoyt’s jealous wife. Looking at her while she had pleaded her innocence, I wanted to believe it.
