My Unexpected Valentine

Chapter 1

Emily

"The jury finds the defendant guilty."

The judge's words played on repeat inside Emily's head as she left the courthouse. This was the biggest case of her career as a criminal defense attorney and she had lost.

"You promised! You promised me you would get me off!" her client had screamed, as they pulled him from the courtroom in cuffs and chains. He wasn't wrong. She had made a promise to him. Not exactly that she would get him off. She was thinking 5 years at the most. Instead his sentence was 15 to 25.

The man was guilty. He had burned down one building and two cars. In his defense, they were empty. No one had been hurt. That helped his case. It just wasn't enough. He had done a lot of damage. The judge wasn't feeling lenient.

Emily could come up with excuse after excuse, but deep down, she knew this was on her. A part of her didn't want to get him off the hook. A part of her felt he deserved the jail time.

But it didn't matter what she thought. Her job was to defend him to the best of her ability and she had failed.

With a heavy sigh, she walked to the parking lot and got into her car. Dressed in a black blazer with a collared white shirt underneath, complete with black dress pants, she very much looked like a professional lawyer. Too bad she didn't feel the way that she looked.

She stowed her briefcase in the back seat and she sat there for a minute in silence. How was she going to recover from this? This case was all over the news. Everyone was talking about it. Everyone was going to know she was responsible for losing the case. And then who would hire her? A loss like this would not look appealing to potential clients.

This wasn't the first case she lost, but it was the most devastating one. She felt sure it was going to be a huge blow to her career.

She snapped out of her thoughts when she heard the sound of something vibrating. It was her phone. She reached into her purse, pulled it out and on the screen, she saw a message from her older sister, Talia.

How did it go?

Clearly Talia hadn't heard the news yet. Emily didn't know if she was ready to tell her.

Her older sister had always been the shining star of the family. The one who could do no wrong. Talia was the good daughter. The perfect student. After she graduated from high school, she went on to bigger and better things. She was currently a web developer. She had created several popular phone apps, and she just finished up a new dating app that she had been talking about nonstop.

Right now, Talia was everything that Emily wasn't. She had a successful career. She had a family. Emily didn't even have a boyfriend. She couldn't remember the last time she went on a date.

Bad, she reluctantly typed on her phone. She stared at the word a long moment, then hit send. Despite the envy she felt over her sister's growing success, Talia was her closest confidant.

Oh no. I'm sorry, Em. Want to stop by the office and talk about it?

I'll be there in a few, Emily typed back before shoving her phone into her purse.

Talia's office was about fifteen minutes away from the courthouse. It was a small one-story building with big glass windows. It used to be an old RadioShack before it was shut down. Now it had been turned into a quirky office with bright colors. Inside there were several desks, each with a computer. Most of the desks were empty, except for one.

A young boy with dark brown hair turned and smiled at her. "Hey, Aunt Emily."

"Hey, kid," she replied. The boy was her nephew, Stefan. After school, he was always in the office with Talia, playing on one of the computers while his mom finished up work.