No One, her testimony save you

There is a five-minute break, and no one approaches me.

Right in front of the assembled partners and panel, Gertrude had cut straight through the corporate decorum, publicly demanding to know if John had raped her. When Laly flatly refused to play along—telling the truth and throwing a massive wrench straight into Gertrude's carefully manufactured narrative—Gertrude's composure completely shattered. Fueled by blind fury, Laly retaliated by dragging their affair out into the open for everyone in the room to hear, publicizing everything that happened at last year's Christmas party.

Looking right across the room at Gertrude, Laly had declared, "He gives me all of his attention, after you threw me away. And I love what he does to me... Sure, his views on women are completely outdated, but that's the only thing he's guilty of. And it make him even cuter. He actually knows how to please a woman, and he's an attentive, dominant lover who treats a lady the way she's meant to be treated." She even threw it in Gertrude's face that she would willingly share John with his own wife, once Madison finally opened her eyes to what a tyrant Gertrude really is.

That provocation immediately set off a furious shouting match, with Gertrude and Laly screaming at each other in rapid-fire French as the other lawyers scrambled to contain the fallout. One of the partners had him wait in the main lobby, escorted down by security guards while the chaos raged overhead.

Arriving in the lobby, he takes a seat and tries to contemplate the dizzying pieces clicking into place. He had known about Laly's affair for a year now, playing along with the domestic illusion while heading home to an empty house. But the truth was far deeper: Laly, bisexual and fiercely loyal to Gertrude at first, had suffered a shattering realization when she uncovered Gertrude's own betrayals. Seeking total vengeance, she decided what better payback than turning the firm's other wounded party into her lover. He realizes now that walking in on Gertrude in that lesbian tryst wasn't an accident at all—it was entirely mapped out by Laly and his lawyer, Izabel, engineered for maximum, devastating impact.

Between losing his job, navigating the fallout of his crumbling marriage, and realizing he was a willing instrument in Laly's grand revenge scheme, his life is a controlled demolition. Yet, his phone is still blowing up with messages from Laly wanting him by her side. As a twist of fate, the assigned legal advisor striding toward him across the lobby is none other than Izabel—Madison's former friend—who is representing him now, entirely uninterested in taking his money because she knows exactly how all the chess pieces are moving.

As he sits there reviewing how a single engineered collision with Laly last year completely altered the trajectory of his existence, he watches the group of lawyers—led by Izabel—close the distance across the lobby right toward him.