Mr. Gold had seen many divorce cases in his time in divorce and family law with SBG and Associates. He'd represented both women and men and usually found that when the divorce was acrimonious there was usually enough fault to go around with both parties. However French vs. LaRoux wasn't like the others.

First of all, Belle French was a lovely woman and he genuinely felt sorry for what she'd gone through from her husband Gaston LaRoux. There were documents from the police indicating there had been physical and mental abuse. Sometimes he got the feeling that there had been a sexual side to it as well that she didn't feel comfortable telling him and it made him feel incensed and queasy. No matter how many times he'd seen abuse in divorce cases he'd never grown immune to the fury it gave him, that someone could turn something so precious and naturally beautiful as love and partnership and distort it into some kind of cruel prison like this Mr. LaRoux had done.

Gold liked to joke to put his clients at ease. Divorce and custody battles were stressful and his clients often arrived so nervous and wound up ahead of time, it helped to get them to relax just to be able to have a sensible conversation.

"How do I know you're the best lawyer for this? Ms. French had asked him when they first met.

"Because not only am I the president of the law firm, but I'm also a client," he'd quipped, imitating the old Hair club for Men infomercials from TV.

She'd looked perplexed, not quite getting the joke. He'd have to think of something new, he admitted, the reference was getting old. He wondered if she was old enough to remember Chia Pets, he wondered.

"I'm divorced myself, so I know a bit about it," he explained, making a face.

She smiled a little at his grimace, and the small smile seemed to light up her face like a bulb. He wondered if she had a nice laugh, before bringing his focus back to the task at hand. It didn't do to mix business with pleasure and hitting on her was no way to help her with her current problems.

For her part, she had been worried about going to a lawyer, even though her family had encouraged her. She knew she deserved money for the house as she had helped pay for it with part of her wages from the flowershop originally, but she still couldn't shake her fear of her ex-husband. Anything that might drive him to anger was still so hard for her to do, and it made her feel ashamed of herself. What had happened to the undergrad, with all her beliefs in feminism and equality and desire for higher education? Instead, when it'd come to her private life, she'd gone straight from the shitty home situation she'd been born into, to one she'd created herself that was even worse. It's just at first it had seemed so different, something resembling the love she'd read about in storybooks, not the animosity and fighting her parents engaged in at home. But it had all been an illusion, a combination of Gaston not showing his full hand at first, and her trying to hold onto the illusions in her mind even when reality began to resemble something else entirely. And now she was paying the price for the bad deal.

She'd thought dealing with a lawyer might be part of this unpleasantness. She'd seen enough Saul Goodman types on TV that she was all ready to expect someone fast talking, insincere and sleazy, but she was amazed to see that Gold genuinely cared, that he sympathized with her situation and wanted to help her and not just for a fat pay check or a love of verbal sparring with some other lawyer.

In his office Mr. Gold noticed Ms. French was sweet and funny, with a caustic sense of humour and a wit and intelligence to her that he hadn't noticed when he first took her on as a client. Then she had seemed so scared, as if her ex-husband might pop out of at her from every passing shadow.

She'd changed since she'd gone back to university to pursue a degree in library science. She held herself with confidence, looked him in the eye when they talked and was no longer afraid to disagree with him on certain points. He had to say that student life agreed with her. While everyone talked about lawyers being scammers, few people outside the trade talked about the legion of clients who tried to pull the wool of their lawyers' eyes about what the other party legitimately owed them. Mr. Gold knew just what lake to tell those folks to jump into. He hadn't been born yesterday. While plenty of his clients with far less to complain about than Ms. French liked to play the victim card or hide their own transgressions from their lawyer, she had always been straightforward with him and in a profession such as his, that was a thing to be treasured.

What Ms. French wanted from Mr. LaRoux seemed right and fair to Mr. Gold, and not just because he was her lawyer. Her claim was for half the money from the house she and LaRoux had once lived in, the house he'd thrown her out of, and then sold, keeping all the profits for himself, when the house had been bought and paid for by the two of them together, with her wages as well as his.

Belle really only cared about the money in so far as it would go to pay for her to finish school, as she was already in enough student debt to begin with. Even this fairly innocuous settlement was something she was afraid to engage LaRoux in.

When Mr. Gold asked her once exactly what she was afraid of, she only looked back sadly at him. "Maybe I'm just a coward," she said her voice husky with pent up emotion, shame.

"No you're, not," he insisted his voice taking on just an edge of anger. Sensitive to any indication of this particular emotion, she seemed to shrink back in her seat, away from him.

Couldn't she see, Gold thought, that he wasn't anger with her, but with the kind of pathetic excuse for a human being that would take such a fine, spirited woman and try to squeeze her essence down into something he could bully and control? How had LaRoux gotten away with treating her that way? Gold thought. Had she been with him, he knew he'd have loved her as an equal, not like a carelessly treated possession.

"Listen, anybody would be afraid, after what's happened to you," he said evenly. "Courage doesn't come from an absence of fear." Feeling emboldened by his words himself, Gold touched her hand. "Courage comes from being afraid, but doing what you know is right anyway."

That day when she left the office, she thought that if the world had been different, if she'd finished school the first time around like she wanted to, maybe Gold was the sort of man she would have met and married, not someone large, blunt and physically cruel, but someone small and sharp and clever and kind. But it was too late for that now, she thought wistfully. Still, she cautioned Gold to look out for Gaston. She knew he didn't fully understand how her ex-husband could be, the lengths he could go to retain the things he thought he owned or revenge himself on those who angered him, lengths that could include violence at times.

Things went surprisingly well at the trial, all things considered, thought Belle. Gold brought up the "anonymous" threats she'd received through the mail and harassing letters stuck on her car windshield to the judge and Gaston didn't run across the room and throttle him. Most embarrassing for her were the large number of threatening e-mails (sent anonymously of course), to the law firm itself, including ones that featured specifically nasty things Gaston planned to do to Mr. Gold himself. Gold for his part, seemed completely unruffled by the threats as he read them out to the court room in as flat a tone as if he was reading some simple piece of legislature, although Belle did notice a slight blip in his voice when he read the line about castration, even Gold wasn't that cool of a cucumber.

None of these things did anything to shore up Gaston's case, even though it was difficult to link them directly to him without full proof and an admission of guilt. But when the evidence was all over the judge awarded her all they had asked for and then some for additional pain and suffering and a restraining order against Gaston.

As they walked out of the courtroom, Gold put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "You did great in there," he whispered. "Knew you had it in you kid," he said and she beamed because she had been so nervous and also he sounded a bit like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

And now it was all over and she could have a life and keep on with her studies at school and finally get the job she'd always wanted at the library and who knows, maybe later get someone new in her life who treated her like she should be treated and maybe if the whole lawyer/client thing was over by then and they were back to being regular citizens they could date or something. Her mind spun with new thoughts and feelings. It was a ridiculous fantasy she knew, but theoretically possible. Possible. She liked the taste of that word. So much was possible now. Now that she was free at last.

They emerged from the courthouse out into the parking lot and the afternoon sun was warm on their formal courtroom clothes. When they had arrived at court the sky had been full of grey clouds and spitting rain, but now it was bright blue and glowing like an omen of good things to come.

Gold loosened his tie. "Where are you parked?" she asked him.

"Nowhere," he said, lifting his umbrella. "I walked here earlier. The office isn't too far from the court."

"Well then, let me drive you back," she said with a smile. "It's the least I can do." Belle bent over the car to unlock it with her key. Someday she hoped she hoped to be able to afford a car with automatic keyless entry. Big dreams French, she thought to herself, big dreams.

Just then Belle heard the sound of car tires coming to a halt nearby. She hadn't been looking in the direction of the arriving car, instead busy getting the key in the fussy front door lock.

"You gold-digging bitch!" yelled a voice and her body froze in fear. It was Gaston. She looked up to see him leaning out the window of his car, with a gun pointed right at them.

"Run!" hissed Gold.

She turned, grabbed Gold's hand and they both started to move, but not before Gaston had a chance to squeeze the trigger. She was behind Gold, pinned against the side of her car as the first bullets hit. She felt them slam into his body, making it jump, the force of it knocking her head back into the car. A bullet grazed her leg and she felt a blinding pain. Then Gold was sagging off her, sinking to the ground, lying at her feet.

"How'd you like your slimy little lawyer now?" he smirked.

She looked down at Gold, face, his neat pinstripe suit all covered in blood, limbs awkwardly posed like a broken puppet.

Then Gaston fired the last bullet in the clip, hitting her in what she initially thought to be her chest. Pain again. She put her hand to her shirt and took it away covered in blood. He's killed me, she thought desperately as she sunk to the ground, distantly aware of screams in the parking lot.

He's won after all.

There were other sounds, car tires on asphalt, screams, shouts, more shots being fired, but she heard it all from a distance as if it was all miles away. Everything felt strange and slow as she sank down, to lie on the ground across from Gold. The black tarmac was hot against her ear and cheek.

She stared at Gold's torn suit and bloody pants. There was something white that shouldn't be there she thought distantly, poking out from the fabric of the leg closest to her, with the sharp white edges of a recently broken tree branch. A wave of nausea assailed her, but she still could not look away.

Please, please, be alive, she begged, not sure if she said it out loud or only in her head. Then, as the shouts grew closer to her and the sound of feet thumping on the ground near her ear increased in volume, she heard, or thought she heard, a pained gasp, and then, a word spoken desperately into the asphalt.

"Belle," she heard Gold sigh, before she blacked out completely.

But it was only in her mind that she responded back to him, "I'm here."