My name is Ana Popescu. I am twenty-eight years old and I'm a criminal defense lawyer. I'm not famous. I don't come from a wealthy family. But I grew up with a name that forced me to become someone. My father, Andrei Popescu, a former judge, taught me that justice is not negotiable, that the law is the only weapon of those who refuse to be corrupt.
Ever since I was little, I wanted to make him proud. Maybe too proud.
That's why, when I was offered the chance to defend a big, complicated case—one that was making waves in the press—I didn't think twice. I said "yes" without blinking. Even though… I shouldn't have.
My client? Marko Ivanov.
A name that inspires fear. A man the press talks about in whispers and the police mention only when they have solid evidence. A mobster, they said. Dangerous. Obsessively calculated. Involved in influence trafficking, dirty money, unresolved disappearances. And yet, paradoxically, never convicted.
"One of the hardest to touch," a colleague told me when he heard who had hired me.
"That's exactly why he deserves to be defended like any other person. Justice isn't selective," I replied.
The truth? Maybe I wanted to prove something. Or maybe I wanted to escape my father's shadow and build my own path.
The first night after I accepted the case, I barely slept. I read everything I could about Ivanov—files, articles, rumors. I closed my laptop around four in the morning and, despite the exhaustion, my heart was pounding wildly.
I was going to meet him.
Things were about to begin—things I would have no way of controlling.
Back then, I still believed I held the reins of the story.