By the time she'd reached her workstation, three of those were already long gone leaving only two she could recall with any clarity. After fifteen frustrating minutes, she'd realized she'd transposed the last names. Though she'd sensed Hadrian's gaze drilling through her left shoulder, Priya remained focused on her task at hand. She had bigger problems.

She'd sourced out a couple articles on Jessica—daughter of a major real estate mogul father and publisher mother, she was an only child. Brought up as an orthodox Jewish household and during her time at Columbia, she'd helped immigrant families navigate social services, the immigration detention system, and voter registration. She'd also worked as a paralegal at an immigration law firm where she translated for Yiddish-speaking clients and prepared visa applications.

Calvin, born in Hong Kong, immigrated to the US at the age of six, according to an interview conducted in his third year at Brown where he discussed overcoming a challenging childhood to pursue his dreams of law. His father became addicted to gambling and abandoned his family, leaving his mother to raise three young children on her own and they'd endured several stints of homelessness. And, by trolling his Facebook, she made the startling discovery that he was currently battling retinitis pigmentosa which caused slow, but progressive loss of vision, starting with peripheral. As of yet, there was no cure.

She'd only just started drafting her points of attack when Heather reappeared with a sharp clap of her hands. Nine fifteen galloped upon them like the headless horseman brandishing his flaming pumpkin and sharp sword.

Priya trickled in with the flow of her fellow candidates into the firm's library, positioned between the second and third boardroom, across from the file room. The library was aptly named with high cases lined with legal texts in various leather bound volumes. The floor thick carpeted and walls grey, she could almost envision herself in her, working late nights with her peers, pouring over doc reviews and litigation materials.

A trio of tables were set up at the front of the room, two set side by side and facing a third, next to which was a lone chair. The rest of the room had seating spaced out in court room style, with a reserved side row of nine already filled with the senior partners. Seven men and two women.

Unlike the remaining candidates in the room, she knew everything about them, right down to the barest detail, and for the first time all damn morning, Priya felt the cool, calming rush that presaged going to war. As nervous and under prepared as she felt with her skimpy notes and foggy thoughts, this was the part she'd always loved the most. Sitting in a courtroom, squaring off with a judge, tearing into a defendant on the stand.

She lived for the rush. The thrill.

Slipping into an available seat, Priya tucked her satchel at her feet and kept her notebook in her lap, pen uncapped and ready. Just because she hadn't accomplished much by way of research, didn't mean she couldn't make up for it now. Today was about feeling every one out, separating the weak from the strong. Priya knew which side of that line she planned to fall on.

Dressed in judge robes, Marai claimed her seat and, plucking a folded strip of paper out of a box, and by some unfortunate luck of the draw, Team D was up first.

"We'll go alphabetically," Marai said smoothly, easing back into her seat, hands folded atop the table. "Taryn Jobin."

Priya watched as a poised young blonde took to the stand, dressed in a charcoal suit and pale pink blouse. Random selection from the opposition Team C placed Calvin as her cross-examiner. The stocky Asian guy she'd sat next to in the boardroom. While he wasn't particularly graceful in the way he commanded a room, and a bit clumsy in his questioning, he kept Taryn on her toes throughout the fifteen-minute exchange.

Priya took notes throughout, as did the rest of her peers, letting not even the smallest detail escape her notice. As this was a month-long venture, who knew when a bit of Intel would come in useful? She'd been so focused, and entrenched in thought that it was only when Marai called her name for the second time that she heard it.

"Sorry," she apologized, hastily tucking her notes away and taking care to lock her satchel as she approached the stand. Unbuttoning her blazer, Priya slid into the seat, warmed by those who'd sat there prior and tried to exude easy, casual comfort.

"Ms. Nagao," one of the male candidates stood up quickly and cast Marai a disarming smile, "My name is Michael Winschitz. I know this isn't exactly protocol, but I would like to extend myself as volunteer for this round of questioning."

Priya inhaled a slow, halting breath. He had a long face, top heavy with a wide brow and narrow chin. Everything about him said snotty trust fund brat and, judging the smugness of his grin, one who was out to get her.

"I'll allow it," Marai said after a moment's consideration and a collection of nods from the senior partners.

Great. Priya sat a little straighter.

"Please state your name for the record," Michael said, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets. His suit, though expensive, didn't fit quite right, and suspected he wanted to hide thin arms and skinny legs.

Feet crossed at the ankles, Priya set her hands in her lap and met his gaze. "Priyanka Naveen Seth."

Michael nodded, his bottom lip pulling down in exaggerated expression of consideration. "Seth. That's your mother's last name isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Lakshmi Seth, am I right?"

Priya released a slow breath. "Yes." She heard a few whispered comments, a couple of soft gasps. A reaction she was more than accustomed to when people discovered that she was the daughter of a noble prize winning physicist.

"That's quite a legacy."

"It is. I'm very proud of my mother."

"And you should be. Noble Prize..." He shook his head, gave a soft round of applause. "She's created some big shoes for you to fill; I can imagine following them isn't easy."

Priya narrowed her gaze, wondering where he was going with this personal line of inquiry. What was his strategy? His point of attack? Surely he couldn't think to be stupid enough to target a woman as accomplished as Lakshmi Seth, child prodigy turned physic's genius.

"What are you?"

"American. Born and raised." Asshole.

"Congratulations, you have an American passport. But what are you?" He laughed, flashing an arrogant smile. And something else, she realized, something beneath the snark and sarcasm.

A meanness she'd come to know rather well, growing up in a predominantly white community, surrounded by white kids with their fair skin, pale eyes and straight hair. She was different. She didn't look like the rest of them. She was a minority. A mixed-breed mutt with darker skin, dark hair and dark eyes.

She was used to people speaking to her in slow, exaggerated sentences as they assumed she didn't speak English, or in their constant need to know which box to stuff her into, inundated Priya with questions like where were you born? What is your background? Or the less polite, what are you?

As if somehow being bi-racial or a woman of colour somehow set her apart from the status quo.

And no matter how many times it happened, it never got easier. Her heart always kicked up in speed, simmering with a riddled mess of anxiety, anger and whatever choice extreme emotion one could think of until she was lightheaded, torn between twin urges to run away or rip out the ignorant fool's throat.

Teeth on edge, Priya released a calming breath. "I don't see how that's pertinent."

"It's a simple question."

"An irrelevant one."

He advanced, leather soles whispering over thick carpeting. "It's not a big deal. Answer the question."

Yes, she thought, it is a big deal. A big deal that I have to explain what I am instead of who I am. "My mother is Indian and my father is Swiss." She spoke coolly, calmly, but didn't hold back the flashes of temper from her eyes. The flames were too high and hot for her to contain them completely.

"Father." His grin turned feral. Ugly. "Interesting choice of words. Tell us about your father, Priyanka."

"His name is Hernan Suarez, an Argentinean a former Telecommunications CEO who stepped down seven years ago and now sits on the Board of Directors. He and my mother live together in Zurich which she's currently researching—"

"You're referring to your Step father?" Michael sliced in.

"Yes."

"I asked about your father."

"He is my father."

"As he wed your mother when you were almost twelve, I don't see how that's possible. Care to clarify?"

"He's been in my life since I was seven. He's raised me. Loved me. Provided for me." She held out a hand, palm up and let it fall. "I don't see how much more I can clarify on the subject."

"That's sweet, but I wasn't talking about bedtime stories and backyard barbeques. I'm talking about simple, basic biology." He came closer with every word, his eyes locked on hers. "I Who is your father?"

He knows. He knows. He knows. The single phrase spun through her head on loop.

Priya tried to draw in a breath, but her lungs had collapsed and refused to expand. Like the balloons for a wildlife fundraiser she'd coerced her mother into letting her organize for school. Fresh out of the packaging, with her lips puckered at the end and she'd blown and blown and blown until she was red faced and panting. Not a single balloon would inflate. They'd had to rush to a boutique an hour before the festivities.

That's how she felt right now. Limp. Compressed.

"You don't know who he is, do you?" Michael pounced, tone hot and uncompromising. "Answer the question."

She jolted under the severity of his voice. "No..."

"No, what?"

"No. I don't know who he is." Saying it aloud was like chewing on glass, every word sliced and scored deep until she bled.

"And that is because approximately twenty-five years ago, your mother visited a specialist in New York for artificial insemination with sperm from a carefully screened, anonymous donor."

Priya couldn't bring herself to look at him, or anyone. Shame, humiliation seared beneath her skin, flashing from head to toe in alternating waves of hot and cold. She'd accidentally discovered the truth about her parentage when she'd turned thirteen.

A startling secret revelation her young mind struggled to process. To accept. She'd made the mistake of telling someone at school. A close friend she'd thought she could trust—needing someone to confide in, to share the burden of discovery—to shoulder her confusion and pain. Instead that friend had blabbed to the rest of her class and before end of day the entire prep school knew.

Her mother had refused to pull her out and enroll Priya into a new school. You'll learn the hard way, Priyanka. You always insist on the hard way, but you'll learn.

And thought part of her had resented her mother for not swooping in to save her, Priya had learned. She'd walked through those doors for the next three years with her head high and ears deafened to the snickers and comments, she'd pretend she didn't hear their mean jokes and cruel taunts. The onslaught of ridicule and scorn had frightened her into silent inaction. After that, she'd never made the same mistake of telling anyone ever again.

Aside from her Sisters, no one else in her life knew.

So how did Michael figure it out? They'd only had an hour to research and even the wise-and-all-knowing-Google wouldn't be able to pull up that long since buried skeleton in such a narrow window of opportunity.

The only plausible explanation was he'd already known, and had invested considerable time and resources into digging into her personally. How and why suddenly became no longer relevant as the pain of degradation was burned away by the awakening flames of rage.

"Let the record show that it's our opinion Ms. Priyanka Seth has testified in the affirmative that—"

"For the record," Priya interrupted, rising on legs, her knees locking underneath her for strength, "whether I was born via InVitro Fertilization or through good old fashioned f*cking, I am a human being and deserve to be treated with a modicum of respect, not viewed as a lab rat to be dissected under a microscope."

Patches of red mottled his fair skin, the whites of his eyes circled the stunned blue irises and as he opened his mouth to speak, the sound of a gavel hammered loudly.

"Your time is up, Mr. Winschitz. And let's adjourn for a recess. One hour for lunch, and then we shall continue with the remaining teams. To ensure fairness, the rest of you are prohibited from using that time to further investigation. All work accounts will be monitored and you must turn in your phones at reception. Anyone who fails to do so, or is caught coercing any members of the completed teams to do so on their behalf will be dismissed from the firm and their contract revoked."

The assembly didn't require much more prompting as by the time Priya reached her seat and collected her satchel, most of the candidates and Senior Partners had vacated the library, including Marai Nagao.

"Hey...Tiger—"

"Not now," she snapped, shouldering the strap, too angry to think coherently and stalked off in search of her target. She found him, Michael Winsh!tz, surrounded by a couple of other candidates by the cubicle. His back to her as he enjoyed some joke—probably at her expense—with Taryn Jobin, Mary Schulman, Pierce Warren and Mark Bell.

"I'd like to speak with you."

"As you can see," he tipped down his chin and leveled a bored expression, "I was in the middle of a conversation. See, people, standing close together and talking equates to a conversation. A conversation you rudely interrupted."

Fine, she thought, if he wants to do this in front of an audience, so be it.

"What I consider rude," she snapped, loud enough to cut above the sound of everyone else, "is crossing serious personal boundaries. If you have a problem with me, come out a say it like a man with some balls. Unless your socialite mommy took care of those for you? Spade you did she? Like her tea cup Chihuahua?" She might not know him personally, but she knew his type, and judging expression, lips pressed tight and puckered into a grimace, she'd pegged him dead on.

Michael stepped forward and lowered his sneering face inches from hers, "Cross breeding aside, you're a f*cking science project conceived in a petri-dish. You don't deserve to be here. The firm. Breathing." He shrugged. "Take your pick."

Staggered, it took every ounce of self control Priya had left to hold her ground as he walked away. God...he was not only a racist, but a purist. Gathering herself, carefully, she slid into the first set she could pour herself into and willed her heartbeat to ease, her thoughts to clear. She'd faced some horrible people in her life, but this...nothing like this.

The monitor winked to life and the screen flashed to an inbox with an incoming email. Dazed, Priya squinted and realized she'd plunked herself behind someone else's desk. And not just anyone. But Hitler-incarnate himself.

She was about to move away and seek out the refuge of her own workspace when a thought struck her. A sneaky, devious, revenge colder than a motherf*cker idea. He'd left without logging out or locking his computer. Giving her complete access to his account.

Everyone else was gone, not wanting to waste a precious lunch hour, but who knew how long she'd be alone. Her fingers found themselves flying over the keys on the laptop and she pulled up numerous browsers, ran searches and opened windows.

Of porn.

Gay.

She-male.

Hardcore girl on girl.

Fetish.

Wherever her mind wandered that's where she went. The dirtier the better. Downloads, online forums and live sex performances. Minimizing the various windows, she left them running in the background and set the computer to restart in twenty minutes.

By the time he'd come back, Michael would be none the wiser.

Satisfied, Priya made her way to reception to enact the second portion of her game plan. Lorraine appeared from around the corner as soon as Priya reached her desk and her surprised expression softened into one of empathy.

*Author's Note**

Hola!

Jesus, isn't Michael an epic douchebro? I cringed during that scene, but I think Priya is going to teach him a serious lesson he won't forget.

Growing up as a bi-racial child, I had to face a lot of what Priya experienced from Michael during her cross-examination. The constant need for someone to understand what you are before they know who you are always drove me crazy. I couldn't understand why background was always such a big deal it often was the first question out of someone's mouth shortly after 'What's your name?"

Not to say that everyone who asked it was ill-intentioned, but it can get a bit exhausting sometimes, to be pigeon-holed. So I decided anyone who asks I give the simple answer: Canadian. I was born, raised and that is What I am. It's my nationality, my heritage and my place of origin. It is home.

Some people get it, and others will laugh and roll their eyes and say, "Ya, okay but seriously what are you?"

And you'd be surprised that even someone who is also a visible minority or disabled can be equally clueless.

I've had black people call me a traitor for refusing to identify as 'only black', white people who refused to let me into their homes with the rest of the kids to play and a guy in a wheelchair refer to me as 'mutt' once I did reveal the extent of my diversity.

But, TBH what I've experienced here in Canada is so minor as compared to other parts of the world. I love my home and am so proud to live in such a diverse city, rich with cultures and identities and beliefs.

How about you guys? What have your experiences been like? What have you seen or endured?