Habit had me going straight to my old office. I stopped a few feet away when I remembered, then turned around and trudged back down the hall to where I’d been relocated.
I was halfway there when I collided with Pierce.
Literally.
Crashing into him, I hissed as hot coffee splashed on my hand, and more of it splashed on him.
“Dammit, Dena! Bad enough you’re fucking with my career,” he snapped, glaring at me. “Do you really need to throw second degree burns on top of it?”
The apology I’d been formulating died on my lips.
“I'm fucking with your career?” Aware that people were staring at us, I kept my voice low. “I’m not the one who started it, Pierce. All you had to do was speak up.”
“And you could have just ignored it and let it go. Nothing would have happened.” His eyes darted around, his handsome face an ugly shade of red.
“Wrong.” I reigned in my temper. No matter how I felt about him screwing Bethany, she was the one in the position of power. “When you ignore a bully for shit like that, they just do more. They want to see what else they can get away with. How far they can push you.” Reaching into the side pocket of my purse, I pulled out a couple of tissues. “Here. For your jacket.”
He ignored the offer, continuing to blot at the liquid with an already drenched napkin.
I started to shake my head and step around him, but stopped part-way around. “You know, she’s not worth it. She’s already trying out her desk with some other guy. Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t think you’re a half-bad guy under all of it, Pierce. You could do better. You deserve better.”
Before he could say anything else, I headed to my office and shut the door, locking myself in.
***
The first three times I called Bethany, I was snapped at, hung up on, and put on hold for twenty minutes – in that order.
Finally, tired of waiting, I gathered up my notes and the bullet point list I’d made of the reasons why Leayna Mance wasn't the killer. All of which I was almost positive Arik would be presenting in court. We needed to either find ways to refute all of these points, or we needed to find a better suspect. The real suspect.
I just needed to get Bethany to see that.
As soon as I reached Bethany's office, however, I knew things wouldn’t be going my way. Her receptionist, Barbara, cut her eyes to the door, then shook her head. Based on the expression on her face, she wasn't merely telling me to sit and wait until Bethany was done with whatever she was doing.
Through the partially open door, I could hear Bethany talking. As there wasn’t anybody responding to her curt questions, I had to assume she was on the phone.
I settled myself in one of the chairs and gave Barbara a little smile. In her fifties, she once told me she was counting down the months to retirement. I was pretty sure she only had eight months left. I couldn't imagine having to work eight months directly under Bethany. At least now I could escape to my office most of the time.
There was a heavy smashing sound and Barbara and I shared a grimace before Bethany appeared in the doorway. Her glare flew past me to lock on her receptionist. “Find out who in the fuck is handling the docket this afternoon. I want a name. They're going to be very sorry they fucked with me.” She drew in another breath and then stopped, her gaze drifting back toward me. “Did we have something scheduled?” she asked, her voice icy.
“No.” I managed a polite smile. “I can always set up a time for later, but I had a few things about the Mance case that I needed to discuss with you, and I wasn’t having much luck calling you earlier.”
“This was why I wanted Lawton on the case,” she said, turning on her heel and stalking into her office. “He seems perfectly capable of working independently.”
Since she hadn’t closed the door, I assumed that meant I was to follow.
“As it seems he’s back from his suspension, perhaps you’d prefer him to resume being second chair.” I kept my voice neutral.
“No,” she snapped. “The back and forth is slowing things down, and it won’t look good when we finally get to move to court. Speaking of which...” She took up position behind the desk and spread her hands wide on the surface before giving me a hard look. “You had something to discuss. Let’s hear it.”
Placing my file down on the desk, I flipped it open.
“Nothing about this case adds up,” I said bluntly. She wouldn't like it, but at least she wouldn't throw me out before I had my say. “Mrs. Mance is being painted as a woman scorned, murdering her husband for planning to divorce her, and leaving her with nothing. Except no one can find any record of him even speaking with a divorce lawyer.”
“All he had to do was say it, and it set her off.” Bethany crossed her arms over her chest.
“But there's no proof,” I continued. “And according to their pre-nup, if he filed for divorce for anything other than infidelity, he had to pay her half.”
“Just because we haven't found proof of an affair doesn't mean it didn't happen.”
I took a slow breath. “We have no motive, and none of the forensics supports her being the killer.”
“She was in the building,” Bethany snapped. “She had his blood on her.”
“But not as much as she would have if she'd killed him. The medical examiner said that the killer would've been covered from head-to-toe. The pictures of Ms. Mance after the fact show blood on her shirt and her hands, nowhere else.”
“Dammit, Dena! Are you a prosecutor or her bleeding heart defense attorney?”
“I’m a lawyer, same as you. And things don't add up. We might be prosecuting the wrong person.”
Bethany snorted, the sound thick with scorn. “Oh, honey. You need to grow up.” She gestured toward the file as if she didn't even want to touch it. “Put that away. This is about getting a conviction.”
I squared my shoulders and asked the question I hadn't wanted to ask. “And if an innocent person goes to jail?”
An unladylike noise came from her throat. “Don't be so naïve, Dena. Nobody’s innocent.”
Chapter 8
Dena
Nobody’s innocent.
There was nothing Bethany could have said that would've pissed me off quite as much as those two simple words.
It wasn't just the opposite of people who thought everyone was innocent. Thinking that nobody was innocent, in Bethany's mind, seemed to be a free pass to charge anyone with any crime, whether they did it or not, simply because they must be guilty of something.
I knew that, more and more, the belief of innocent until proven guilty was being put through the ringer, especially by the media. It annoyed me, but it wasn't the same.
Bethany made a mockery of everything I’d chosen to believe in, everything I wanted to believe in. She preferred to ignore all the evidence pointing to the possibility that her suspect might be innocent. She just wanted to put someone away, get a win. Justice didn't matter to her.
I still believed in justice, and I'd do what I needed to make sure that it was served.
Even if that meant going over Bethany's head with any evidence I found.
At least it seemed like I'd have plenty of time to work. Pierce was going out of his way to avoid me. Since he wasn’t working on anything connected to the Mance case now, it was easy to stay away from him without actually looking like I was avoiding him. And, of course, Bethany was tied up in court. If the courthouse grapevine was anywhere near accurate, she’d nailed somebody’s ass to a wall on the stand just the other day.
Between now and Monday morning, I probably didn’t have to worry much about Bethany appearing at my shoulder or calling me. Her current case would probably be going to closing arguments tomorrow and handed off to the jury over the weekend.
Come Monday, though, Bethany would be on my ass again. More importantly, she’d be looking for a way to lock Leayna Mance up for a murder I was becoming more and more certain she hadn’t committed.
If sh
e’s innocent, you just need to find a way to prove it, I told myself. Regardless of what Bethany said, there was more to my job as a prosecutor then putting people in prison. Everybody lost when an innocent person was found guilty.
I kept that in mind as I stayed closeted away from the world, feeling more and more isolated as Thursday wore on. Except for a text from Carrie, I didn't speak to anybody outside a few people to request evidence.
Well, and the barista on the corner.
I really wouldn’t have minded a call, say from somebody like Arik.
But the phone stayed stubbornly silent.
***
“You’re looking in the wrong place.”
Arik slid his hands up my torso. His mouth grazed mine before he caught my wrists and guided them behind my back. “You should have told me about getting second chair. You didn’t. Now I’m going to punish you.”
The shiver that slid through me was delicious. I shouldn’t have felt so excited. I was still mad at him, wasn’t I? And I had a right to be. Didn't I?
Making myself look at him, I said, “I was going to tell you. I just needed time to think about what it meant.”
“You could have thought about it and told me. We could've talked about it. If we’re going to have a relationship, we don't hide things. We talk.” He tugged me closer, tucking me up against him so that his cock was pressed against my ass. “So...do we have a relationship?”
“Yes.” I whimpered as I said it, loving the way it twisted something inside me. Something stroked me between my thighs, dragging a moan from my lips. “Are you...how are you going to punish me, Arik?”
He laughed, the sound low and husky.
“You know you deserve to be punished, don't you?”
Face flushed and hot, I nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.”
He stroked a hand down my hair and stepped away. I strained to see him and that was when I realized I was tied to a chair. My office chair. And I was naked.
He passed in front of me, tapping a crop against his thigh. I licked my lips and Arik wagged a finger at me. “Don’t go getting impatient, Dena. This is the reward. Not the punishment. You only get the reward if you solve the puzzle.”
“What puzzle?”
He gestured toward my desk.
“That’s the punishment. You have to solve the puzzle.”
Confused, I shook my head. “That’s not how this works. Arik, untie me.”
“No. You have to solve the puzzle. Look again.”
I looked and this time, I saw something else. The courthouse. In miniature. Like a dollhouse.
I tried to stand up and realized I could.
I was dressed again, and Arik was gone. I wasn't worried about that though. I was focused on the puzzle. Moving forward, I stared down into the courthouse. The roof was gone and I could see a miniature me standing outside Bethany’s office. She was in there, with that guy.
“Solve the puzzle.”
I jumped at the sound of Arik’s voice.
He was behind me and I almost yelped.
He grinned at me, his teeth flashing white. “Jumpy, Dena. You should get more sleep. You wouldn’t be so nervous. Who is he, Dena?” He pointed at Bethany and her...friend.
“I don’t know!”
“That’s the puzzle.” Arik went back to staring at the miniature of the man I’d seen with Bethany. “Solve it and you can have your reward.”
The miniature man and Bethany weren’t having sex now. The man was going through the papers on Bethany’s desk and Bethany...I swallowed when I realized she was on the floor with a bright red dot in the middle of her forehead.
“What happens if I don’t solve it, Arik?” I didn't look at him as I asked the question.
He hugged me against him. “You have to, Dena.”
***
I jerked awake, my temples throbbing. That hadn't been the best dream I'd ever had. If anything, it just made things worse. Then I looked down at my desk and sighed as I remembered why I'd closed my eyes for just a minute.
“This doesn’t make sense.”
Rubbing my temples, I went over the figures again.
I didn't know why I was even bothering, because I’d already done the calculations a good four times, and had come up with the same result.
It wasn’t my math that was wrong.
As much as I hated finances, over the past few years, I'd become depressingly good at eyeballing things and seeing where the discrepancies were, where the lies hid. Too many of my former clients had spouses who tried hiding money to avoid claiming the assets. Then there'd been the ones who tried hiding an affair or some sort of crime.
If there was one thing I'd learned from years as a divorce lawyer, it was that numbers talked.
And these numbers were telling one hell of a story.
Mr. Mance had spent more money than he’d made, and his corporation had been in trouble. He’d tried to get loans over the past year, probably trying to shore things up, but he’d been turned down.
“Banks know a bad bet.” Blowing out a hard breath, I leaned back and studied the sheets filled with my scrawling notes.
The data for the business had all looked pretty much the same for three years running, right up until six months into this past year. Then, things had turned around. A sudden influx of money. I would've assumed a loan, but there was no sign anybody legit had paid anything out. However, he’d suddenly been able to do exactly what needed to be done, shored up some of the areas that were bleeding money, cut some of them off entirely. He'd managed to salvage his company.
I just had no idea how he'd done it.
“Where did he get the money?” I ran my finger down the column more slowly.
Shit.
There it was.
Fifty thousand.
In cash.
My heart thudded loudly in the silence.
Coincidence.
Had to be.
But...
I ran my hands over my face. The police had searched the apartment of my dead police informant slash possible witness.
And they'd found a bag of fifty thousand dollars in cash.
Officer Dunne had told me that the rumor around the station was that the guy had been involved in organized crime. I'd originally thought that the man had been Mance's lover, though that hadn't been an angle I would've brought up to Bethany unless I had proof. Now, however, I was thinking that might not have been true. Or, at least not the whole truth.
Organized crime. Large amounts of cash found. Equal deposits of cash. Secret meetings at strip clubs.
What the hell had Mance gotten himself into?
Chapter 9
Arik
I’d had worse weeks.
Really, aside from one personal matter, things hadn’t completely sucked. It was just that the one personal matter had colored everything else I’d done.
“Personal matter,” I muttered, climbing out of my car and tossing my keys to the valet outside the building. I paid a small fortune just to keep a car in the city, but I was too used to having my own transportation. The few times I'd tried car services and taxis, it'd been all I could do not to backseat drive.
“Sir?”
I looked over and saw the valet’s puzzled expression and realized I’d been grumbling out loud. “Sorry. Just talking to myself.”
“Of course.” He nodded as if that was perfectly normal.
Then again, I could've told him that I was talking to an elephant in a pink tutu, and he wouldn’t have blinked. When you had money, you were allowed more than a few eccentricities. People excused all sorts of shit when dollar signs got involved.
Which was why I didn't really let anyone know that I had money. I liked people taking me at face value, for who they thought I was or wasn’t, just based on how I acted.
Like with Dena. I’d acted like an asshole, and now she was making it pretty damn clear that she wasn’t impressed.
What in the hell had I been thinking?
As I headed into the high rise, I debated on whether or not to call her. She’d said she needed space, time to figure things out. I’d given her that. A few days, at least. But if she didn’t have an idea about whether or not she was going to forgive me by now, then I’d like to know when she thought she might be ready to talk to me.
Besides, I should apologize, right? I’d been a tool.
In front of the elevator bay, I glared at the numbers as if they were responsible for how things were going between Dena and me. I might have continued to do that if somebody hadn’t delicately cleared her throat. Jerking myself out of the brooding haze, I looked up just in time to see a thin blonde dressed in yoga gear lean over and punch a button.
She gave me a cautious look, one of those speculative looks that I might've acted on a couple of months ago.
Instead of initiating a conversation or even smiling, I just nodded and punched in my own floor. We rose in silence, and she got off first. When I reached my floor, however, instead of going to my apartment, I headed out to the rooftop to think.
Somebody was up there smoking. That went against the tenant’s rental agreement, but as long as they kept the smoke on that side of the building where the wind could grab it, I didn’t care. Hands braced on the railing, I stared out over the sprawling Manhattan skyline.
Part of me was homesick. Not for Chicago, exactly, but for the friends and family I had there. I might've grown up with money, but my family had never really seen themselves as rich. We worked hard for our money, got our hands dirty alongside our employees. There'd been no hard feelings when I'd gone into law instead of business. I'd been grateful for it, just as I'd always been grateful that my parents hadn't cared if my friends were rich, poor or in-between. Some had moved away after high school, some after college, but there'd always been someone I could call to go out and have a drink with when I needed one.
And I sure as hell needed one right now. Both a listening ear, and a drink.
Unlawful Attraction: The Complete Box Set: Alpha Billionaire Romance Page 25