Billionaire Protector

by Kyanna Skye

  Entering into the lobby she felt like something out of a story of Greek mythology, like a lowly hero entering into the halls of Olympus. The lobby of Lester & Desoto was everything that she had heard it to be. The floor, ceiling and large columns that flanked both sides of the lobby were all crafted of finely polished marble. Carpets that looked as though they couldn’t have been more than a year old were set at strategic points in the lobby that partially quieted the sound of shoe leather on marble, but did nothing to hush the numerous voices that were echoing off of the expensive walls.

  Everywhere she looked she saw men and women in expensive suits, either talking on their phones or to one another about this problem, that solution, or a combination of the two. Some of it, she was able to infer as nothing more than idle gossip, some of it was the oral stroking of egos, but very little of it was genuine business.

  It was the standard of conversation for people in high profile legal firms like this. She had learned that in law school. Part of a lawyer’s job was not to discuss privileged information with associates unless they were consulting, which she doubted they were by the sounds of things. But some self-praise was to be expected in most cases. No one got ahead in the legal world if they appeared weak and making oneself look good in front of others was how the game was played.

  Ahead of her, sitting behind a desk that was so highly polished it looked like it could have been made of ivory was a woman in a black business dress and a short skirt. She looked to be about Jamie’s age, maybe a bit older. Her face was framed behind a pair of thick glasses that made her look almost comical, but she seemed as no-nonsense as those around her.

  The girl looked up from the papers on her desk as Jamie approached. “Can I help you?” she asked very businesslike.

  “Jamie Lombardo,” she said equally plain. “I have an–”

  “Appointment,” the girl finished for her. “Yes, Mr. Desoto is expecting you.” She leaned over and keyed a few numbers on the intercom on her desk. “Mr. Desoto, Jamie Lombardo is here to see you.”

  “Thank you, send her up,” said a disembodied male voice on the other end of the intercom. Though Jamie could not see the face or the body of the man that owned it, something in the man’s tone was full of authority and the kind of menace that one might endow with a hungry lion.

  She felt a twitch of nervousness in her heart that she took a deep breath, hoping that she covered it sufficiently.

  The young girl in the glasses gave her a smile. “You’ll need to take the express elevator, it’s the only one that goes all the way to the top,” she explained as she opened the top drawer of her desk and fished out a plastic key card, passing it to Jamie. “Go around to the bank of elevators, you’ll see a set of golden doors there. Flash this at the reader and just hit the “Skyview Offices” button. They’ll direct you when you get there.”

  “Thank you,” Jamie said, accepting the tendered card.

  She followed the streams of people that were flowing deeper into the building, knowing that they could only be heading for the means to rise to the offices ahead of them. She saw a gathering of people attempting to fill the elevators as quickly as they could and just beyond them there was the pair of golden elevator doors that the receptionist had spoken of.

  As she walked towards them she saw that a few of the people she passed in the fancy corridors finally took notice of her, some of them not for the better.

  “Hot damn,” whispered one, a tall and brawny man in a gray suit with long hair that was parted neatly down the center, reminding her of an adult Alfalfa. “Someone must be throwing a party.”

  “I hear you,” said his companion, a smaller man with a developing pot belly in a black suit with a bad tie. “Hey, honey… who splurged for a party and didn’t invite us?”

  Jamie gave them a scathing look as they smirked wolfishly at her as if they had stumbled onto buried treasure and she was to be had for the wanting. All she could do was stare at them as she reached the golden elevator doors and waved her key card at the reader before them and the doors parted invitingly for her.

  The men’s smirks vanished instantly.

  Jamie allowed a moment to revel in the power that she clearly had that these two did not. It was obvious enough that the golden doors were meant for the cream of this crop and these two obviously fell short of the mark. And that they thought her some kind of a party girl bespoke as to why that was so. But doors like these surely wouldn’t open to such a creature as they thought her to be. And that realization was clear on both of their faces as the doors began to close.

  In the span of a heartbeat, she considered winking at them but decided against it. She didn’t want to leave an impression on these two at all, let alone one that would make them think that they’d been right in their assumptions. No, she wanted them to think that she was someone with power… someone that could destroy them. She kept her face stoic as the doors closed.

  When next they opened she could feel that she had ascended to a top level. Directly ahead of her was another desk, this one made of mahogany behind which an elderly woman sat. She was a wrinkled old thing with creases of age in her face and like the downstair receptionist, her features were cradled inside a pair of glasses. The woman might have been aged, but the business dress she wore was not. Jamie recognized the suit and in keeping with such things she knew that the designer label on it was not cheap and the overall design itself was not a month old and hard to get a hold of for one who didn’t have money.

  They pay well here, she realized if the receptionist was dressed better than most millionaires that she was aware of. It made her wonder briefly how well-dressed the superiors of this firm were dressed and if she, Jamie, had underdressed herself.

  When she reached the receptionist desk the old woman there looked up and smiled warmly at her. “Jamie Lombardo?”

  Jamie wordlessly acknowledged with a nod.

  “Follow this hall and turn to the right. It’s the only office at the end of the hall. Mr. Desoto is expecting you.”

  “Thank you,” she said and turned to as she had been told. She wandered down the hall, noting how quiet this floor was before arriving at the aforementioned destination. This door she saw was large enough to drive a Cadillac through and mounted on swinging hinges with no sign of any locks or that the door could be at all closed for privacy.

  She stopped just short of the door, took a bracing breath, and stepped inside. The office beyond the massive doors was not what she had been expecting. It was a large room, flanked on all sides by floor-to-ceiling windows with the exception of the wall on which the doors were mounted. Upon that wall, was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that was loaded with volumes of the usual texts requisite to a lawyer’s office.

  At the far end of the room, there sat a lonely desk. She recognized it as being oak, trimmed with highly polished brass. Behind it, there was a small man with a balding head and a thick pair of glasses that looked like they could have gone out of style back in the 40’s. The man wearing them looked to be somewhere between seventy and eighty years old and the suit he wore looked equally as old.

  He sat with his head down, his eyes fixed on the papers in front of him as if he had not noticed her arrival. Feeling her nervousness growing she crossed the expanse between the front door and the desk, uncertain if she should clear her throat or not get the elder man’s attention or if she should just introduce herself.

  He saved her the trouble. “Ms. Lombardo,” he said without looking up from his work. “Please, come and sit down.”

  Doing as she was bidden she moved and settled into one of the two leather chairs facing the desk and the smaller man behind it. Still, he did not look up from his papers as he worked, his pen working fervently to complete whatever task he had been stuck with.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  She paused, a little stunned by the question. “Excuse me?”

  “Lester & Desoto isn’t your run of the mill legal firms, Ms. Lombardo. We’re one
of the top one percents of all legal teams in the country. The rich… the influential… those with the most to lose – especially if they’re even remotely guilty and anyone can see that – are the ones who come to us. They pay us to keep them out of prison… or in some cases to keep them from losing everything in the divorce. Every case that we take here is worth millions. Hundreds of millions, even. That’s a lot of weight to bear, especially if you fail. So I ask again, are you ready?”

  She stiffened her spine, though she had not let her posture slip one bit since she had sat a moment before. “Of course I am, Mr. Desoto. I was top of my class and I–”

  “I’m well aware of your qualifications, Ms. Lombardo. We pride ourselves on knowing everything we can about the people we hire. How do you think you got here? You’re fresh out of law school and you get a job here, of all places. We didn’t take you in because we’re a sympathy cause. You were top of your class, out of hundreds, from the best school for this kind of work. All the right marks, you wrote the best papers, you killed yourself in your undergrad school and you doubled that in legal school. You come from a family that was famous for its work in the legal system, which was a point in your favor that set you apart from the others. And your reputation among your professors, as well as your peers, has it that you’re one who can get things done. It’s why we brought you on to this team without the formal interview nonsense. Did I miss anything?”

  Jamie felt like she had just been lectured like a recruit in a military camp, but she didn’t feel the need to complicate matters. Everything seemed complicated already. “No, sir, you didn’t.”

  “Good. Are you ready for your first assignment?”

  She frowned with a slight tinge of worry, but the elder man didn’t seem to notice as he had yet to look up from his papers. “My first assignment?”

  Still not looking away from his work he pushed a leather-bound folder across his desk towards her and went right back to his writing.

  She took the folder and opened it. Within was a legal brief, detailing a small case history and the transcript of a trial that was dated three years prior. She noticed quickly that some of the files had been redacted, blacked out with a magic marker. An unusual practice for a legal document, not to mention more than slightly illegal since this wasn’t the CIA. She scanned the most pertinent details on the case folder that she could find and noticed that the name on the folder was blank. The mystery of it was so overwhelming that she found that she wasn’t able to comprehend what she was hearing. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll come right to the point, Ms. Lombardo. We brought you onboard because your ideas are radical and you think outside the box. That’s something that this firm needs. We believe that we can use someone like you and to that end, we’ve decided to give you one of our highest profile cases. Inside that folder, you’ll find a small packet containing your travel plans.”

  “Travel plans?” she asked, flipping through the folder and looking for the aforementioned packet.

  “We’re sending you to Colorado,” Desoto went on as though she had not spoken. “Your first case is a man that this firm has a – shall we say – large interest in. Your task will be to function as his counselor. All the details will be made available to you when you arrive at your destination.”

  “Sir,” she said, feeling uneasy speaking thusly to a man whose name was on the building she was in, but felt it was necessary. “Some of this file has been redacted. That’s illegal, especially for a law firm, and I can’t see what other details might be provided for me that should already be in this file.”

  Desoto’s face remained neutral as he spoke. “The client mentioned in that folder was a former employee of this firm. The copy you’re holding there isn’t the original document, it’s merely a copy and the details pertinent to your task have been left in. Everything redacted is trivial and unimportant. But suffice it to say that your first client has information that we need that he did not disclose during his trial… it was considered privileged information and thus was not open for discussion, even behind closed doors.”

  Though this was her first day on the job, she knew that that was unusual. Whenever anything came to trial, all pertinent information relevant to the case either for defense or prosecution had to be disclosed to all parties involved. If anything was withheld from either party it would have been declared a mistrial.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Desoto said, interrupting her train of thought. “But you’re wrong. The information that was withheld would only have helped the man we’re sending you to meet, but he never gave it up. We’re sending you to get it from him.” He paused and for the first time, he looked up from his work to meet her eyes. Her earlier assessment of him being a hungry lion, she now saw, would have been something of an understatement. He was more akin to some kind of a hungry and mythical sea monster that had learned to walk on dry land, but no less dangerous. “And we expect it to be done by any means necessary. Above all, you are not to share the nature of your assignment with anyone outside of this room. Is that understood?”

  There was a subtle malice in the man’s words, very much in fact like the growling of a lion. If she could have put words to it, it would have translated as “I can eat you or I can scare you. What’s it going to be?” Jamie knew that she had been given an order. And like a soldier should, she knew that when she had been given an order the best thing to do was to obey it.

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Good,” Desoto said, going back to his papers. “Then you’d better get going. Your plane leaves in four hours and I imagine that you’re not packed. I’d recommend summer clothes… Colorado gets hot this time of year.”

  She felt a tingle in her belly that she knew to be nervousness. Not nervousness because she felt unequal to the task, but nervousness born of being unprepared. She cleared her throat before speaking. “Uh, Mr. Desoto, I don’t mean to overstep my bounds… but this seems highly irregular. This legal brief you gave me isn’t even complete… there’s no name on it. You haven’t even told me what it is that I’m looking for. How can I be expected to complete this task that you’ve given me?”

  Again, not looking up from his work, Desoto just sighed as he responded. “Your work in law school suggested that you were good at figuring things out with less to go on. We brought you on because we liked that about you. Are you suggesting that we made an error in judgment?”

  There was no direct malice to his words this time, but she did sense that she was like a moth flying dangerously close to a flame. It was better to retreat than to press the issue any further. “No, sir. You haven’t.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it. In any event, more details will be provided to you once you reach your destination, Ms. Lombardo. And I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you that everyone here at this firm has the utmost confidence in you and that you will no doubt carry a great deal of our respect if you return to us with success.”

  There was a finality to the words that was hard to miss. She understood that she had been dismissed. She rose to her feet, gathered up her briefcase in one hand and took the leather-bound folder under her other arm and smiled at the man who had only met her eyes once in the strangest – and admittedly only – induction speech that she had ever heard.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, turning and heading for the door.

  “Ms. Lombardo,” Desoto called after her.

  She paused and turned to look at the elder man, who still had hardly acknowledged her presence. Keeping with his work he added, “Welcome to our little family, I’m sure you’ll be quite happy here.”

  Saying no more, Jamie quickly turned and left the office.

  Once she was out and in the hallway beyond, she felt her heart quickening to a pace that she had never experienced before in the whole of her life. She looked at her watch and the whole of the situation splashed on her as though she had woken from a strange dream. It was her first day at work, she had only been here less than fif
teen minutes, and she was being sent off on what was apparently an important assignment, and with incomplete details.

  She wondered for a moment if her father had ever endured such a thing before during his days, but she quickly pushed those thoughts aside as she returned to the golden elevator and swiped her keycard across the reader. Once inside the elevator, she turned her thoughts to what to pack for the trip.

  ***

  She had managed to pack a bag in record time and managed to make it to the airport just in time to catch her flight. She had flown coach, which surprised her when she finally had a moment to evaluate her situation. This fact had been lost on her in the hurry of it all when she weighed what she already knew of her current employers. Shouldn’t Lester & Desoto have their own private jet? Likely, they did… but they had seen fit not to give her use of it. Why? Perhaps it was because she was the new kid in school? That seemed plausible. Even being new and with her academic career as distinguished as it was, she had yet to earn her stripes. Maybe it was also because the jet was otherwise in use? That too seemed possible.

  She gave up on such thoughts as she returned to her legal brief for the umpteenth time since she had left the office. She spent the entire flight looking at it and committing every detail to memory and trying to extrapolate what it was that she was supposed to be doing.

  It all came back to one inescapable fact: it was a pretty strange thing, this assignment. And what she was able to infer from the reading was that her client – whoever it was – was up to their neck in some pretty serious shit. The transcript, she learned, was not only redacted but fragmented. She had read – even written – several such things as part of her education. From that, she was able to see that her brief had spanned at least three days’ worth of court appearances. So this matter hadn’t been settled as quickly as she had originally thought. Even so, there were gaps in the transcript and in the details prior and post of the hearings. Again this whole affair struck her as odd that she was not being given the details of what her task was, or of whom her client was.