Punitive Damages

by Charlotte Byrd

  “Who are you? You look familiar.”

  “My name is Cora, but we have not met.” She didn’t recognize me from the arraignment and I didn’t want to give her any help in remembering. “I’m just dropping off this package. Have a good day.” I turned to walk away, but I heard her chair roll back as she stood up.

  “Is this some ploy by Asher Dean? It would be like him to use some crazy trick to try and throw me off.”

  I turned around to face her with my face as calm and neutral as possible.

  “Who is Asher Dean?”

  Martinez shook her head and walked back to her desk. I continued on to the elevators and back down to the lobby. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be on the lookout for, so I just stood around for a few moments. I had barely enough time to get bored when a severe looking woman in a gray suit walked up to me. She looked like an FBI or Secret Service agent, the kind of person who hadn’t laughed in months.

  “Excuse me, miss, can I borrow your phone? I have to call my sister in Milwaukee.”

  I was surprised, Asher had indicated that it was going to be a man. But, then again, maybe he just used the masculine pronoun out of habit. That did always annoy me, the fact that ‘he’ was the default.

  “Of course,” I said, pulling out my phone. The woman gave me a short nod and, ignoring the proffered phone, turned and walked toward the exit. I followed her. She opened the back door to a black sedan.

  “Are you taking me to Asher?” I asked. It came out far more excited than I thought it would.

  “Don’t know the who, only the where.”

  “Ok, where are you taking me then?”

  “Santa Monica.”

  I sank back into the seat and tried to calm my heartbeat. I was sick of being kept in the dark. I knew Asher was private, I liked the mysterious quality about him, but I wanted to know what was in the envelope, what he was planning. Because now it involved me as well. Not just because I was involved in the case, but I was more and more involved in him.

  I watched as the freeway sped by. Traffic was light for this time of day on the 10 freeway. The driver took an earlier exit than I expected.

  “I thought we were going to Santa Monica?” I asked.

  “That’s right, miss,” was all I got for an answer.

  I started to get a little nervous. She had used the right code phrase that Asher had given me, but where were we going? All of my worries were dispelled quickly, though, as we pulled into the parking lot at the Santa Monica Airport. I had never been there before, as the airport is normally used for private airplanes.

  We drove right onto the tarmac. I leaned forward in my seat and peered through the windshield. Asher was there. He was standing in front of a sleek, gleaming jet. Various crew were hustling about, attaching and detaching hoses and doing all sorts of other tasks, but I only saw Asher. The car came to a stop and I nearly tore the door off its hinges and ran over to him, throwing myself in his arms. He lifted me up and kissed me deep as I wrapped my legs around his waist.

  “Good to see you again, too,” he said as soon as he was able to free his lips from mine. “I trust you got the package to Reyna.”

  “I did. She didn’t recognize me either. What was in the envelope, Asher?”

  “Oh, let’s just say it is enough information to put Art Crane’s real killers in prison for a long time. Especially since they won’t have me defending them.”

  “No?” I asked playfully. “Where are you going to be?”

  “We are going to be in Tahiti.”

  A grin broke out across my face.

  “What about my internship?”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I will still write you a great recommendation.”

  I laughed and hopped down onto the ground. He took me by the hand and led me to the stairs and onto the plane. I had always wanted to fly in a private jet and this one did not disappoint. It was decked out in soft leather chairs and couches. A small bar held crystal tumblers and a few bottles of top shelf liquor.

  “It is a long flight. We will have to find some way to entertain ourselves.” He grinned hungrily. I felt a pulse of energy shoot through my body, centering in my groin. A dull, sweet aching grew between my legs. I had the feeling I wasn’t going to be bored on the flight at all.

  * * *

  The End

  FREE BONUS Book! Auctioned to Him

  Aiden Black wanted to own her from the minute he saw her. He paid good money and has the paper to prove it. The contract is unbreakable. Ellie has to do everything he wants tonight. But he doesn’t want just sex. Oh no…he wants more.

  Tonight, there are no rules.

  It was just supposed to be a luxurious yacht party. Until Ellie discovered that all the female guests were going to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. If you don't want to play, you can’t stay. But if you stay, you're in for a night of whatever he wants and you get to keep all the money. Ellie’s friend thinks she’s crazy. But she owes $150,000 in school loans. Plus, the guys are hot and very rich. What can go wrong?

  WARNING: This is a HOT, modern day, dark erotic romance with an alpha billionaire for fans of EL James, Pepper Winters, and Alexa Riley. It contains light bondage, NO CHEATING, and a HEA.

  1

  When the invitation arrives…

  “Here it is! Here it is!” my roommate Caroline yells at the top of her lungs as she runs into my room. We were friends all through Yale and we moved to New York together after graduation. Even though I’ve known Caroline for what feels like a million years, I am still shocked by the exuberance of her voice. It’s quite loud given the smallness of her body.

  Caroline is one of those super skinny girls who can eat pretty much anything without gaining a pound. Unfortunately, I am not that talented. In fact, my body seems to have the opposite gift. I can eat nothing but vegetables for a week straight, eat one slice of pizza, and gain a pound.

  “What is it?” I ask, forcing myself to sit up. It’s noon and I’m still in bed. My mother thinks I’m depressed and wants me to see her shrink. She might be right, but I can’t fathom the strength.

  “The invitation!” Caroline says jumping in bed next to me. I stare at her blankly. And then suddenly it hits me. This must be the invitation.

  “You mean…it’s…”

  “Yes!” she screams and hugs me with excitement.

  “Oh my God!” She gasps for air and pulls away from me almost as quickly.

  “Hey, you know I didn’t brush my teeth yet,” I say turning my face away from hers.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Go brush them,” she instructs.

  Begrudgingly, I make my way to the bathroom.

  We have been waiting for this invitation for some time now. And by we, I mean Caroline. I’ve just been playing along, pretending to care, not really expecting it to show up. Without being able to contain her excitement, Caroline bursts through the door when my mouth is still full of toothpaste. She’s jumping up and down, holding a box in her hand.

  “Wait, what’s that?” I mumble and wash my mouth out with water.

  “This is it!” Caroline screeches and pulls me into the living room before I have a chance to wipe my mouth with a towel.

  “But it’s a box,” I say staring at her.

  “Okay, okay,” Caroline takes a couple of deep yoga breaths, exhaling loudly. She puts the box carefully on our dining room table. There’s no address on it. It looks something like a fancy gift box with a big monogrammed C in the middle. Is the C for Caroline?

  “Is this how it came? There’s no address on it?” I ask.

  “It was hand-delivered,” Caroline whispers. I hold my breath as she carefully removes the top part, revealing the satin and silk covered wood box inside. The top of it is gold plated with whimsical twirls all around the edges, and the mirrored area is engraved with her full name, Caroline Elizabeth Kennedy Spruce. Underneath her name is a date, one week in the future. 8 PM.

  We stare at it for a few moments until Ca
roline reaches for the elegant knob to open the box. Inside, Caroline finds a custom monogram made of foil in gold on silk emblazoned on the inside of the flap cover. There’s also a folio covered in silk. Caroline carefully opens the folio and finds another foil monogram and the invitation. The inside invitation is one layer, shimmer white, with gold writing.

  “Is this for real? How many layers of invitation are there?” I ask. But the presentation is definitely doing its job. We are both duly impressed.

  “There’s another knob,” I say, pointing to the knob in front of the box. I’m not sure how we had missed it before.

  Caroline carefully pulls on this knob, revealing a drawer that holds the inserts (a card with directions and a response card).

  “Oh my God, I can’t go to this alone,” Caroline mumbles, turning to me. I stare blankly at her. Getting invited to this party has been her dream ever since she found out about it from someone in the Cicada 17, a super-secret society at Yale.

  “Look, here, it says that I can bring a friend,” she yells out even though I’m standing right next to her.

  “It probably says a date. A plus one?” I say.

  “No, a friend. Girl preferred,” Caroline reads off the invitation card. That part of the invitation is in very small ink, as if someone made the person stick it on, without their express permission.

  “I don’t want to crash,” I say. Frankly, I don’t really want to go. These kind of upper-class events always make me feel a little bit uncomfortable.

  “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I ask.

  “Eh, I took a day off,” Caroline says waving her arm. “I knew that the invitation would come today and I just couldn’t deal with work. You know how it is.”

  I nod. Sort of. Caroline and I seem like we come from the same world. We both graduated from private school, we both went to Yale, and our parents belong to the same exclusive country club in Greenwich, Connecticut. But we’re not really that alike.

  Caroline’s family has had money for many generations going back to the railroads. My parents were an average middle class family from Connecticut. They were both teachers and our idea of summering was renting a 1-bedroom bungalow near Clearwater, FL for a week.

  But then my parents got divorced when I was 8, and my mother started tutoring kids to make extra money. The pay was the best in Greenwich, where parents paid more than $100 an hour. And that’s how she met, Mitch Willoughby, my stepfather. He was a widower with a five-year old daughter who was not doing well after her mom’s untimely death. Even though Mom didn’t usually tutor anyone younger than 12, she agreed to take a meeting with Mitch and his daughter because $200 an hour was too much to turn down. Three months later, they were in love and six months later, he asked her to marry him on top of the Eiffel Tower. They got married, when I was 11, in a huge 450-person ceremony in Nantucket.

  So even though Caroline and I run in the same circles, we’re not really from the same circle. It has nothing to do with her, she’s totally accepting, it’s me. I don’t always feel like I belong.

  Caroline majored in art-history at Yale, and she now works at an exclusive contemporary art gallery in Soho. It’s chic and tiny, featuring only 3 pieces of art at a time. Ash, the owner - I’m not sure if that’s her first or last name - mainly keeps the space as a showcase. What the gallery really specializes in is going to wealthy people’s homes and choosing their art for them. They’re basically interior designers, but only for art. None of the pieces sell for anything less than $200 grand, but Caroline’s take home salary is about $21,000. Clearly, not enough to pay for our 2 bedroom apartment in Chelsea. Her parents cover her part of the rent and pay all of her other expenses. Mine do too, of course. Well, Mitch does. I only make about $27,000 at my writer’s assistant job and that’s obviously not covering my half of our $6,000 per month apartment.

  So, what’s the difference between me and Caroline? I guess the only difference is that I feel bad about taking the money. I have a $150,000 school loan from Yale that I don't want Mitch to pay for. It’s my loan and I’m going to pay for it myself, dammit. Plus, unlike Caroline, I know that real people don’t really live like this. Real people like my dad, who is being pressured to sell the house for more than a million dollars that he and my mom bought back in the late 80’s (the neighborhood has gone up in price and teachers now have to make way for tech entrepreneurs and real estate moguls).

  “How can you just not go to work like that? Didn’t you use all of your sick days flying to Costa Rica last month?” I ask.

  “Eh, who cares? Ash totally understands. Besides, she totally owes me. If it weren’t for me, she would’ve never closed that geek millionaire who had the hots for me and ended up buying close to a million dollars’ worth of art for his new mansion.”

  Caroline does have a way with men. She’s fun and outgoing and perky. The trick, she once told me, is to figure out exactly what the guy wants to hear. Because a geek millionaire, as she calls anyone who has made money in tech, does not want to hear the same thing that a football player wants to hear. And neither of them want to hear what a trust fund playboy wants to hear. But Caroline isn’t a gold digger. Not at all. Her family owns half the East Coast. And when it comes to men, she just likes to have fun.

  I look at the time. It’s my day off, but that doesn’t mean that I want to spend it in bed in my pajamas, listening to Caroline obsessing over what she’s going to wear. No, today, is my day to actually get some writing done. I’m going to Starbucks, getting a table in the back, near the bathroom, and am actually going to finish this short story that I’ve been working on for a month. Or maybe start a new one.

  I go to my room and start getting dressed. I have to wear something comfortable, but something that’s not exactly work clothes. I hate how all of my clothes have suddenly become work clothes. It’s like they’ve been tainted. They remind me of work and I can’t wear them out anymore on any other occasion. I’m not a big fan of my work, if you can’t tell.

  Caroline follows me into my room and plops down on my bed. I take off my pajamas and pull on a pair of leggings. Ever since these have become the trend, I find myself struggling to force myself into a pair of jeans. They’re just so comfortable!

  “Okay, I’ve come to a decision,” Caroline says. “You have to come with me!”

  “Oh, I have to come with you?” I ask, incredulously. “Yeah, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh c’mon! Please! Pretty please! It will be so much fun!”

  “Actually, you can’t make any of those promises. You have no idea what it will be,” I say, putting on a long sleeve shirt and a sweater with a zipper in the front.

  Layers are important during this time of year. The leaves are changing colors, winds are picking up, and you never know if it’s going to be one of those gorgeous warm, crisp New York days they like to feature in all those romantic comedies or a soggy, overcast dreary day that only shows up in one scene at the end when the two main characters fight or break up (but before they get back together again).

  “Okay, yes, I see your point,” Caroline says, sitting up and crossing her legs. “But here is what we do know. We do know that it’s going to be amazing. I mean, look at the invitation. It’s a freakin’ box with engravings and everything!”

  Usually, Caroline is much more eloquent and better at expressing herself.

  “Okay, yes, the invitation is impressive,” I admit.

  “And as you know, the invitation is everything. I mean, it really sets the mood for the party. The event! And not just the mood. It establishes a certain expectation. And this box…”

  “Yes, the invitation definitely sets up a certain expectation,” I agree.

  “So?”

  “So?” I ask her back.

  “Don’t you want to find out what that expectation is?”

  “No.” I shake my head categorically.

  “Okay. So what else do we know?” Caroline asks rhetorically as I pack away my Mac into my b
ag.

  “I have to go, Caroline,” I say.

  “No, listen. The yacht. Of course, the yacht. How could I bury the lead like that?” She jumps up and down with excitement again.

  “We also know that it’s going to be this super exclusive event on a yacht! And not just some small 100 footer, but a mega-yacht.”

  I stare at her blankly, pretending to not be impressed. When Caroline first found out about this party, through her ex-boyfriend, we spent days trying to figure out what made this event so special. But given that neither of us have been on a yacht before, at least not a mega-yacht – we couldn’t quite get it.

  “You know the yacht is going to be amazing!”

  “Yes, of course,” I give in. “But that’s why I’m sure that you’re going to have a wonderful time by yourself. I have to go.”

  I grab my keys and toss them into the bag.

  “Ellie,” Caroline says. The tone of her voice suddenly gets very serious, to match the grave expression on her face. “Ellie, please. I don’t think I can go by myself.”

  2

  When you have coffee with a guy you can’t have…

  And that’s pretty much how I was roped into going. You don’t know Caroline, but if you did, the first thing you’d find out is that she is not one to take things seriously. Nothing fazes her. Nothing worries her. Sometimes she is the most enlightened person on earth, other times she’s the densest. Most of the time, I’m jealous of the fact that she simply lives life in the present.

  “So, you’re going?” my friend Tom asks. He brought me my pumpkin spice latte, the first one of the season!

  I close my eyes and inhale it’s sweet aroma before taking the first sip. But even before its wonderful taste of cinnamon and nutmeg runs down my throat, Tom is already criticizing my decision.

  “I can’t believe you’re actually going,” he says.