Temptations - The Complete Series

by Annie Jocoby

  “Sometimes things can surprise you,” I said. “For reasons that you didn’t expect.”

  He nodded his head, and said nothing more.

  We drove to his house in silence.

  Chapter 12

  The next day, I went into work. I knew that chances were the Derek would be there, and I had to go ahead and face it sooner or later, so I decided just to bite the bullet and do it. Being at Malcolm’s funeral kind of prepared me for being around my co-workers, especially Derek, and it was time to really get back to being immersed in the office culture. Cindy, of course, was the first person into my office. “We missed you,” she said to me. “Where have you been? Everybody has been talking about you and Derek. Why did you punch him like that?”

  I cleared my throat. I wasn’t about to tell this parasite the real reason why I would do something like that, of course. “I lost my head. Listen, I need to schedule some depositions on this new case we have. Can you get Anita to reserve the court reporter and the conference room for me?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I think you can do that yourself.” She sat there just looking at me, and I knew that she wasn’t about to let the Derek thing go. “Now, tell me again why you would punch Derek like that? He’s a brand-new hire, and we can’t lose him. He came very highly recommended.”

  I tried to deflect, but I knew she wasn’t going to be happy until I told her everything. “I’ll tell you later, but, truly, I’ve been gone from the office for a few days and I have a shit-ton of work to do. We have a new case. Margot Facinelli. I have to work my ass off on this case if I am going to have any chance of winning.”

  “I know that case. Slade’s mother.” She shook her head. “From the frying pan to the fire, I say. The media was all over Slade’s case and they’re really all over this one too. I hear Slade helped her get rid of the body. After his murder charge went away, the media was disappointed that he didn’t go to the hoosegow. Now they know that they have him, and they’re really salivating.”

  “Yes,” I said, looking down at one of my files. “I understand all of that. I can’t speak for Slade and what happened there. As you know, he has another attorney defending him, Jackson Prejean. He’s a celebrity attorney, so he knows the ropes. He’s not our concern anymore. Margot is. Hopefully the media won’t be interested in her as much as they are in him.”

  “Ironic, considering she was the one who killed a man.” She twirled one blonde lock around her finger nervously. “She’s the one who did the killing and he’s the one who the media is obsessed with again.” She lowered her voice. “I guess the media loves him because he’s so camera-ready. If he was only half as good-looking, I doubt that he would get all this attention all the time. Being gorgeous is a curse sometimes. I know from experience.” She smirked, so I knew that she wasn’t trying to make a joke. She really had a high opinion of herself. She might have been kinda cute, but I didn’t think that she was as hot as she thought she was.

  “Well, I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Right.” She leaned back in her chair. “You’re not chopped liver yourself you know.”

  I groaned. I didn’t want to keep talking to her, yet she made no moves towards the door. “Listen, I would love to keep on chatting with you, but I really have to get with Anita about scheduling those depositions. I also have to get Margot in to be evaluated by Dr. Sanderson. I hope to get this to trial by the end of the year so that we can get all of this behind us. So…” I gestured towards the door while I looked at it.

  “I get the hint,” she said.

  Finally.

  “I get the hint, but this conversation is only tabled. I really need to know why you would punch Derek in the nose the way that you did, right in front of everyone. I mean, you just met the guy, right?”

  I took a deep breath, hoping that this nosy bitch couldn’t figure out what was really going on in my head. “Right.”

  She got up to leave, but then she sat right back down. “Wait. You’re from the East Coast, aren’t you? I mean, I know that you’re also a transplant from New York, but aren’t you originally from Maine?”

  I felt the icy fear creeping up in my veins as she sat there looking at me. I could see her wheels turning. I bowed my head and started to play with my paper-weight. That was one of the things that I tended to do whenever I was nervous, and I didn’t want her to see how nervous I really was. “Yes. I’m from an…”

  “Unincorporated town outside of Portland,” she said. “You must have known Derek when you were in high school. That’s where he’s from, too. He’s your same age as well.”

  I sighed. There wasn’t going to be any hiding the fact that I knew Derek from before. Not when Cindy knew the truth. “Yes, I knew him. Now, please, I have to get to work.”

  “What happened? Was he a bully? Was he mean to you? I know that he was some kind of popular jock type. Did you run in the same circles?”

  “No.” I looked desperately towards the door, hoping that somebody would come and save me from this third degree I was getting from Cindy. “We didn’t run in the same circles at all. I was more of a Goth kid. I went to raves and certainly didn’t run with the same kinds of people that he did.”

  She smiled. For once, it seemed to be genuine. “You, a Goth kid? I couldn’t imagine it. You’re so stylish now. I just couldn’t imagine you with black eyeliner and staying up all night with other kids in an abandoned warehouse.”

  “Well, you don’t have much imagination, then, because that’s exactly what I was and what I did. I never once saw Derek at one of those things, either, so I would imagine it wasn’t his scene.”

  “No, I would imagine it wasn’t.” She narrowed her eyes. “Yet, somehow, someway, I think that you and he have a history. I hope you don’t mind, but I think I’m going to make it my mission to find out exactly what that history is.”

  “Knock yourself out.” I tried hard to sound calm, cool, and collected, but my voice pitched a little when I talked to her. “You won’t find out anything. You’ll only discoverthat he and I went to the same school, but didn’t run in the same circles. I think that you’ll be disappointed when you find out how little we interacted.”

  “I don’t believe you. Why would you punch him unless you had a good reason to?”

  “Because…” I didn’t quite know how to answer that question. “He said something rude about Slade.” I shrugged my shoulders. “He doesn’t even know that Slade and I are together, so I guess I shouldn’t have taken it quite so personally. But he said that he thought that Slade was guilty as hell and he’s dismayed that the charges were going to be dropped against him, and, well, I guess I’m just tired of hearing that. So I punched him. There was really nothing more to it than that.”

  “Huh. That’s kinda ridiculous. After all, most people thought that about Slade. Some people still do, even though it’s now obvious that our fearless leader was something of a psychopath. A psychopath with a serious gambling habit at that. But some people still think that Slade had something to do with Jordan’s murder. If Derek said something about that, I don’t see why you would react so violently.”

  “I told you, it was the final straw. I’m tired of people just assuming that they know him and assuming that he’s guilty. I also think that if Derek is going to be a part of this firm, he probably shouldn’t be bad-mouthing former clients like that. I just wanted to put him in his place.”

  “Okay.” She seemed unconvinced. “But I think that you two have some bad blood between you. That’s what I think, and I’m usually not wrong about these things.”

  “Well you’re wrong now. Please, I have to get to work.”

  “Okay, okay.” She finally got up to leave. “I have work to do too, of course. But don’t think that this conversation is over. It’s not. There’s something up, and I intend to find out just what it is.”

  I waved my hand dismissively at her and she finally left.

  After she left, though, I shut the door behind her, and I put
my head down on my desk. I tried to calm my beating heart, but I heard Derek standing right outside my door, talking to other co-workers, and I felt myself shaking. I put my head back on my chair and stared at the ceiling. How was I going to get through this? When I didn’t want to just punch the guy, but kill him?

  I tried to take my mind off of it by poring over the files on my desk. In anticipation of my being sworn in by the State of California, so that I could fully practice law, my firm had piled up a multitude of cases on me. And, of course, there was Margot’s case file. It was staring at me accusingly, as if it were beckoning me and taunting me. You can’t win, the file was saying to me. You can’t win, you’re going to blow it, and Slade will never forgive you.

  Slade will never forgive me. There it was – the real reason why I was so stressed out about Margot’s case. Sure, if I gave it my all and still lost, there would be no way he could be angry with me. But what if something happened and I made some kind of major mistake, which caused Margot to lose? What if she killed herself, rather than face prison time? What if the cascading wall of dominoes just came tumbling down? I would lose Slade, that’s what.

  Plus, even if I gave it my all and lost, Slade might be angry with me. It would be irrational anger, of course, but when has anger ever been all that rational?

  The fact of the matter was his mother’s life was in my hands. I felt trapped. If I pawned the case on somebody else, and that person lost, then Slade would be angry with me for pawning it off. If I took the case on, and I lost, then Slade would be angry with me for losing. I felt like I was in a room with four walls and no doors or windows. Just me in a little tiny box, a box that was getting tinier by the second.

  On top of it all, Derek was still outside my door. It sounded almost like he was intending to knock on the door, but was side-tracked by other people.

  Sure enough, in a few minutes, I heard an insistent rapping. I crouched down in my chair, behind my desk, in a defensive position. I was almost thinking that if I made myself as small as possible that Derek would eventually just give up and go away.

  But the knocking kept coming. It was then that I realized that I didn’t lock the door behind Cindy when she left. I felt vulnerable, like I did in the woods all those years ago. My heart was pounding as loud as the door. I looked down at my hands and realized that I was shaking uncontrollably.

  PTSD. I was going to be researching that a lot because of Margot. Dr. Sanderson was an expert in dealing with this disorder. I knew that I had some form of PTSD myself, and it was ever more acute with Derek being around. I knew that PTSD episodes often had a trigger, and, if that trigger was powerful enough, you could be thrown right back into the incident that caused the trauma. Certain smells did that for me for the longest time – the smell of cedar and grass were two smells that caused a powerful physical reaction for years after the incident. The sound of wind whistling through the trees, and of frogs, coyotes, and cicadas – those were the sounds that I heard that night after Derek was through with me. Those were sounds that I could never bear to hear afterwards.

  Now here was Derek himself. He was no longer just a piece of my nightmare, but was here in the flesh and blood. And standing outside my door, knocking on it.

  I took a deep breath and willed him away.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t get the hint, because a few minutes later, he was inside my office.

  “Serena,” he said, flipping on the overhead light. “Why are you here in the dark?”

  I looked at him and tried to calm my racing pulse. He looked like any average handsome man that you would see on the street. The kind of guy who women would turn around and look at once he passed by. He might even star in a few fantasies. He wasn’t quite as handsome as Slade, but he was very good-looking. It astounded me that somebody who looked like that could be so evil. So vicious. It would be so much easier if the evil men who walked among us would actually look the part, but they didn’t. I remembered reading somewhere that Satan would present himself as a beautiful, cherubic child.

  Satan might present himself as a beautiful, cherubic child, or he might present himself as a blue-eyed, 6’3” man with fine features and chiseled muscles.

  “Derek, I want you to leave me alone,” I said to him. “I’m serious. That punch I gave you was your warning, and my way of telling you to back the hell off.” I was trying to show him that I wasn’t intimidated, but I was acting, of course. In reality, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, and I had to hide my hands underneath the desk so that he couldn’t see how much I was shaking.

  To my dismay, he sat down across from me. I tried hard not to cry, and I blinked my eyes rapidly several times in an effort to stem the tide that was threatening. I swallowed hard, and, all of a sudden, the scene in the woods came to me. It was just as if it were happening right at that moment. I could feel him ripping into me savagely, and I could hear myself screaming. I felt the blood rushing down my leg, the blood that was released when he took my virginity. I felt the excruciating pain and humiliation.

  He crossed his arms, evidently delighting in seeing me in such terror. He leaned forward, and I backed away instinctively. “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said in a low voice. “And I would appreciate it if you would call off that fiancé of yours.”

  “I don’t have a fiancé,” I said to him.

  “Yes you do. That man who you were with told me that you and he were engaged. Anyhow, I don’t want him around me anymore.”

  I narrowed my eyes. Slade had called himself my fiancé, which was strangely exhilarating, even if I knew it was all bullshit. In reality, he wasn’t committed to me at all. He was soon going to return to LA, and I was going to be here, and we were going to be nowhere at all. But him saying that we were engaged, even saying that to somebody like Derek, gave me some kind of hope that maybe, just maybe, he was more committed to me than he let on.

  I let that thought distract me from the abject terror I was feeling right at that moment, and I felt my heart-rate slow. Slade was with me always, even if he wasn’t around physically. He was there to protect me and make sure that people like Derek didn’t defeat me. “Slade will be around you as long as you’re around me, so get used to it,” I told him. “If you think for two seconds that he’s just going to let you get away with tormenting me, then you have another thing coming.”

  “Tormenting you?” He snorted. “I’m not tormenting you. I’m just like you, trying to do my job.”

  “Your job is owed to Charlotte Boswell and you can’t tell me differently. What did she pay you to come out here? Or did she blackmail you somehow?”

  “That’s none of your goddamned business,” he said.

  “Oh, but it is. It is. Listen, I don’t think that anybody in this firm has any clue about what you really are. And I say ‘what,’ not ‘who,’ because I don’t consider you to be human. I don’t consider you to be an animal, either, because I love all animals and I don’t think that any of them are as savage or as evil as you. I consider you to be a form that is lower than anything that is on this earth, and you deserve to be in prison much more than any of our clients.” I pointed to the door. “Now, please get the hell out of my office and leave me alone. I know the truth about you and why you’re here, and if you don’t want the rest of the office also knowing that truth, then I suggest you get out of here and never come back in here again.”

  I felt better after telling him that little speech, although I could tell that he wasn’t moved by it. I knew that my physical reactions to his presence were giving my true feelings away, and, when I saw him don a sly smile, I knew that he wasn’t hearing my words. He narrowed his eyes. “Okay, Serena, since you know so much about why I’m here, then you also must know that I have a job to do. A job that I’m being paid very well for doing. So you must also know that I will never leave you alone, because if I did, I would be violating my contract.” He stood up. “I’m not going to leave you alone, and I’m going to haunt your every moment in th
is office. I’m not going to let up, because it’s too much damned fun to see you squirm.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Plus, I’m being paid well to make sure that your life is a living hell.”

  I let his words sink in as I gripped the edge of the desk. Of course Charlotte was paying him to harass and torment me. That was the only reason why he was here at the office in the first place, so he couldn’t back off. I could already tell that her game was for me to decide between leaving and relegating Margot’s fate to the hands of another attorney, or staying at the firm and being tortured by Derek.

  I couldn’t let Margot go to another attorney, so I just had to stick it out with Derek at the firm. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.

  I raised my chin and closed my eyes. At the very least, I could get some kind of sense on how he was really feeling. I tuned into his vibrations, and I felt only calm. He wasn’t feeling guilty for seeing me so frightened. He wasn’t even feeling gleeful about watching me squirm. There was just a nothingness, a void where there should have at least been a conscience.

  That was when I knew that he was truly dangerous. He had no feelings. He was simply a hired gun, just another hit man hired by the Garancino family. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it, and there wasn’t much that I could do about that. After all, Slade wasn’t there at the firm on a daily basis, even though he was now the majority partner. He couldn’t just swoop in and protect me every time I felt threatened by Derek. I was well and truly trapped, and that thought made me want to throw up in the trash can next to my desk.

  I stayed in my office for the better part of that day. I cowered in there, feeling foolish that I let him defeat me. I was never a girl who was defeated, yet I felt that way. It was just as well, as I had a lot of paperwork to catch up on and phones calls to make. When I finally came out, it was 6 PM and everyone had left for the day.