The Proviso

by Moriah Jovan

  Dirk Jelarde, Chouteau County’s most sought-after defense attorney, popped in and out of the prosecutor’s office several times a day on various cases, but occa­sionally to talk to Eric about a karate studio they co-owned. Justice found it very odd that two men would own a business together then meet each other as adversaries in the courtroom.

  “They went to college together,” Richard said when she’d questioned him about it. “They’re sparring partners and they balance each other out.”

  “I understand sparring partners; they do that in court. It’s the business partners I think is weird.”

  “This is Chouteau County, Alice,” Mr. Davidson said as he passed by, the first thing he’d ever said to her. “Welcome to Wonderland.”

  Richard laughed, and Justice did have to smile.

  “JELARDE!” Knox bellowed from his office, then appeared in his threshold, glaring at Dirk, his hands on his hips and his suit coat gathered back and over his wrists. “You’re representing Rachel Wincott now?”

  “Yeah. Too bad Nocek kicked the bucket. Now she has a lawyer who isn’t terrified of the Badass.” Knox’s expression darkened and Dirk’s pretty white smile flashed in his pretty black face. Dirk was just . . . pretty . . . and Justice realized she had never seen a pretty man before. “Sucks to be you.”

  “Get your punk ass out of my office, Jelarde. You want to talk about the dojo, do it on dojo time.”

  Dirk did leave, but not without a healthy laugh floating after him.

  “That wasn’t about the dojo, Boss,” Eric intoned, but Knox snarled at him before slamming the door behind him.

  Everyone found that hilarious, but Justice only thought the whole exchange very strange. “Dirk,” Richard told her between chuckles, “likes to poke at lions. Rachel Wincott is the thorn in Knox’s paw and Dirk took her as a client just to push it in a little deeper.”

  “Why?”

  “Probably because he was bored. He does a lot of crazy things when he’s bored.”

  “No, I mean, who’s Rachel Wincott and why is she a thorn?”

  “She is a woman Knox put in prison for armed robbery. She also almost became Knox’s stepdaughter.”

  Justice blinked.

  “Oh, he wasn’t happy about it, but he loved her mother, so . . . ” Justice’s gut tightened. “And if it hadn’t been for Rachel, he’d have never met Leah in the first place.”

  “Why almost?”

  Richard suddenly speared her with an odd look. After a moment’s hesitation, he finally said, “Leah . . . died.”

  “Oh,” she breathed.

  “On their wedding day,” he added carefully.

  Justice’s eyes widened. “Oh, how sad.”

  Richard continued to stare at her with that strange expression for a moment longer, then released his breath in a whoosh while shaking his head. He said nothing more and Justice figured that topic was closed.

  Justice wondered what it would mean to be loved by Knox Hilliard. She couldn’t imagine it would be easy to be with him; in fact, now that she’d worked in the same office with him a week or so, she couldn’t imagine him with anyone at all, particularly anyone who might need a little tenderness once in a while.

  Actually, no, she couldn’t imagine that Knox Hilliard could love anyone.

  Knox was . . . cold, cruel. She should’ve understood that her third day in law school, when he’d defended her, touched her, but she had assumed it to be righteous anger, noble in its purpose. Never had it occurred to her that his kindness might be the true anomaly. Betrayed by her naïveté, she felt vulnerable because now she couldn’t trust anything she saw, felt, or deduced.

  The only thing she knew she could trust her eyesight for: the money.

  Endless streams of crisp banded bills, all thrown around like candy. On Wednesday of her second week in the prosecutor’s office, Mr. Hicks tossed Justice a banded pack of fifty one-hundred-dollar bills. She caught it reflexively, but dropped it like a hot potato and stared at it as it lay on her desk. The office grew as quiet as it ever did and she looked up to see him, Eric, Richard, Mr. Davidson, and the residents all watching her expectantly.

  “Um . . . ” She gulped and her chest felt like it had collapsed as her gaze returned to all that money. She thought about the things it could buy: Better feed for the cattle, repairs for the tractor, seed to sow. She thought of all the things it could go toward: shoring up the foundation of the house and a new roof, a new car . . .

  “Take it or don’t,” Knox barked at her from his office threshold after what Justice realized must have been a long time. She looked up at him, feeling bereft and betrayed once again. “Whether you like it or not, this is who we are, so you can either benefit from it or you can cut off your nose to spite your face. I don’t give a shit one way or another.”

  “What’s it for?” she whispered.

  “It’s your free hit.”

  She gulped and picked it up, then handed it to Richard with a flush, refusing to look at anyone else. The office went back to its usual activity, apparently having satisfied its curiosity as to which side of the divide she’d chosen. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Richard toss it back to Mr. Hicks, whose indecipherable smirk unnerved her.

  “Yo, Tommy,” Eric called. “Lemme have it if you’re giving it out.”

  Justice gulped when he laughed and chucked it at Eric’s head, the rest of her illusions shattered and gone by her eighth day of working in a prosecutor’s office.

  “Where does all this money come from?” Justice whispered to Richard one day almost three weeks after she had turned down the money, her curiosity hanging over her like a dirty cloud.

  “Don’t know. As far as I know, nobody else does, either, including the feds.”

  “How do the other new hires deal with it?”

  “Different ways, but most pretend to not see it. Usually after a while, they get used to it and then do as the Romans do. Whatever he’s doing, he’s hiding it very well because his books and our files have been gone through meticulously several times over. He’s as untouchable as Nocek, but Nocek had to work a lot harder at hiding it.” The note of reluctant pride in his voice unnerved her, but at this point, she couldn’t pass judgment; she wanted some of that money every time she drove onto her property and saw her house.

  “When Eric interviewed me, he asked me if I knew how this particular office worked. I always thought it was just a rumor.”

  Richard shook his head. “I can see why you might, but no. Nobody in ten counties wants to take Knox on and the governor has better things to do than reinvent the FBI’s wheel. The feds even tried to get him on Leah’s death, but that didn’t stick, either.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “But— Jones.”

  “Justice,” he said sternly, “you saw what happened that day and he did the right thing, whether your sensibilities were offended or not. And,” he went on, gathering steam for his chastisement, “you of all people should know better.”

  She gave him a surprised look.

  “We know who you are. We just don’t care. You’re popular because you’re a novelty, not because you’re saying anything original. Not that you won’t mature, but you need time and experience to sift your idealism from reality.”

  That accusation had hit her in print more than a few times, but it shocked her how bald it sounded face to face.

  “And,” he continued, “most of us don’t agree with the rest of your politics, either.”

  She shrugged and took a bite of her sandwich. “I don’t care if anybody agrees with me,” she said. “I have as many friends in the liberal blogging communities as I do the conservative ones, possibly more.”

  “And you wonder how Eric and Dirk can be business partners and adversaries at the same time.”

  Her gaze flickered to his. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “They’re your colleagues, no? You talk? Email privately?”

  She nodded. “Yes, we do. I guess that’s exactly wh
at they are.”

  “Look, Justice, I know you’re having a hard time and you’d rather be anywhere else, but you haven’t been treated any differently than any other new resident we’ve ever had.”

  “Yes, I have!” she protested on a hot whisper. “He came looking for me that first day when I was late.”

  “You aren’t the first; doubt you’ll be the last. He really doesn’t like tardiness and he does that to make a point.”

  . . . you might like some of the things I’d do to you.

  Justice decided to keep that part to herself.

  “You have a lot of potential and it would be foolish to waste your time here. Do your job. Do it well. Be on time. Do what we tell you to do and how to do it because in this office, you have no name. You’re just the latest junior AP fresh out of law school.”

  She sighed, but saw the truth of what he said. Too much attention to her political status—which meant nothing here anyway—could only hinder her training as a litigator and, much as she hated to admit it, every lawyer in the office was superb at his job. Any of them could turn her into a stellar prosecutor.

  “Eric will tell Knox when you’re ready for more. If you can immerse yourself, get better, learn from Knox, you’ll settle in here just fine.” He gathered his things and stood. “Thank you for buying my lunch, Justice.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “One more thing,” he murmured, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “Quit thinking about Knox that way.”

  Her eyes widened and she pulled away from him.

  “It’s written all over your face every time you look at him. You’re too young, too naïve, too—” He waved a hand, looking for the right word. “—conceptual. He likes women who are much older than he is—”

  Older!

  So. She’d never had any chance at all and the irony of that stabbed her somewhere deep in her chest. Now she was stuck with no reason to be in the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office at all, nowhere else to go, and no way to get there even if she knew where there was.

  Richard was still speaking. “—street smart and experienced, and you need to put—whatever it is—away.”

  She gulped and her stomach churned with a mixture of embarrassment and hopelessness. “I thought I had,” she whispered.

  “Nope. Get rid of it. He’s getting irritated and I don’t think he’ll tolerate it much longer.”

  “Richard, I have to get out of here. I can’t stand it.”

  “That’s not going to happen, either. Part of the deal with Knox is that if you’re hired, you stay until you’re well trained and ready to have his name on your CV. Period. Nobody’s ever tried to leave earlier than he allows. Believe it or not, we want you to succeed here. We’re interested in watching how this experiment’s going to turn out.”

  He straightened then and patted her back before he left. “Remember what I said.”

  * * * * *

  57: WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN

  JUNE 2007

  For the first time in her working life, Giselle didn’t have a job. She didn’t have to be anywhere. She didn’t have to do housework or cook. She and Bryce had spent three weeks in Europe just after she graduated and would have liked to have stayed all summer, but Bryce had too much work to do to stay away from his practice that long.

  Thanks to Sebastian’s investment of the rent she’d paid him and Fen’s reparations for her bookstore, she had her own money, no debt, and a new car. She didn’t feel too much the moocher since she could live off the interest her money earned.

  Bryce grew very impatient with her money issues, but something just didn’t sit right with her about a poor, debt-ridden woman marrying a very rich man—especially without a prenuptial agreement—and he wouldn’t understand that. She suspected Bryce had instructed Sebastian to move money from his account to hers, as her interest had begun to outpace normal earnings, even under Sebastian’s stewardship. While that annoyed her, she decided not to call him on it.

  They had enough adjustments to make, even now after having lived together for nine months. They were both moody and short-tempered, and he had yet to fulfill his promise to tell her about his fire, his family.

  Some days Giselle thought their long conversations and the incredible sex were the only two things holding them together.

  Until Bryce would hoarsely call his children’s names in his sleep, mostly Emme’s, plead desperately with the Lord to help him get them out of the house alive, to not let them die, then jerk awake in a cold sweat, chest heaving, bury his face in her hair while he caught his breath. Wrap his arms around her and pull her close to him. Whisper, “Help me, Giselle. Please help me,” over and over until he went back to sleep. He didn’t seem to remember what happened in the wee hours of the darkness or realize why some mornings he woke up exhausted and grouchy.

  Until she suddenly began to think about the prospect of actually being a lawyer, standing up in court in front of people, her growing fears that she wouldn’t be able to do the job, that she wasn’t cut out for it. Her family scoffed at her insecurities and told her to suck it up, princess, but Bryce listened to her. “Giselle,” he’d say gently, “if it turns out you don’t like it or you get bored with it, I’ll support you in whatever you want to do. But if you quit lawyering, it won’t be because you’re not good at it.” He never failed to tell her how beautiful she was, how simply looking at her turned him on; he understood why she’d posed nude, why she needed to hear him say it. No suck it up, princess from Bryce.

  So they had their problems, but for the moment, she decided to enjoy the time off. She spent her days lying in the shade in Loose Park with her mp3 player, lost in the worlds her favorite authors built for her. That got old in about two weeks, but she had more than a month to go before she was due to show up at Hale and Ravenwood, no longer a transcriptionist, no longer in that stupid cubicle, no longer with those infernal buds in her ears. She spent her evenings with Bryce going places and seeing things, the symphony, the zoo, the movies, outdoor concerts, Shakespeare in the Park.

  “Say, Wife,” he purred one evening as he approached her from behind, wrapped his arms around her, and slid two tickets down her neckline into her bra. “Think we’re too old for a Mötley Crüe and Aerosmith double-header in October?” Giselle had squealed in delight.

  Every night she lay on the couch in the candlelight, drinking in her lover’s music with her whole body as he poured his passion, his strength, his anger, and his skill into the keys of their concert grand piano. He saw what he did to her with his music, stroking her, seducing her with it as effectively as hours of foreplay.

  Once he had heard Carmina Burana in its entirety, he had fallen in love with it so that he’d bought the chamber score to learn it.

  “This is like nothing I’ve ever heard or played before,” he muttered one night as he struggled over what he said was a deceptively difficult passage. “I don’t know whether I like it on its own merits or because it was what was playing our first night together.”

  “Sebastian only plays it when he’s lonely or he’s got a woman on his mind. He says it fucks your ears.”

  He smirked and abandoned the piano to slowly lower himself over her on the couch, on all fours, the way he did every time he wanted to conquer her, when he wanted her to give him a fight. “I’m not interested in fucking your ears right now, Wife,” he murmured and kissed her harshly.

  The next day, Bryce came home from work in a more foul mood than usual. “Giselle,” he barked, “when you look at me, what do you see?”

  She looked up from the club chair where she slouched reading Fanny Hill. Her brow wrinkled. She could’ve answered that six different ways, but she didn’t quite know which one he wanted, and she told him so.

  Bryce was insistent. “I want whatever you have to say.”

  She gulped, searching her memory for her impressions, not wanting to get this wrong because it was the first sign she’d seen of any willingness to talk about it. “I
see an extraordinarily strong body that got that way with physical labor, not weights. I see graft scars, most of them healed now, but I don’t want to see your scars.” He flinched and paled. “No!” she said, impatient with herself and searching for words. “When I see your scars—you know, see them—I see pain and suffering. I see children who died and a little bit of my heart dies.”

  She arose and went to him, pulled his shirt out of his trousers, unbuttoned it, took it and his undershirt off his body. “Like, here,” she said, caressing a particularly vicious wound just under the lowest rib on his left side. “That looks like something sharp went in there.”

  “A broken floorboard.”

  “Well, and then here—” She unbuckled his pants, let them fall, then knelt to take them off of him. Shoes, socks went, too, so that he stood completely naked before her. She touched his ankle where began a wicked scar she knew very well. It streaked up his calf and thigh until it stopped at his hip. She lightly drew her fingertips up the length of the scar as she arose. “It looks like fire burst all the way up your leg from the floor.”

  “It did,” he whispered.

  “Your arm,” she said and, with a fingernail scraped the mat of scars on his left arm where he had no hair. “When I see this, I think about the child you carried there, that your arm was on fire, and that the child was on fire.”

  “Andrea,” he croaked.

  She knew that from his transcripts, but she didn’t tell him she heard his anguished rants during the nightmares that plagued him.

  “Your face— Your shoulder— Here,” she said as she touched a spot on his neck that was still intact and stood out more for it. “This is where another child hung onto you—Luke? Because he was strong enough to hang on? His arm protected you there because he was on fire, too.”