by S. K. Lessly
All of it was wishful thinking though. The cold and harsh reality of it all was that he was taken. He had someone that wanted him as desperately as she did. Nyla saw it written all over the woman’s face; besides the appalling expression that she held the moment she entered the diner.
What Nyla should be doing, she discerned, was to try to open herself up to Darrius. He wanted her; she knew this without a doubt. He would be able to take care of her and Se’Nya with no problem. Darrius wasn’t a lawyer, but he had a great job driving for one of the top shipping companies in the U.S. He could provide for them and she liked him. But she didn’t want to simply like someone, she wanted to be in love. She wanted her soulmate. And the only man she felt that passionate, deep emotional connection for was for the one man she couldn’t have.
“Andrew…”
Chapter 4
Andrew ran his hand through his hair as he headed to his office. He was exhausted. So far he’d been busy in court all morning, and once he made it back into the office, he found himself in meetings with his other clients for the remainder of the day. He loosened his tie a little and took another deep breath. Finally, he had the chance to relax. That’s when Nyla Montgomery entered his mind.
He couldn’t believe how much he wanted and needed to see her again. He wanted to satisfy the sudden urges to be with her, but most of all, he wanted to feed his curiosity. He had so many questions to ask, most of them centered around her and Robert. It didn’t take long for him to learn all he needed to know about what happened between the two of them. His office was a gossip train filled with more rumors than the tabloids. It seemed everyone knew about this mess except him. Andrew learned that Nyla had suffered her reputation because of her relationship with Robert. After all, Robert was a married man.
There was no way he could be certain that Nyla knew Robert was married. He just had a feeling that she was innocent in all of this. Andrew had known Robert Downs for years, and during that time, he had never seen the man’s left ring finger decorated with the symbolic band. The flip side of that was Robert’s evil bitch of a wife, Debra. She had no problem showing off her seven carat diamond every chance she got. However, the miserable couple never made appearances in public together, unless it was for an A-class crowd.
Which bodes the question of how Nyla and Robert met. These two were from different worlds. They didn’t socialize in the same circles; they didn’t have the same friends. From the stories he’d heard, they met at a function both attended and Robert was the aggressor.
Robert was known to sleep around on his wife, so Andrew believed what he’d heard. He also believed that fucking around on his wife was a game to Robert. He’d even witnessed Robert on the prowl before, stalking after women. He couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, but Andrew figured Debra didn’t care as long as she wasn’t embarrassed. So when it got out that Nyla was pregnant by her husband, that he’d fucked up by embarrassing his wife and family, Andrew heard that Debra didn’t take it well, and hell, neither did Robert. Being the bitch that Debra was, she defamed Nyla so bad in the press that she became the home wrecking whore that had come between a “committed marriage.” Yeah right!
Robert, of course, had played the innocent victim. He let his wife run Nyla, the mother of his child, into the ground without a second thought. Nyla being the mother of his child should’ve meant something, but it meant shit to Robert. Andrew felt his jaw tense as he thought about how Robert let this happen. It pissed him off to no end to hear how Nyla was treated, and even though he didn’t know much about Nyla or the situation, he believed in his soul that she deserved better.
He frowned and berated himself. He should have beat the shit out of Robert in the diner when he had the chance. But knowing Robert the way that he did, Andrew knew that he would have his chance again. It was inevitable.
“Hey, Pierce.” Andrew stopped walking after hearing his name and looked into the office of Lazarus Spencer. Spencer was a co-worker who Andrew fucking despised but tolerated. Spencer was a decent lawyer who was part of the family law division within his firm. Spencer was just as tall as Andrew but three times his size with small, unwelcoming eyes. He couldn’t understand why Spencer even practiced family law. He had admitted multiple times, to anyone who listened, how he hated children.
Andrew walked into the man’s parse office and gave a head nod. “What can I help you with?”
Spencer smiled and leaned back in his screaming chair. “Heard you have quite a case on your hands.”
“Where did you hear that?” Andrew frowned, thinking about the Buckman case that was just wrapping up. “The Buckman case is actually cut and dry. The lawsuit has no merit. It should be wrapped up in a few days.”
Still smiling, Spencer shook his head. “No, not the Buckman vs. McManus International case. I’m talking about the Downs case.”
Andrew’s brows furrowed, instantly on high alert. “What about the Downs case? What have you heard?”
Spencer stood and walked around his massive desk. He leaned against the desk and folded his arms in front of his meaty chest.
“Oh, I haven’t heard any particulars. Just that you’ve got yourself wrapped up in some shit, that’s all.” Spencer started to laugh. “Wow, this is crazy. I’ve never heard of so much fuss over a little ass. I mean sure, she is hot as hell, but I didn’t think she was all that. I wonder what she did to get you involved in this. It must have been big.” Spencer then leaned closer to him and grinned. “Tell me, did she drop to her knees and wrap those fantastic thick lips around your-”
Andrew didn’t let the man finish. Before Spencer was able to blink, Andrew was on him. He’d quickly grabbed Spencer by his tie and pulled his body toward him. “Go ahead and finish. What you were going to say?”
Andrew, keeping a tight hold on the tie gripped in his hand, forced Spencer back against the nearest wall. The rage was welcomed as he slammed the overweight man against the wall and lifted him a few feet from the ground.
“Jesus Christ,” Spencer’s scratchy voice spat, thrashing his legs.
“Tell me what you know,” Andrew growled.
“I don’t know anything,” Spencer strangled out before Andrew tightened his grip further.
Andrew stared in the man’s eyes as his predatory features came alive. He knew that if he didn’t keep it together, things could get much worse very quickly.
Andrew spoke in a carefully controlled tone. “You must think I’m a fucking fool, Spencer. You know something, you son of a bitch. Spill it.”
Spencer, trying desperately to remove Andrew’s hand from his favorite tie and breathe at the same time, saw something in Andrew that he never saw before. He knew the man was crazy, but he figured it was rhetorical in a sense. He didn’t believe it was actually true. He did now.
“You’re crazy,” he managed to force out.
Andrew, however, didn’t care too much for him breathing any longer. He kneed him in the nuts and tightened his hold on the tie, completely cutting off the man’s air. Spencer’s face started to turn dark red.
“You will tell me what I want to know or so help me God, your fucking days of living will be over.”
Andrew didn’t have time to play games. It would be a matter of seconds before all hell would break loose and he broke this man’s neck. Andrew was about to cross the point of no return, and Spencer felt it too. He nodded quickly, signally he was ready to talk and Andrew finally released him, letting his feet finally touch the ground.
Andrew stepped back to give Spencer room but not enough to get free of him.
Spencer bent over coughing. “I can have you arrested and disbarred,” he said in between breaths.
Andrew frowned. “Please, you fat fucking prick, I know a lot more judges than you. Trust me, you don’t want to go there.”
“You tried to choke me, you bastard!”
Andrew actually grinned. “No, I don’t recall that. Besides, you know how you’re into that kinky style BDSM fucking. You probably h
ave your Dom tie you up around your neck or something and beat the shit out of you on the regular.”
Spencer frowned, instantly bringing his hand around his burning neck. He released his tie and opened the top button on his shirt.
“Please, I’m not into that shit.”
Andrew shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, but you will be if you keep fucking with me. I’ll have witnesses, pictures and video that say otherwise circulated faster than it would to take your fat fingers to lift a donut to your mouth.”
Spencer stood upright quickly and met Andrew’s crazed eyes. The truth in them, the calculated madness that was displayed all over Andrew confirmed what Spencer had thought earlier. The man was certifiably crazy. One thing Spencer wasn’t was suicidal.
“Now, tell me what I want to know… now,” Andrew charged.
When Spencer didn’t respond right away, Andrew growled and moved to grab him again. Spencer held his hands up and backed away. “Okay, okay! I’ll tell you, shit. What do you want to know?”
“You know exactly what I want to know. You’re stalling, and I’m losing my patience.”
Spencer went to his chair and sat down. He shakily took a bottled water from his desk, unscrewed the cap and took a healthy gulp. He pulled out another one and handed it to Andrew. Andrew shook his head, knowing those bottles had anything but water in them. He could smell the alcohol from where he stood. He sat down in front of the still red-faced Spencer and waited with narrowed eyes. Spencer was an opportunist, not a gossip. He’d always been like that. He only gets involved in shit that benefited him. If it didn’t, he didn’t give a damn what went on around him. The revelation that Spencer was a greedy bastard and seeing the fear that was dripping off of him told Andrew that Spencer was more involved in what was happening between Nyla and Robert than he was letting on.
Outwardly shaking now, Spencer took another drink from the water bottle. He could feel the beads of sweat forming above his brow, pooling under his arms.
Shit, this fucking lunatic, Spencer spat to himself.
“Pierce,” he said finally. “I don’t know much, but I can tell you what I’ve heard.”
“Why don’t you tell me how you’re involved with Downs?” Andrew charged.
Spencer’s eyes grew as he shook his head vehemently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I-”
In a blink of an eye, Andrew had sprung to his feet and lunged for Spencer over his desk. Spencer reacted but not as fast as he would’ve liked to as Andrew grabbed a hold of his tie again. Spencer shot up, as fast as his bulk allowed, and stepped back from his desk, letting Andrew pull his tie off his neck, tripping over his chair and almost falling to the floor.
“All right, all right! Damn it, Pierce!”
Andrew clenched his hands into tight fists, imagining exactly how he would throw this fat fuck out of his office window. Would he bust the glass first or just use the momentum of Spencer’s body to do the work for him? He smiled wickedly as he decided exactly how he would do it.
“What the fuck did you do, Spencer?” he asked as he sat back down in his chair, dropping the tie on the floor next to him.
Spencer placed his hands up in an effort to calm the rage that was evident in Andrew’s eyes.
“All right, look; I overheard Robert talking one day at some fundraiser event downtown. He mentioned that he got this waitress pregnant and she was keeping the baby. He said that he told her he wasn’t leaving his wife for no simple ass. He bragged to a few people, telling them that he said to her ‘if you want to have the baby, you’re on your own’ and that he wasn’t getting involved. Someone asked him what would happen if she tried to take him to court, and that spooked him.”
Spencer then leaned forward and placed his meaty hands on his desk. “Pierce, if only you could have seen the fear in his eyes. You know how much of an asshole Robert is, right? I even heard you two got into it a few times. So, yeah, I started thinking what if I could expose him for the scum of the earth that he is?”
“So you decided to reach out to this innocent woman and you what? Told her you would help her get support from her baby’s daddy?”
Spencer shook his head. “Okay, no, that’s not exactly how it went down. Look, I figured this would be a way to get back at him, you know? So, I leaked the information about him having a kid by another woman to the right people in his circle. Then I went to find her to try and talk her into taking him to court. I figured if I made him look like shit in the public eye, then maybe that precious reputation of his would fall apart.”
Andrew grunted, seeing exactly how things played out. “Only the shit has backfired,” Andrew added, and Spencer nodded.
“Yeah, in more ways than one. First, she wouldn’t cooperate. No matter what I said to her, she wouldn’t take my advice. Something about Robert had too much power or some shit. I tried to tell her that together we would take that power from him but she didn’t listen. She just wanted to stay under the radar and away from Robert. What she didn’t know was that her little secret wasn’t a secret any more. The cat was out of the bag.”
“Did you tell her that?” Andrew asked.
“I didn’t see a need at the time. I figured once word got around, he would do whatever it took to bury it. He would quietly pay up to keep her quiet and of course, I’d get a piece of the pie from the woman since I was advising her, but that didn’t happen.”
Andrew frowned. “It sure didn’t. Instead, Debra made this innocent woman out to be a home wrecker and Robert an innocent victim and now he’s trying to take her baby from her.”
“Yeah, that was the other thing that blew up. But come on, do you really think the girl was innocent in all this?”
Andrew’s demeanor quickly changed and Spencer started backpedaling fast. “Okay, yes, she probably was innocent, but I was trying to look out for her. I had no idea Downs would react the way he has. Shit,” Spencer chuckled uncomfortably, “He has a fucking hard-on for this case. He turned the tables and started making her out to be a horrible person for keeping him from his child. It’s a mess.” Spencer ran his hands through his thinning hair.
“So what’s your plan to clean this shit up?” Andrew asked.
Spencer shrugged. “What do you expect me to do? I mean, I tried to help her and when I knew I couldn’t, I told her to find someone else that could. I sent her in the right direction; that’s all I was able to do for the girl. I wouldn’t go near this with a ten-foot poll, and anyone that represents her from here on would be committing career suicide. Do you know Michaels is Downs’ attorney? That’s why I’m trying to warn you, Pierce. I know you are good, but going up against Michaels and the Downs’? I mean, can your reputation withstand this? It’s really fucked up. Look, man, take my advice and let this go. I heard Michaels gave her a chance to save face and make this situation better for all parties. Just advise her to take the deal and be done with this.”
“Oh, so, I should just let her give up the rights to her child to Downs? I don’t fucking think so.” Andrew stood. “I want everything you have on this case sent to Bertha within the hour. It shouldn’t be much since you haven’t done shit but fuck a good person.”
Spencer rolled his eyes and mumbled, “Yeah, I wish.”
Andrew’s features frowned and Spencer wisely pushed himself against the window behind him. He inquired quickly, “So, you’re taking her case? You’re doing it pro bono?”
Andrew ignored him and added, “Don’t let me have to come back here if I don’t have all the information I need in my hand in the next fifty-six minutes.”
Spencer’s meaty neck shook as he nodded. “Oh, you’ll have everything you need.”
Andrew moved to the office door, then turned and said, “Oh, and Spencer, if I find out you were involved in this shit deeper than what you told me, I will break your fucking neck, understand?”
Spencer replied, nodding his head quickly, “Perfectly.”
Chapter 5
Forty minutes later, Bertha
, his assistant, bounded into his office with a slim folder in her hand and slammed it on his desk.
“What’s the meaning of this? I hear you’re doing work for free? What’s in it for you?”
Bertha Swan had been Andrew’s assistant for years. She’d been with him and seen him through a lot of difficult issues in his life. She and Andrew’s relationship was different. They were more like brother and sister than employee and employer. Bertha was the utmost professional at doing her job, however. She had Andrew running like a well-oiled machine. However, when they were alone, she had no problems lighting into him like she was doing now.
When Andrew first met Bertha, he was astonished at how her name didn’t match her physical appearance at all, but it fit her loud voice and big personality. Bertha was a very attractive woman with light brown skin and long hair that she always kept in a tight ponytail or bun. She was tall; about as tall as Andrew with her heels on. She had a figure that any woman would kill to have.
Andrew took the folder that she’d slammed on the desk and opened it. The first thing he saw was a picture of Nyla and a beautiful light-brown skinned little girl with light brown, curly hair.
Bertha folded her arms over her breasts. “When do you think you’ll have time to do pro bono work?”
“I’ll make it work,” he told her as he kept his eyes on the photo.
He could see the resemblance between mother and child, but he didn’t see Robert anywhere in the little girl’s features. As his eyes studied the picture, he still felt that passionate magnetic pull toward Nyla. He also felt the happiness radiating from her eyes just by looking at this picture.