Confessions of a Litigation God: A Legal Affairs Full Length Erotic Novel (14 page)

The minute the words
are out of my mouth, I know they are not well received. Still, I’m
a little surprised when she says, “Then I’m sorry, Matt.
This freak of a fuck show is over.”

“What?”
I ask in confusion, because I thought we’d just fight some
more, then maybe have great makeup sex. I mean, Mac likes it as much
as I do.

“You heard
me,” she says with finality. “I can’t do this
anymore. If you want my resignation, you have it. Just let me know.
If not, I’ll show up and do my job well. But as far as you and
I are concerned… we’re done.”

What. The. Fuck?

I stare at her in
disbelief, trying to call her bluff. My conscience is telling me to
give in, to tell her the truth about Lorraine… that it’s
just a business dinner. My conscience is also telling me to tell her
about Cal. About how black his soul is and if she doesn’t want
to be with me, at least don’t be with him. He’ll hurt
her. I know it, and I don’t want that to happen.

I plead with her…
with my eyes, because my mouth will not open and say those things. It
stays shut, because I’m still controlled by my past. I’m
convinced, if I let her in… just a tiny bit more… I’ll
crack wide open and become completely exposed. I’ve spent years
forging these steel walls around me, and I can’t open them back
up… not for anyone. Certainly not for a woman I’ve
barely known for a few weeks.

I. Just. Can’t.
Do. It.

So, I just stare at
her and I watch the determination in her gaze solidify. It’s
done. I’ve lost her.

Mac turns around and
walks out of my office without a backward glance.

***

For the third time
tonight, I pull my arm back across the table to dislodge Lorraine’s
hand. She’s been painfully flirting with me since we’ve
arrived at the restaurant, and I’ve been trying to put her off
by extoling Mac’s virtues. I know she doesn’t like Mac
and the more I talk highly of Mac, the more she’s forgetting to
flirt with me.

Not that it’s
a chore to talk about Mac’s great virtues, but I will admit…
it’s a tad painful given what went down just an hour ago in my
office. I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around
the fact that I won’t be seeing her tonight… or any
night thereafter.

And the insane thing
about that?

I knew that was
going to happen when I refused to just tell her the fucking truth. I
knew I was driving her away.

I am one seriously
twisted dude, who apparently loves misery.

Pushing my plate
away, because honestly, I have no appetite, I decide to cut to the
chase and let Lorraine know about her fate.

“Lorraine…
I know Bill has talked to you twice since you’ve started with
us, about the problems we’ve been having with your behavior
toward other attorneys and staff.”

I pause and gauge
her reaction. Her pulse starts pounding at the base of her neck and
her face goes a little red, but she doesn’t say anything.

“We haven’t
seen any improvement, frankly, and we don’t believe that
Connover and Crown is a good fit for you.”

This, of course, is
an understatement. Although I’ve never seen it, apparently
Lorraine is a certifiable slave-driving bitch. She’s managed to
piss off every attorney she’s worked with so far with her
bitchy, entitled attitude. She’s caused some of the staff to
break down in tears.

And while I found it
fucking hilarious, she apparently pulled that shit on Mac last week,
repetitively ordering her to get her coffee. One of the attorneys
watched this take place and told me that when Lorraine told her to go
get her some coffee, Mac leaned over, grabbed her stomach, and moaned
piteously. Told Lorraine she had diarrhea and couldn’t do it,
running off to find a bathroom. Apparently, that same attorney saw
Mac ten minutes later and asked how she was. She apparently grinned,
gave a wink, and confided in a low voice, “I’m perfectly
fine. But that’s the best way I’ve found to keep her off
my back.”

Fucking. Hilarious.

But completely
unacceptable that Lorraine is treating her peers that way. And yes,
Mac is her peer now, not her employee.

Bill talked to
Lorraine twice about it in the form of a performance evaluation. Each
time, she acknowledged the problem and said she would get it under
control. She lasted about a day, and then went back to being a
monster to everyone. Honestly, I think there’s a mental issue
there, but it’s not my place to get into that.

Now we’re done
trying and it’s time to part ways.

“We’re
willing to buy out your existing cases and offer you a severance
bonus. Or you can walk with what you came into the firm with, but no
severance. If you choose the first option, I’ll ask you to stay
for thirty days to help transfer the cases over to Bill permanently
and that will also give you time to look for a job.”

I pause and push an
envelope across the table. “Here’s a detailed proposal of
the case buyout. Of course, the clients will need to agree to come
with us, but I’m sure we can work that out.”

She doesn’t
say anything, her face getting redder. She takes the envelope,
peruses it briefly, and then turns her eyes to me. I expect her to
argue or plead to stay on.

Instead, she
surprises me when she says, “I accept the first option to buy
my cases out. I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that life in
a large law firm is not for me.”

My eyebrows shoot
up, because I was confident this was not how it would go down. I’m
greatly relieved so I give her a true smile and lean my arms on the
table. “Excellent. How about we order some champagne and drink
to new ventures for both of us?”

She returns my smile
and reaches a hand out to touch my arm. “That would be lovely.”

I cringe and pull my
arm away so I can signal for the waiter, who starts over toward us.
I’m going to guzzle the champagne because the sooner its drunk,
the sooner I can leave and be done with Lorraine Cummings. Granted,
she’ll be around for another thirty days, but we can suffer
with it since it’s a permanent fix.

Pulling out my
phone, I check the time. 8:30 PM.

I wonder what Mac is
doing right now. Is she thinking about me? Cursing me? Masturbating
thinking about me?

One can only hope.

None of that matters
though. We are done, and it’s back to business as usual
starting tomorrow.

For the first time,
in a long time, I actually feel sad.

I hang up my phone
and mentally check off my list to find a date for the Patron’s
Gala for the New York State Bar Association next week. I hate these
functions, but they are a necessity. Much of my business comes from
personal referrals from other attorneys, so it’s necessary for
me to rub elbows with them.

I’m taking my
friend, Melody Chambers. She’s a partner over at Weinsten
Fannerty, a very successful criminal defense firm. She and I worked
together at a little boutique civil rights firm right after we
graduated law school. It was only for a few months before she moved
on, but we stayed in contact and became friends. We became better
friends after my divorce.

Not in a sexual way.
Rather, Melody’s husband, Richard, is an advertising executive
and he travels a lot internationally. I’ve filled in as escort
for her on occasion, and she’s done the same for me so I don’t
have to go stag to these functions. It works out nicely, and we get
along well. She planned to go to this party anyway, so we’ll
basically share a limo and I’ll have someone who I can actually
stand to talk to all evening.

Glancing at my
watch, I see it’s almost six PM. Mac sent me an email this
morning asking for help on the
Jackson
case. I’m not
sure what it says about me that I felt like a schoolboy that just got
handed a note from the girl he likes when I first saw that email. A
zing of adrenaline went through me and maybe I secretly hoped when I
opened it that she would be asking to see me tonight.

Alas, it was short
and to the point, asking for help on that case.

Still rocking the
schoolboy complex, I immediately responded back to her that she could
come discuss it with me any time. I sort of expected her to come
immediately to my office, but I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I didn’t go
out to lunch, in case she decided to come see me on her lunch hour.

But still I waited.

Finally, I gave up
and spent the remainder of my Friday afternoon lost in some legal
research on an admissibility issue, and I forgot… for a while…
about Mac.

Which was good,
because the email is not the first thing I’ve obsessed about
this week. Since she broke things off Monday night, I’ve gone
over in my head a million times how fucked up that entire situation
was. I let my anger over seeing her with Cal get the better of me,
and I made her suffer for it.

I know it was wrong
not to tell her about Lorraine, but the way she demanded it of me
took this thing we have going in a different direction. It smacked
too much of a relationship, and I don’t like having to answer
to anyone. I do know, however, that’s an issue I have to work
on… someday.

I know it was wrong
to demand she stay away from Cal. But fuck… the thought of her
with him is driving me bat-shit crazy. The fact that she has
something going on with him causes my veins to feel like they have
acid swimming in them.

Everything just
fucking burns.

If it would be any
other man in the entire world, it would not have been a problem.
Okay, well… that’s not exactly true. I don’t want
her with any other man.

But for fuck’s
sake. Cal Carson?

In the hierarchy of
people that I despise, Marissa is numero uno. But taking the second
slot position, just a millimeter under her is Cal Carson. Truly, the
only thing I hate about my career is that I actually have to deal
with Cal on cases we have. Thank God, we are on opposite sides of the
cases we have, and so all of our dealings together are dirty fights.
Over the last few years, we’ve managed to act civilly toward
each other when we are around other people, but if we were ever to
get alone… I guarantee there would be bloody knuckles
involved.

I think about how I
found out about Cal and Marissa. I would have never known had Cal’s
conscience not gotten the better of him.

He actually
confessed… waiting outside my apartment. Marissa and Gabe were
out and about, so I invited him up. He declined a beer I offered him,
and then proceeded to destroy me.

I already knew that
Marissa was cheating on me. After I started noticing suspicious
behavior—taking phone calls and walking out of the room so I
couldn’t hear, running errands at odd times of the day or
night, going out with “the girls” four to five nights a
week—yeah, it all tipped me off something was wrong, so I hired
a private investigator. Within one week, he had a thick report with
photographs of my wife banging two different guys.

The marriage was
over. She didn’t know it yet, but I was carefully plotting the
way it was going to occur. She didn’t think it was odd that I
was sleeping on the couch, or had basically stopped talking to her
all together. In her shortsighted mind, that was just better
opportunity for her to sneak around.

So, was I surprised
that Marissa fucked another guy? No.

Was I surprised it
was my best friend? Abso-fucking-lutely.

I didn’t even
get the story from him. Cal made the mistake of starting his
confession off by hitting me with the bad news.

He’d said—with
tears in his eyes, “Matt… I am so sorry. But last night,
I got really, really drunk and I was with Marissa.”

That’s as far
as he got before my fist planted in his face. It knocked him backward
into one of the kitchen island stools, and he flipped over it,
crashing to the floor. I was on him like stink on shit, pummeling his
face with my bare knuckles.

It was only when I
drew back from a direct hit to his eye, and saw I had burst a blood
vessel in it, that I stopped the attack. While fury was driving me,
common sense was stepping in and telling me not to do anything that
would get me in criminal trouble. Without that good, old common sense
driving me, I probably would have killed him and to make matters
worse, Cal wasn’t defending himself.

I pushed off him and
stood up, my legs shaky, my chest heaving, and blood dripping from my
hands.

“Get out,”
I said quietly.

I watched him roll
over and push himself up, blood pouring from a cut to his temple and
out of his nose. One eye was already swollen shut. He staggered to
the door and just like that, the two closest people to me had
shredded my heart.

I’m broken out
of my tragic memories by a shrieking noise coming from somewhere
close by. My head snaps toward my door because it was a woman
yelling, and I listen again. I don’t hear anything but I get up
to investigate, walking down the hall from where I think the noise
was coming from.

Turning the corner
and heading down a hallway that houses a long row of attorney
offices, I hear, “Don’t you have anything to fucking say
for yourself?”

Okay, that’s
Lorraine’s voice and I start to walk a little faster. It’s
coming from the door I have my eyes pinned on just thirty feet away.

Mac’s office.

I’m starting
to reach my hand for the door when I hear Lorraine say, “You’re
such a fucking screw up, McKayla!”

Rage suffuses me,
not only that Lorraine would be screaming at someone, an offense I
just basically told her was getting her shit-canned from my firm, but
because she’s yelling at Mac. A protectiveness rises up and I
throw the door open to Mac’s office so hard that it crashes
into the wall and one of her degrees falls to the ground, causing the
glass to break. I take in the scene in a quick glance. Mac sitting at
her desk with papers scattered all around, an empty file on the
floor, broken degrees looking pathetic, and Lorraine standing over
Mac with fury in her eyes.