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I told her she was coming as my secretary, nothing more, but I’m sure she saw through my lie. I’m as transparent as a jellyfish in clear water.
For one night, I can be a gentleman, can’t I?
“Let me know your decision about Vivienne and I’ll draft a letter.” She tidies up the cups and saucers and puts them in a neat pile.
“I’m not taking the case, Arianna.” I’d rather chew on a hornet’s nest.
Her forehead creases as if she wasn’t expecting me to say that. “You’re not?” she asks.
“She’s lying.”
Arianna nods her head in agreement. “I know, I just thought that since you know her and you have history, you know, having slept with?—”
“Do not finish that sentence. Whatever you heard my brothers and me talking about, it was a one-time thing and it happened a very long time ago. It’s not something I’m proud of. I don’t represent liars,” I add. “Especially one I suspect murdered her own husband.” The fucking moxie of the woman coming in here thinking she could hoodwink me makes me sick to my stomach.
My words halt her in her tracks, and she stops mid-reach to pick up her laptop off the table. “I think she did too,” she whispers. “And you’re not going to represent her?” she asks, clearly needing me to confirm my stance.
“If you don’t know by now how we operate at Hart Law, Arianna, you haven’t been paying close enough attention. We represent the good guys.”
“Not everyone is good. How can you be so sure?” she fires back.
“After a while you get to know people, work out how they operate, read body language.”
“Did you learn that from a book?”
“No. From my father.”
She scrunches up her nose, the same way she does every time someone says something she doesn’t agree with.
“What did I say that annoyed you, Arianna?”
“Nothing.” Clearing her throat, she rubs the end of her nose before lifting her laptop off the table. “I just think that you can’t say with complete confidence that every person we represent now or even in the past is, or was, a good guy.” Slowly, she moves to the door. “Not every time.” Her voice is much smaller now and there’s hurt in her eyes, and something else I can’t quite work out, which I hate.
She hides her pain well and after learning that she lost her family in a car crash, it has been gnawing away at me. I want to know what happened, but I don’t think she’ll give up the information. Not easily anyway.
I straighten my spine, confident about who we represent. “Every day, when we were growing up, my father would have me and my brothers recite our key values and code of ethics. It was drummed into us. Everything we do here at Hart Law is by the book and we do everything within our power to uphold myfather’s mission to provide exceptional legal representation with integrity.”
I couldn’t have been clearer, but the way she’s looking at me makes it seem like she’s struggling to process what I said—confused, annoyed, maybe both?
I drive home my point. “I would never, not in a million years, take on a client like Vivienne Cavendish. If my father was standing in this room his decision would be the same as mine.”
“So what you’re saying is that you’re a stand-up guy, as is your father?”
It surprises me that having worked here for some time she can’t see that.
I reply, “Absolutely. I believe in honesty. I’m dedicated to the justice system and upholding my father’s high ethical standards.” And I will die on that hill.
“Did your father retire?” she asks, raising a perfectly plucked brow.
“Sort of.”
“What does that mean?” She taps her fingers against her lip, her voice thick with curiousness.
“That’s a story for another day.” I move on, preferring not to talk about my father; it’s too painful. “In the meantime, I have two things I need you to do for me.”
“Name them.”
“Schedule lunch with Deputy Chief Philip Robbins. Tell him it’s to discuss information I may have on a suspected homicide.”