Until it wasn’t.
Eventually it spiraled into tale-as-old-as-time tabloid fodder—infidelity, drugs, domestic disturbances and a nasty custody war over a smiling three-year-old boy.
And now Hartley Morrow is sitting in my office. Light blond and tragically beautiful in that fragile, ashen way sad women are.
“Hello, Miss Morrow—I’m Tommy Sullivan.”
She stands, pushing her big round dark glasses to the top of her head and shaking my outstretched hand.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I ask. “Tea, water . . . whiskey?”
She lets out a jittery laugh. “A whiskey would be good.”
At the minibar in the corner I pour myself a glass too, because no one likes drinking alone. Hartley’s hand trembles when she takes the glass from me, sipping it as I sit behind my desk.
“What brings you here, miss? What can I do for you?”
She slips a ragged piece of paper from her purse and lays it on the desk like it’s poisonous. “After I picked up Sammy from preschool today, I came home and found this. On my bed.”
I read the lines scrawled across the paper—it’s a fairly typical but nasty death threat. Bitch, whore, hurting her child while she’s forced to watch, are big themes.
“There have been threats, as I’m sure you can imagine. Awful online messages, voicemails and emails to my lawyer’s office . . . but this . . . whoever did this was inside my home, Mr. Sullivan. Where my son sleeps.”
“Where’s your son now?”
“At a hotel, with his nanny. I packed a bag and just left. I didn’t know what else to do—we couldn’t stay there.”
“You did the right thing.” I nod.
She breathes slow and takes another drink from the glass. “My friend—Penny Von—we did a film together years ago but we’ve stayed in touch. She recommended your firm.”
Penny Von is the stage name of Penelope Von Titebottum, sister to Lady Sarah—Prince Henry’s wife and the future Queen of Wessco.
“Reid’s had a terrible season and the fans, his teammates, the whole club blames me for it. Even his teammates’ wives . . . women who I thought were my friends . . . the ones who’ll still
speak to me, just want the divorce finished so they can get back to focusing on winning games. My lawyer contacted the police about the threats, but they don’t really seem interested in investigating who’s doing it. They just add it to the file.”
“Who do you think is doing it?”
People should trust their instincts more. Nine times out of ten their gut already knows the answer and their brain is just standing in the way.
“I think it was Reid. It’s insane that I can say that about the father of my child—about a man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with—but I think it’s him. He wants to scare me so I’ll give in, sign the divorce papers, stop fighting.”
She scrapes out a bitter laugh, shaking her head.
“And the joke is, I don’t even want anything—he can have the houses, the cars—I don’t even want child support. I just want Sammy. Full custody. Between practices and games, Reid is barely home most of the year. He hasn’t seen Sammy in months. It’s just about winning for him. He can’t stand to lose—ever. And I think he’s doing this now because it looks like I might actually win custody and that’s just not acceptable to him.”
Doing this job long enough turns you into an amateur philosopher on the human condition. Not so much when it comes to women—they’re complicated, nuanced creatures. But men are simpler. There’s only a few types to us.
Some are like my dad—kindhearted and gentle, but strong in their own way. In the way they provide, and the way they teach. Some are slick, underhanded—they get their jollies from pulling a fast one and getting away with shit they shouldn’t. Some men are like me, like Logan—simple tastes and low maintenance. We don’t care about much—but try to harm what we do care about? We’ll rip your throat out without breaking a sweat or batting an eye.
And then there are men like Reid Frazier—possessive, with an undercurrent of anger and a desperate need to prove how big their cocks are. There’s something ugly inside them, and no matter how much they try to keep it in, eventually it spills out over everything.
I really fucking hate men like Frazier.
And they definitely don’t like men like me.
I pick up the phone on my desk and punch the button for Celia.
“Have Gordon come in, please. Tell him he’s on the clock.”
I replace the receiver and look into Miss Morrow’s soft blue eyes.
“Gordon is one of my more experienced bodyguards—he’s a good man. He’s going to go with you to collect Sammy and the nanny and then he’ll get you settled in a new hotel so we can be sure you aren’t followed. Then he’ll stay there with you until we have a team in place.”