CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHRISTIAN
Present
I tucked the hard copy of Atonement under the loose floor plank beneath my bed. You’d think a brand-new building in Manhattan, with real parquet, wouldn’t have slack tiles, and you would be absolutely correct. The reason it was loose was because I’d ripped it with my bare hands so I’d have somewhere to hide all the legal documents I never wanted anyone to find. A safe was highly predictable. It practically screamed to be opened. But no one was going to unglue the floor pieces under my bed.
I wondered why Arya hadn’t called yet. Or better yet, barged into my office with a machete and every intent of using it on my neck.
I was going to hell, but not before making the most out of my time here on planet Earth. What I was doing to Arya was, for lack of legal terminology, a dick move of gigantic proportions.
The lie grew larger by the day, fed by time, intent, and emotions that had no business getting thrown into the mix. I’d spent my whole life cherry-picking my partners. I had the looks, the aura, the job, and the bank balance to lure anyone into my web. But with Arya, even when I had her, she didn’t truly feel mine, and that was a problem.
Someone knocked on my bedroom door. Riggs’s head, freshly (and wholly) shaven after another successful trip to God knew where, popped in the space between the door and the frame. “Food’s here.”
I waltzed through my bedroom toward the kitchen, where Arsène was unloading take-out boxes full of sashimi. Riggs sat next to Arsène on a stool.
“Back to the subject at hand, before Christian had to go back to his room to listen to his Sinéad O’Connor album while crying over Arya not calling.” Arsène hit ignore on his phone when the name Penny flashed across it, accompanied by a picture of what appeared to be a goddamn supermodel. If I had a penny for every time he rejected a perfectly good Penny, I’d be able to buy this entire building, not just a one-bed apartment. “You have two choices here—either you cut her loose, seeing as you’ve had your fun, and that was the original plan, or you tell her the truth and face the consequences. Dragging this out is volatile.”
“Are you crazy?” I spit out, digging through the containers. “It’s too late to tell her. I’ll be dropped from the case, disbarred, possibly face legal action—no, definitely, considering this trial is a sure goddamn win for me—not to mention I’ll lose her anyway.”
Arsène smirked at me like I was an adorable little puppy who’d just learned how to piss on his potty pad. “Thought you said this was not how it works. That—and this is a direct quote—you didn’t get your law degree from Costco.”
He had me there. But that was before Arya and I had sex. I’d thought I could keep my shit—and my dick—to myself. Watch her suffer and move on with my life.
“Thanks for the I-told-you-so. You’re being real useful right now.” I snapped the wooden chopsticks apart.
“Can you tell her after the trial is over?” Riggs asked, ambling toward my fridge to grab a beer. He looked buff as hell these days, but I knew unlike Arsène and me, he wasn’t one for hitting the gym. Instead, he climbed mountains. Professionally. Had a bunch of companies endorsing his ass. I never understood his fascination with near-death experiences. Life had a 100 percent mortality rate. What was his rush to fall off a goddamn cliff at a 14K elevation?
I shook my head no. “The trial will be over in a few weeks. Besides, even if I tell her after it’s over, she can unveil my identity afterward, which would mean all my work would have been for nothing.”
I’d brushed up on the Rules of Professional Conduct. There was nothing that specifically prevented me from sticking my dick into Arya. But it didn’t look good. And of course, there were those pesky catch-all rules for situations like these. A competent attorney could file a claim alleging my conduct was intended to disrupt the tribunal. And fuck, with my fact pattern, they might just win. Amanda Gispen would have my ass on a platter for ruining her case, and Conrad Roth would too. Either way I looked at it, being with Arya was simply undoable. They were right. I needed to cut her loose. But how could I, after she’d told me she’d tried to write to me? That she thought I’d moved to the other side of the world? That I was the one who’d gotten away?
I’d been so sure she was in on whatever Conrad Roth had done to me, it had never occurred to me he’d fed her a few lies to soften the blow. It twisted me inside out. The revelation she might have not known. Made me lose sleep, cases, and my goddamn mind. All this time—all this rage—and it wasn’t even her fault.