David came back to me four weeks after I asked him to look for Nicky, informing me of his death.
I didn’t get out of bed for three days, after which the fear of turning into my mother outweighed the misery of knowing he wasn’t alive.
From that point forward, I vowed to forget Nicholai Ivanov had ever existed.
If only it were that easy . . .
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHRISTIAN
Present
Arya arrived at the courtroom the first day of the trial.
Clearly, she’d decided to give my friendly advice a nice, long middle finger with a side of mind-your-own-business clapback.
At least she opted to take a seat in the public seating area and not the family bench, where she’d be visible. Conrad Roth never had hired a female litigator like I’d suggested to his daughter. Whether it was out of pride or because he knew he couldn’t worm his way out of this mess was anyone’s guess.
Five victims, accusing Roth of six counts of harassment each, seeking $200 million combined in compensation, $40 million each.
Unlike other sexual predators of his position and wealth, he’d done a piss-poor job at covering his tracks. I estimated it at four weeks before Judge Lopez would ask us for our closing statements.
I stood in front of Judge Lopez’s bench for my opening statement, clad in my Brunello Cucinelli suit and grave expression. It took everything in me to rip my eyes from the woman in the last row of the courtroom. Arya sat with her back ramrod straight and her nose tilted up. The picture of poised elegance. She’d stopped hitting the pool, so I’d had a week to stew on our last encounter, in which she’d pretty much told me to go shove it when I’d offered to take her for dinner. Naturally, it made me want her even more.
I wasn’t sure when, exactly, the line between wanting to screw her over and screw her, period, had begun to blur. But I knew I was straddling it like an eager stripper performing at a bachelor party for tips.
No matter how irrational, how illogical, how dangerous (and there was no denying that touching her could complicate my case, my partner prospect, and my life in general) it was, I wanted Arya.
Deserved her too. After everything she’d put me through, having her in my bed was the perfect consolation prize.
She could go her merry way after I was done with her, probably to marry beneath her pedigree, now that Daddy dearest would be banished from the hedge fund company he managed and exiled from polite society.
Unfortunately for Arya, and maybe for myself, my opening statement included a presentation showing a dick picture of her father, which he’d sent a twenty-three-year-old intern, and which was enlarged on a screen in the middle of the room, pubes and half-mast erection intact.
I tried hard not to look at Arya while I explained to the jurors that her father had sent an image of his penis to someone younger than his own daughter, feeling sick to my stomach. And then ignored her after that, too, when my client tearfully explained on the stand how scarred she was by the (quite literal) revelation that her boss was a dick.
The first day of trial proceeded smoothly. The plaintiffs were compelling. The jurors warmed up to them. I gave an Oscar-worthy performance, making a show of listening and bunching my eyebrows together in concern at all the right places.
When Judge Lopez banged his gavel and said the court stood in recess, I turned around to Arya’s seat and found it empty.
I proceeded with the plaintiffs and Claire through the double doors of the courtroom, out to the foyer, breaking the day down to digestible bullet points for my clients. I descended the courthouse stairway, slipping between the grand columns. Rain clung to my suit. Across the street, a flash of rowdy chestnut hair I’d recognize anywhere disappeared behind the door of a coffee shop.
Arya.
“I’ll catch you back at the office.” I touched Claire’s arm, just as she turned toward me, saying, “Would you like to grab some coffee on our way so we could talk?”
She stopped, swallowed hard, then nodded. “Yes. Yes. Of course.”
With my eyes still glued to the coffee shop’s door, I crossed the street and strolled inside. Arya was already seated, cradling a cup of coffee at a high window-facing table, staring into it. I slipped into the stool in front of her, knowing full well that I was playing with matches next to a six-gallon barrel of explosives.
“How’re we feeling today?” I recognized on impact that it was the wrong thing to ask. How the heck did I think she was feeling? I’d just spent the last seven hours nailing her father’s metaphorical coffin closed before dumping it in the ocean.
Arya looked up from her coffee cup, a little disoriented. The rain knocked on the window in front of us.