by Ivy Nelson
Patrick turned his attention to Austin. “I hope you told them to shove it.”
She rolled her eyes. “I told them I wanted to see what they had. That was my call with Victoria earlier. The judge is aware of the plea deal on the table and is requiring that we be allowed to examine the evidence and witness list before we make a decision.”
Patrick’s stomach felt like it was full of rocks. This was the first time he’d ever heard doubt in her tone when it came to his defense. Was there a chance he could go to prison? The bliss of the previous few hours faded away, and he felt like he was going to be sick.
“You think I’m going to prison, don’t you?” he said quietly, unable to keep the pain from his voice.
“Patrick,” Austin breathed. “I didn’t say that. I’m just saying it is prudent to know exactly what the DA has before we make any decisions.”
“You mean before we decide if I should plead guilty or not?”
Austin looked around the room and back to Patrick. “Maybe now isn’t the best time to discuss this.”
“Why not? It’s my freedom we’re talking about. Can we beat this or not?”
“I hear panic in your voice and I’m going to tell you like I tell all my clients, panicking isn’t the way through this. Panic is going to make you say something you’ll regret and in a case like this, saying something you shouldn’t is more likely to send you to prison than any evidence they present. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I’m not fucking terrified. I am, but I can’t guarantee that they don’t have something damning, and if they do, I have a duty to you as my client and as my partner to advise you to take a deal. If you have to go to prison, I would rather it be for four years than twenty-five.”
Patrick shoved back from the table and jumped from his chair. “Four years?” he said, his voice cracking with fear. “Four fucking years? That’s what they’re offering now? When they first broached the subject of a plea bargain, they said I could be out in months, not years. What the fuck, Austin?”
She put a hand on his shoulder, but he brushed her away and paced the room.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “That’s why I’m telling you they likely have something that can prove your guilt.”
“But I’m not fucking guilty,” he shouted. “I thought you believed me.”
Austin closed her eyes. “That came out wrong. I do believe you, but in a trial, it doesn’t matter what I believe. It matters what both sides can and can’t prove to a jury. Right now, I have a solid alibi for you, but they likely have their own witnesses and enough circumstantial evidence that the wrong jury will buy into and send you away.”
Patrick ran a hand through his hair and tried to tamp down the panic roiling in his gut. He knew he sounded like a mad man right now, but he couldn’t seem to control himself.
“It just sounds like you’re giving up on me,” he said, his voice quieter now. “I need to get out of here. Think for a while. I’m not dealing with this very well.” He pulled the key to the suite from his pocket and tossed it at her.
“Patrick, please don’t leave. We need to keep talking about this. I’ve clearly upset you and that was not my intention,” she said, her voice trembling. “Come upstairs with me, let me apologize.”
He couldn’t. The seeds of doubt had been planted, and now he couldn’t get prison out of his mind. Without another word, he turned and walked from the room. Austin called after him, but he forced himself to keep walking. He needed to prove to himself that he could let her go if it came to that.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“What the fuck was that?” Jax asked as Austin watched Patrick disappear.
“I think that was a panic attack of epic proportions,” Lance said, resting a hand on Austin’s shoulder.
“You OK, Austin?” he asked after a few seconds of silence.
Austin nodded. “I think so. I tried to tell him several times today about the plea deal the prosecutor wants to offer him, but he kept insisting we talk about it later. I don’t blame him for being upset. I’m sure he’ll come back when he’s cleared his head.”
She was trying to convince herself of that more than anything though. The hollow expression on Patrick’s face when he handed her the room key wouldn’t leave her head. He was on a dark path. She’d seen it in clients facing prison before, but her heart had never been on the line in any of those cases.
“I’m going to go upstairs, if that’s OK. I’m on the shut-down crew tonight so I’ll be back in time for that. I just think I need to be alone for a little while.”
Lance opened his arms for a hug, and Austin willingly went to him. “We’ll get him through this, sweetheart,” he said as she laid her head on his shoulder.
“I know,” she said, pulling away. “Thank you both for looking out for him. Let me know if you need anything from me.”
When she reached the door, she paused. “Look into Grant Sterling. Tim Reyes told me that Grant asked him to take pictures of the diamonds when they were seeing them into the museum.”
Lance gave her a thumbs up. “That’s helpful. Get out of here, I’ll call you back down if I need anything else.”
She stepped into the lobby to find Holly talking to Eli.
“Hey, Austin. Did my brother leave? I thought I saw him storm out of here.”
Austin drew in a deep breath and tried to hold back tears. “He’s having a rough night. He needed to get out and clear his head. I’m sure he’ll be back.”
Just keep telling yourself that. The thought came from nowhere, and her heart felt like it skipped a beat as panic threatened to smother her.
Eli blocked her path when she tried to push her way into the bar so she could go upstairs. “What’s going on, Austin?”
“Nothing I can’t handle, Elijah. I really need to be alone right now though.”
“Do we need a review of house submissive rules? Talk to me.”
Everything about the plea deal and the last hour tumbled out and she couldn’t hold the tears back anymore. “It felt like he was walking out on me,” she said brokenly as she tried to get control of her tears.
Eli and Holly had walked her to a couch as she poured her soul out. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to lose it like that, or be rude to you, Master Eli.” She ducked her eyes when she said his name.
He tucked a finger under her chin. “It’s OK. It sounds like you have a lot on your shoulders. I wasn’t trying to make you cry. Let Holly walk you upstairs. I’ll make excuses for you with the shut-down crew if you don’t feel up to coming back down. If Patrick isn’t back by then, I’ll call him and see if I can talk some sense into him.”
Holly had been mostly quiet as Austin spilled her guts, and now she squeezed Austin’s shoulders. “Come on, honey. Let’s get you upstairs. If you need me or Dakota, or both of us for some girl time, just let us know. We can steal a bottle of wine from the bar,” she said with a giggle.
Eli just scowled and shook his head.
Upstairs, Austin hugged Holly. “Thanks for everything. Sorry I’m a mess.”
“You’re allowed. Just call if you need me.”
Austin promised she would and stepped inside Patrick’s suite. Exhaustion overtook her when she sank into the bed and despite her worry, she drifted off to sleep.
Hours later, she woke with a start. The room was still dimly lit by the lamp she’d turned on earlier, and she looked around for signs of Patrick. There were none. Knots of fear tightened in her stomach as she reached for her phone. It was just after two in the morning, and there was still nothing from Patrick. The club would just be shutting down which meant she should go downstairs and help the closing team, but she wasn’t sure she could face anyone right now.
With trembling fingers, she typed a message to Patrick.
Where are you? Please let me know you’re OK.
There was no response or indication that he’d read the message.
As she stood in the bathroom considering whether to go down
stairs, her phone buzzed. Her heart jumped into her throat as she lunged out of the bathroom and to the bed where she’d laid the phone. Disappointment flooded her when she realized it was a text from Holly.
Elijah and Lance asked me to tell you to get some rest. We’ve got shut down handled.
With a heavy sigh, she tossed the phone aside and changed into yoga pants and a tank top and washed the makeup off her face before climbing into bed again. Sleep came, but it was filled with nightmares of Patrick being found guilty and spending twenty years in prison. When she woke the next morning, she felt like she’d been in a fist fight and lost. A glance at her phone told her there had been no response from Patrick.
She stumbled into the shower and tried to relax, but the sense of dread continued to grow as she rinsed shampoo from her hair. Dressed in comfortable clothes, she made her way downstairs to see if anyone else was up. She knew Eli, Holly, Lance, and Jax had all stayed at the club last night.
As she pushed her way into the lobby, she heard a voice from the conference room say, “He’s a goddamned coward. I know he’s going through a lot, but this is unacceptable, and he needs an ass kicking.”
It sounded like Dakota, so Austin stuck her head in the door. She found Holly, plus most of the Solitaire board, minus Patrick and Matthew.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice timid. She had a suspicion she knew who they’d been discussing by the guilty expressions on all their faces when they looked at her.
“Good morning, Austin,” Lance said. “Did you rest OK?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Have any of you heard from Patrick? He never came back last night.”
Lance looked down at his laptop screen, and she noticed others avoiding eye contact as well.
Stepping further into the room, she closed the door behind her. “What aren’t you guys telling me?”
“Patrick flew back to California last night, sweetie,” Dakota said.
It felt as if a knife was being twisted in her stomach and she looked for an empty chair to sit in. There was one next to Lance, and he immediately wrapped his arm around her when she sat.
“Why would he do that without telling me?”
“Because he’s a coward,” Dakota spit. “I’m so mad at him right now, I swear I’d take a cattle prod to him if he were here.”
“That’s enough, Dakota,” Eli murmured.
Lance slid a piece of paper to her. “He sent me this to give to you and he submitted his resignation to the board.”
“He what?” she whispered as she lifted the paper to read.
Tears dripped down her face as she read his apologetic note, but she didn’t quite comprehend the words. Had he just broken up with her via email? Anger mixed with the hurt she felt, and she rolled her chair away from the table to pull out her phone.
• • •
Patrick stared at his phone as he sat in his office. He hadn’t expected a call from her so quickly, and he hadn’t had time to figure out exactly what he wanted to say. The email had been a shitty thing to do. Walking out had been shitty. His whole damn night last night had been shitty, but he didn’t know what else to do. After hearing Austin say the prosecutor was offering four years in prison and suggesting that he might need to think about taking it, he’d stopped listening.
Now he knew he needed to answer this call because it just kept ringing.
“Austin,” he breathed. “I’m so…”
“You’re a fucking bastard, Patrick. I’ve given you everything over the last month. All of my energy, my devotion, anything you’ve asked me for, I’ve given it to you, and this is how you break up with me?”
He winced, technically the note hadn’t been a break-up note, but he could see how she would think that.
“I’m not breaking up with you, Austin. Not really. I’m laying contingency plans. I still care about you. I’m just asking you not to get attached to the idea of me staying out of prison. You said it yourself, I could go away for four years. I’m not going to pressure you into staying with me while I’m serving time.”
She laughed, but there was no humor in her tone. “That’s fucking ridiculous. You transferred my house submissive contract to Lance, and you want me to think you’re not breaking up with me? As for prison, have a little fucking faith in me. I haven’t let you down yet and I’m damn good at my job.”
“Where’s Lance?” he asked. “He’s supposed to be taking care of you.”
“I can take care of my own damn self,” she bit out. He could hear tears in her voice, and he felt like such an asshole.
“I’m sorry, baby girl,” he whispered. “I need to stay away from Solitaire until this is over. I need to know you’ll be OK without me. I need to know I’ll be OK without the club. We can talk on Monday at the hearing.”
She was openly weeping now, and he heard someone, Lance maybe, telling her to give him the phone.
“You are handling this all wrong, man. When you put this behind you, you’re going to regret these choices,” Lance said a moment later.
“Take care of her, Lance. She trusts you. Everything points to me going to prison, even though I did nothing wrong. Even if we do figure out who’s setting me up, it won’t be until after I’ve spent some amount of time in jail. You know as well as I do these things don’t happen overnight.”
Lance made a noise of exasperation. “You always have been a rash decision maker. That’s why being in business with Eli and David is good for you. They know how to rein you in and make you stop and think. I don’t know how to do that in this situation. I know you’re panicking. You have every right to panic, but you’re also hurting someone who cares a lot about you and I fucking hope you can fix it when this is done and over with.”
Patrick didn’t want to hear any of this. “I need to go. Take care of her and keep digging. Tell Jax to spend whatever he needs to. I’m good for it.”
Yes, Austin might think he was giving up on them, but what he was trying to do was take care of her. Prison terrified him, but Austin moving on while he sat in prison terrified him even more. Someone, likely his father, wanted him to suffer. Pulling away from Austin was his way of protecting her from whoever wanted him to go down. He just hoped she would forgive him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I’ll be back Monday afternoon, so I’m going to need you to take the hearing for Mr. Sutton. You filed the motion, you know what to expect. Familiarize yourself with the case because I might be taking a step back from this one.”
“Is everything OK, Miss Yates? You sound tense.”
Austin closed her eyes and tried to relax her shoulders. It was four on Saturday afternoon, and Lance and the others had convinced her to stick out the weekend at Solitaire. Now she was trying to lose herself in work, but everything led back to Patrick since he made up a third of the clients she currently had.
Sending Victoria to the hearing on Monday morning was a cowardly move, but Dakota had assured her that Patrick deserved it and more. There had been talk of castration, but she’d tuned it out at some point.
Eli stuck his head in the office door. “How’s it going in here?”
Austin shrugged. “As good as can be expected. Have you heard anything else from Patrick?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. He’ll come around.”
“Are you going to let him back on the board when he does? He loves this place.”
Eli sat across the desk from her and gave her a kind smile. “He’ll have to answer to the rest of the board, but I’m sure they’ll take him back with open arms—and a lot of ribbing. Have you thought about our offer to put you on the board?”
“I don’t know. I think I need to get through all of this first. I want to say yes, but with things ending between Patrick and I, I think I need a break.”
Eli stood again, “Fair enough. I just wanted to come tell you that the set-up team is here if you want to distract yourself and help them out. Thank you for staying the weekend. You’re family to us
, I hope you know that.”
Austin smiled. “Thanks, Eli. I’ll be along to help in just a bit.”
When Eli was gone, Austin took a few minutes to close her eyes and breathe deeply. In the lobby, Simon, one of the long-time house subs was directing a crew of people, some paid staff, and some house subs to different jobs.
“Hey, Simon, what do you need me to do,” she said when he was finished with the rest of the group.
“Austin, what a lovely surprise. We missed you at shut-down last night. Why don’t you go help Mitch set the bar up?”
She gave him a friendly salute and headed toward the bar. An hour later, she was lost in wiping down tables and arranging napkin holders when she heard Mitch holler at her from behind the bar.
“Hey, Austin, Jax wants to talk to you.”
She turned and tucked the rag into the back pocket of her jeans and smiled at the tall cowboy.
“Is Patrick around?” he asked.
Austin’s face fell. He didn’t know.
“Did that bastard not come back last night?”
Austin gave him a shrug. “He’s back in California, having a rough time.”
“I hope you kick him in the balls the next time you see him.”
Austin chuckled. “It’s crossed my mind. What did you want to talk to us about?”
“Tim Reyes.”
Austin quirked an eyebrow up and looked around. The small crew working in the bar wasn’t paying attention to them, so she pointed to a table in the corner and together they sat.
“What about him?” she asked when they were settled.
“His daughter isn’t in the hospital. In fact, she’s not even in the country. She is in a special treatment program in Canada. She apparently got accepted about two months ago.”
Austin twisted the bracelet on her wrist. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It means when he told you his daughter took a turn for the worst he was lying. That tells me we need to be taking a harder look at him. Who else can we talk to or dig into that might be connected to him?”
