by Kira Graham
“I didn’t lose that case! The judge was biased and refused to allow me to use the surveillance evidence to prove Mr. Bertram’s infidelity. That case was a slam dunk, and you all know it,” I argue, feeling frustration fill me when Don shakes his head and sighs, sharing a look with his brother-in-law Brad Donaldson, one of the two founding partners of the firm.
“That’s our point, Rosetta. It was a slam dunk, but thanks to your present conduct and the fact that half the judges in this city are in some state of antagonism toward you, things aren’t going well. Mrs. Bertram was a great client that we’ve represented for two decades, and in one fell swoop, we lost not only her business when she walked, but also the business of half her family along with her. Then there’s Alec Copeland. He pulled his business this morning citing a conflict of interest, the conflict being that he refuses to work with a firm that you’re a part of,” Brad says softly, his eyes filled with sympathy.
I like the guy, and I adore Donald, a man I grew up with thanks to his friendship with my dad. What I don’t like—or love—at the moment, is the fact that Gill Perez is smiling, and that Jeffrey Smote is looking anywhere but at me.
“You’re firing me,” I whisper, meeting Don’s eyes. “Aren’t you?”
Oh God, no. This can’t be happening to me. It just can’t be. And yet, some part of me fully gets it. I have been out of control lately, and nothing has gone right for me. I keep dropping the ball at critical moments and telling myself that it’s someone else’s fault, but what if it’s my fault? What if they’re all right, and it’s on me? I did lose the Bertram case, and while it’s true that the judge was biased, I can’t say that I blame the man all that much, though technically his dislike of me shouldn’t have swayed the evidence or allowed him to exclude it from the case I’d built.
I get it, though. I was the one who yelled at him four weeks ago and called him a pompous misogynist, and I was also the one who insulted his wife at the Graham charity gala when she accused me of murdering an innocent man.
The worst part, though? I don’t know that I disagree with her. When I pulled that trigger to stop Cameron Black from shooting Cleo, some part of me wanted to hesitate because I didn’t—and still don’t—believe that it was Cameron who stalked Cleo, despite his kidnapping and murder attempt.
I know that that sounds crazy, because the guy was clearly pointing a gun at my sister, and he was definitely about to pull that trigger, but somehow, I just don’t think that he was the main player in that sick and twisted play. I just can’t prove it, and I guess it’s been driving me crazy. So crazy that I’ve let everything in my life go to shit, including my job.
This job that I slaved for. It’s my only achievement to date that made any kind of sense in my life, and I single-handedly imploded it, I think, a lump of sorrow forming in my throat.
Just don’t cry, Rosetta. Fight. Remember what dad told you when you were five and determined to win that spelling bee. There ain’t no shame in fighting until your last breath; the shame is in quitting before you’ve even tried.
“We don’t want to. Hell, my heart is telling me to tell Copeland to go to hell and take his business wherever he wants to,” Don sighs, his kindly old face falling when I sniff delicately, fighting back tears.
“But then what?” Perez asks, shaking his head, though his expression does lose a little of the spite when he looks at me. “We’d lose other business, too. The fact is, your behavior over the last few months has pushed us all to the point at which there’s no arguing for you. Half the judges don’t want you in their courtrooms, and the half that will actually allow it aren’t too happy with you, either, Sweet. You’re sloppy, your work ethic has gone to hell, and you’re falling apart before our eyes. I recommended a medical leave of absence and a mandatory evaluation thanks to your ranting in Judge Heinz’s courtroom last week, but Don is right. That would only harm your career even further.”
No, it would decimate it, I think, gulping down an angry spate of words that I would love to fling at Perez. To let myself be evaluated would undermine the confidence that clients have in me and suggest that I’m some unhinged harpy who can’t be trusted to spearhead multibillion-dollar deals. The fact is that I lose here, no matter what happens. If I take the leave, I’ll be labeled a lunatic who needed psychiatric help, and if I don’t, I’ll lose my job.
This is a no-win situation, and suddenly all the fight leaves me. I can’t argue against anything that’s been said here. In fact, all of it’s true. The stress and sleeplessness, and yes, the emotional toll that killing Cameron has taken on me, have completely ruined any credibility that I possessed. I now spend hours going over the months leading up to Cameron Black’s kidnapping of Cleo, and I spend hours more trying to remember anything that I could have missed.
I’ve become obsessed with the hows, whys, and whos of that whole fiasco, and it’s not only turned me into an emotional lunatic at work, but it’s completely destroyed my career as well.
“We’ll give you a healthy severance package, of course, and pay out your shares in the firm immediately,” Allen assures me.
Translation: we don’t want you involved in the business at all, not even as a silent partner.
“This is going to ruin me,” I tell them all, even knowing that it won’t change a damn thing.
I am ruined, but the hard truth is that I ruined myself. Instead of going to see the shrink Adonis recommended, I tried to ignore what had happened, and when that didn’t work, I focused on it so hard that I couldn’t see anything else around me. I’ve yelled at clients, judges, and even my own boss, and while they know me and admittedly cater to my temperamental quirks, my conduct has been what most would label unprofessional. At best.
“Or you could take the advice that I’m about to give you,” I hear from the doorway, my body going cold when I whip around to find Zeus Hart filling the portal, his gray eyes blazing down at the other men.
Jesus! Dammit, this just isn’t my month, I think as he steps into the office and closes the door with a hard slam.
“Hart? What the hell are you doing?”
“Got a call from Jenkins Fellows this morning,” he growls, stalking over to where I’m sitting on, or rather trying to melt into, the chair beneath me.
I’ve heard Cleo ask the ground to open up and swallow her before, and I never understood it—not until now. Right now, I am not just embarrassed that Zeus Hart knows that I’m being canned; I’m mortified. I don’t need yet another person knowing just how out of control I’ve become, and I want that person to be Zeus Hart about as much as I want my doctor to use a cactus as a speculum while giving me a Pap smear with a machete.
“Jenkins has no right—”
“As a partner in this firm, he has every right to call into question the motivations of the rest of you, and, interestingly enough, I suspect that he was right when he told me that Copeland wasn’t ever actually intending to leave your firm. In fact, I think that you’re trying to pull an end run around Rosetta by citing reasons that don’t really have anything to do with your client list. Admit it, Perez—you’ve been trying to get rid of her ever since your own son was overlooked when Rosetta made partner,” Zeus snarls, his lip curling back when Perez sputters and goes red in the face, his anger palpable.
“She was too young and too inexperienced for the job, and Donald knew it—and yet he gave it to her anyway.”
“I earned it!” I say fiercely, shaking off Don’s restraining hand as Zeus helps me to my feet beside him. “No, you don’t get to play the sympathetic victim here, Don. I worked my ass off for this firm, and you all know it. I doubled my client list within six months of walking in here, and I landed the Galveston account on nothing but merit, effort, and the trust that I earned with my work ethic. In the last two years, you have all enjoyed the fruits of my labor, getting bonuses and buying fucking yachts thanks to the clients I brought in from as far afield as Hong Kong.”
Now that I’m officially off the pity train
, I find myself shored up by the facts. For two months, I’ve struggled with my own inner turmoil, and while I admittedly haven’t been operating at the top of my game, I have been doing what I always do: working. For these assholes. Just so that I can get railroaded for being what I should be, which is human.
I’m only human, people, and even admitting to my own failings as of late, I deserve more from these men than the boot after all the work I’ve done for them. Months, I think, my body shaking with rage when Donald swallows and looks back at me, wide-eyed and innocent. I spent months busting my ass and carrying his workload when his wife Maggie was diagnosed with cancer and needed treatment. I worked eighteen-hour days and then went by the hospital to sit with her so that Donald could rest.
And Donaldson. I spent two weeks tracking down a rare antique that he wanted to give his son as a birthday gift, negotiating with the dealer until the price was somewhere halfway decent despite the guy’s hesitation to sell at all.
I’ve gone to bat for them all, even Perez, who has been unfaithful to his wife and didn’t deserve my help when the woman wanted to divorce him. I’ve helped them all, and the injustice of what they’re doing to me is so hard to swallow that I find myself shaking with the need to rip them all apart.
I won’t, though. Not because I shouldn’t, because I don’t give a shit about right and wrong right now, and not because I want to be the better person, because come on, who the hell ever wins when they’re better? No, the reason I don’t slap Don’s face and call him a cowardly traitor is that I just don’t care. Not anymore.
There’ll be other jobs, other friends, and other times to react emotionally and fuck someone up, but right now, all I want is to leave and be done with this. Nothing will ever be the same after this, even if I do fight it, and, at this point, I honestly don’t know that I want it to be.
I need time to come to terms with the Cameron Black killing, and I have to figure out what the hell is bugging me about the whole thing.
“I took a chance on you,” Donald murmurs, playing the victim to the hilt, just as he usually does.
“No, you took advantage. You saw a young woman who was hungry to make her mark, and you knew that you could get more out of the deal than I ever would. I’ve worked my ass off to put this firm on the map, and I did it, no matter what I had to deal with to make it work. I ignored Perez’s gender bashing and sexual harassment. I let it slide when you gave tropical vacation packages to all the other partners except me because, as you put it, Don, I didn’t mind giving up Christmas since I don’t have a family of my own. I’ve worked Thanksgivings, Christmases, and even New Year’s Days so that you could spend time with your family, living the good life, and what the fuck did I get out of it? A freaking kick in the teeth.”
“Rosetta—”
“You can’t fire me, Donald, because I quit. Do you hear me?” I snarl, shaking off Zeus’s hand because, as comforting as it is, I don’t need anyone fighting for me.
That’s what my temper is for.
“You can all go to hell, and you’d better believe that I’ll be following up on this later if you so much as dare to say anything about my conduct or my performance. One bad word, just a whisper of negativity about me to anyone, and I’ll sue you all,” I warn them, already calculating my client list and who will move with me if or when I decide to start up my own practice.
“Now, Rosie, honey—”
“Don’t you ‘Rosie’ me, you old traitor. I should have known that you would be too much of a sellout to stand in my corner. What happened, Don? Did Perez threaten you with early retirement unless you complied? Or how about with information about your little slip while Maggie was in the hospital?” I ask him, sneering when he looks away, probably too guilty to meet my eyes.
The saddest part of this is that Maggie already knows about his slip with his paralegal, Kate. I was the one who was with her in the hospital when her sister Grace called to tell her that she’d seen him walking into a hotel with the woman, and I was there to talk it out with her, of half a mind to kill Donald even though Maggie decided to let it go because, as she put it, he needed something to take his mind off her illness.
Months later, and with the chemo having worked, I find myself on the outside, despite my loyalty to the man. I can’t say that I like it all that much, but, as Mom’s told me over and over, the only loyalty you can expect is from your family.
“Come on, Hart,” I mutter, when no one has the balls to say anything, likely because they know me, and they understand my temper.
Zeus nods, throws another scowl toward my bosses, and walks out behind me, his large body and fulminating glare clearing the office floor as I walk out to find all eyes on me. Some are probably enjoying this, while others just look uncomfortable and can’t meet my eyes.
You know what, though? This is a good thing. I’m over it. I am. I’m nearly thirty, and I haven’t done anything but work for the last decade. A break is just what I need. That and answers, I think, as I stalk into my office to collect my things.
Now that I’ve resigned—and yes, that’s what I’m calling it, because I could have fought to keep my job, and won—I can focus on the Black mystery and finally find some answers to the thing that’s been killing me for months.
Someone else was pulling Cameron Black’s strings—of that I’m certain—and I will find out who it is. Then…then I’ll kill that person and put this all behind me, Achilles included. And after that, I’ll focus on starting my new life free of old jobs and old crushes, with a positive attitude that will totally see me better off overall.
I just know it.
Chapter Four
Rosetta
“You mean he just…”
“Fired me,” I sigh into the phone, the fifth of bourbon looking startlingly empty as I raise it to wash down the half pound of donuts that arrived on my doorstep an hour after Zeus brought me home, only to have the door slammed in his face.
What? I was not in the mood to listen to him rage and demand that I fight this, and I was even less inclined to invite him in when I know that I would have done something I would have regretted. Sex has always been my go-to, feel-better method of dealing with life, but no way in hell am I bumping it with Zeus freaking Hart. Just…no.
The man is a cyborg who spouts off statistical facts and historical nuggets as if that’s what I want to spend the early hours of the morning listening to. Forget that I am usually the one texting him first, and forget even more that I should be more grateful that he actually texts back at ass o’clock in the morning instead of telling me to get lost.
The truth is, I didn’t want to defend myself and my lack of fight, and I really didn’t want to wake up at dusk with a Hart in my bed and no way to explain why and how I suddenly looked at Zeus and realized just how hot he is.
I am steering clear of Harts, dammit, and I don’t care how good Zeus smelled when he wrestled me into a hug, or how sexy his laugh was when I tried to punch him in the nuts and ended up copping a feel instead.
Ask my hand what it thought it was doing, because I have no idea how I went from raging mad to playing with the guy’s balls before the elevator doors popped open.
Let’s not even get started on the fact that he had a hard-on, because then I’d have to admit that things south of the panty border did get a little moist…
Moist? Try drenched. And if I don’t have to explain why I suddenly got hot for Zeus, then I am definitely not talking about what happened in the shower an hour later, after he sent the donuts and called to make sure I was okay.
I am also not mentioning this to Cleo, and not because I’m a coward, but because it has occurred to me that I can’t handle one more humiliating moment this month. I really don’t need my sister and cousins knowing just what a glutton for punishment I am. Mental snort.
“That’s bullshit, Rose! I say you march back into those offices, kick Donald in his wrinkled old nut sack, and demand your job back. You never gave an official resigna
tion letter, and, as far as I can tell, they have no grounds to fire you,” Cleo rages, her shrill indignation causing my mouth to twitch into a reluctant smile.
I’ve actually seen Donald’s balls, just FYI—and no, I didn’t want to, but the man just doesn’t close his private bathroom door fully—and they are indeed old and fucking gross.
I bet Zeus, on the other hand, has young, tight—
Stop that, Rosetta, you freak. Just stop. Remember what happened when you crushed on that other Hart? He led you on, took all your gifts, and then gave you the friendship talk before admitting that he has a thing for—
Again: just stop thinking!
“Cleo, I don’t want the job back. To be honest, I haven’t enjoyed working there in months.”
“Is all this bullshit still about that Black guy? Rosetta, I told you, just pretend I killed him. I do it all the time.”
“Well, you didn’t. I’m the one who pulled that trigger and made mayonnaise of his brain.”
“That’s gross! I love mayonnaise.”
“Fine, pâté. I made liver pâté of his cranium.”
“To save me, Rosetta. You saved me, and I, for one, am very grateful that you sprinted two miles in heels, had the foresight to bring a gun, and then pulled the trigger without hesitating,” she says softly, her rare gentle side making my mouth quirk.
Usually, Cleo likes to make fun of me, and when she isn’t doing just that, she’s busy being a self-involved idiot who has only two topics of conversation—herself, and herself in relation to Adonis. Which is basically another way to make it all about her, because Adonis lives for Cleo.
“So am I, Cleo—so am I. Trust me, I don’t regret killing him, not one bit. What I do regret is killing him before I could torture any answers out of his carcass,” I sigh, tossing away the empty bottle with a whine that turns into a shudder when my stomach heaves a little.
Okay, too much alcohol, I think, refusing to consider those twelve perfect donuts in my belly as anything but good for me. Other people think of protein and carbs as food groups; I consider donuts a nutritional must.
