"Night boo!" Erika screamed from the window of the cab as she raised and waved around the near-empty wine bottle with her. We already demolished about three or four bottles, and it was evident with how we looked in front of everyone else that we had a bloody good night. I mean, if you saw Erika - her mascara ran down her face, her lipstick smeared and she reeked of tobacco after smothering her face with a stranger at the club. I'm not guilty of doing the nasty deeds she did, but I definitely smelled just as bad.
I wavered in my own steps as I tugged at the end of the body fitting lace dress that Erika persuaded me to buy before we left to party. Throughout the night, the dress constantly and insistently slipped their way up to reveal much of my thighs, and the droop around my breast exposed too much cleavage for my liking, however the men in the club hadn't complained as they drooled all over them. I'd say my breast were an average size, but compared to Erika's flat chest, they looked way bigger than they really were. She certainly took the prize for the nicer hips, ass and long legs though, I envy her for them.
"Annie! If your fool of a fiancé doesn't fucking want you, I'd be happy to pass that new hottie in the office your way!" Her voice echoed throughout the empty streets, she slowly disappeared from my view as she slithered all the way back down so she slumped on the back seats, and her other hand struggled to gesture a goodbye to me as I watched the cab leave.
"Bye boo!" I yelled back while my body wobbled towards the entrance of the apartment building, my vision slowly blurred as I buzzed through the doors and entered the lobby. At 4 in the morning, I assumed people were asleep, but I saw around ten people sitting and being as drunk as I was on an early Sunday morning.
"Where have you been?"
"Huh?"
I no longer had control of myself. My arm tossed around someone's neck and my body lifted into a bridal carry, and my head flopped against the person's chest. My head felt so light that I blacked out. And if you asked me what happened next, I couldn't answer you because I couldn't remember anything. Not even a single word, memory or image. Though, I guess the most I could recall was landing on my comfy queen sized bed, my skin kissed the cool atmosphere as I was stripped off my clothed, but the bed sheets quickly replaced them.
I woke up from the sound of a buzzing alarm, my head shot up as I had a hard time even opening one eye, but the headache that I expected to follow the amount of bottles I gulped down, well, it wasn't there at all. I scraped my nails along the skin at the back of my neck, a few strands of hair followed at each stroke as my eyelids fully opened. I lay flat on my stomach, balancing with my elbows as the ringing kept going in one ear, bounced about in my head and out the other.
"Get up."
"It's still Sunday." I mumbled in response to the back of the head that spoke to me.
"No, it's Monday morning," The man replied with a scoff as he shifted and sat up, the blanket dropped down from his chest to his knees to expose his body, and a pair of grey boxer briefs came to view and I grunted, my face scrunched to an annoyed expression. The fact he actually came home, showed his face, touched me and decided he wanted to sleep beside me completely bugged me.
I sat up as well, where I noticed that I wore only my bra and pantie that I remember wearing on Saturday night before slipping on the skimpy dress. I rubbed my eyes and asked, "How is that possible? I came home-"
"-4 in the morning on Sunday, I know, I waited for you to get home."
"Well then explain this?" I beckoned at my body.
"Did you want to sleep in that prostitute-like clothing?"
Okay, so he won that.
My eyes rolled in response. "Then how the hell is it Monday? Did I really sleep through Sunday?"
He nodded. "You were in and out of sleep."
"Fine," I sighed. That meant that today would mark the first day of being a corporate lawyer, reality was being a bitch and I'm not so pleased about it at all. I'd be working in the same office as Dominic, my Father and Nathaniel. There was the new addition of Hamish in the mix too. Erika would probably be the calm and stress-relief the whole time.
"Marianne, I-" Dominic stretched his arm to caress my cheek with the back of his fingers, but I flicked him away, shaking my head and hissed. I shuffled away and off the bed, filled with displeasure and annoyance, well, just disgusted.
"Don't think I forgot what happened on Friday, Dom. We'll go through this day like nothing happened, then we'll sort our shit out later!" I waved my hand towards him to dismiss his presence as I wandered away to the bathroom for the sake of getting ready and out of his way. I hoped that I wouldn't have to face him throughout the briefing today, and I braced myself for the long day ahead of me.
Because it will be.
Dominic and I walked together, hand in hand like the happy couple the people knew us to be, especially the women employees who gushed and let out their 'awws', considering that a lot of them were under 30, single and always gawked at the charming fiancé walking beside me. I swallowed how I truly felt about him in the passing days, and I forced myself to talk and interact with him because that was what my Father and Nathaniel wanted since day one. A perfectly raised, perfectly groomed and perfectly trained power couple that came from the same blood, and to their delight, we managed to meet and fall for each other on our own - before they could even start playing cupid. The more I got to know the new Dominic, the more I realized that my Father wanted the same for me. We were that supposedly perfect couple that strutted the hallways like catwalks and admired like heroes.
"Good morning to the beautiful couple."
Told you.
"Good morning Uncle Nate."
"Good morning Nathaniel."
My body suddenly twirled to face Dominic, my hands landed against his chest as his were pressed firmly on my back, just above my butt. His hazel eyes focused into mine, they were searching for some sort of an invitation or something, and he must've found it because he then forcefully pressed his lips onto mine, a rather aggressive smooch that I never expected. Though it was brief, he still caught me off-guard and made me speechless from the sudden kiss. It felt like he needed to prove something and found a way to reassert his dominance between us again, and at the same time, he reminded me that no matter how angry I was with him, he was someone I fell head over heels for. My lips even kept open as he parted from me, giving me a smirk as he whispered, "Be good."
"Don't worry, Dominic, I'll take care of little Lawler while you settle yourself back into your office," Nathaniel said and chuckled near the end as he leaned back on the black office chair and eyed the both of us with his a serious expression spread all over his face. I could feel the level of intensity from his stare from behind me, and I feared for the worst once my knight in shining armor left me to do his thing. He made me feel all that while sipping on his morning coffee.
"Come and see me in my office once your all done here, Ms Lawler," Dominic added with a curve still at one end of his lips, the pair that I couldn't keep my eyes off of. He tapped on the bottom of my chin to signal to his eyes, the pretty hazel eyes that sparkled with the light. I'd never be able to turn away from them whenever they looked at me in a way that looked soft, sweet and puppy-like.
I watched him leave, a whimper escaped me when he did, because I didn't want to be anywhere near his uncle. Nathaniel still scared me, and after the two days I didn't have to see his face, reuniting with him made my heart sneak away and hide all the way to the back of wherever it went. Even I shrunk in my shoes once I faced Nathaniel as I skid my feet along the floor towards the nearest seat to slide in so I could quickly cover any exposed skin from his stare. The silence was eerie, and it lingered for quite a long time - well I thought it was a long time, but when I snuck a peek at my watch, only five minutes went by.
"Why so stiff?" The man shifted in his seat to lean his head against his hand, nipping at his index finger rather seductively. Disturbing.
"It's my first day and you're my boss, so kind of changed the relationship dynamic compared to before."
"No, you shouldn't think that. I'm still the same as before, still Dominic's awesome Uncle Nate." He sounded like he was taunting me to be honest.
"I suppose." I cleared my throat awkwardly, looking at everything else in the meeting room and avoid giving Nathaniel the satisfaction of me looking at him. It would stroke his ego a lot more and he'd purr like a kitten.
"Sorry I'm late."
Nathaniel leaned his head more to the right and pouted a bit. "Doesn't particularly matter to me. I'm not so much fussy with two minutes, but if Adrian were here, then you would need a great alibi." He said as a way to lighten up the mood.
Hamish came in, out of breath, and struggled to stay as well postured as he could when he drooped his shoulders and breathed heavily. He combed through the strands of his hair, his body moved up and down as he continued to lick his lips.
I giggled. "Did you run a marathon on the way here, Mr Schwartz?" I teased.
"Being tardy is my pet peeve, Ms Lawler." He gulped and forced a smile.
"Good that we're all here then." And my Father stepped in on cue. Now he came in, looking quite the opposite as Hamish did, he was calm and collected while fixing the buttons of his grey vest. He gave me a welcoming kiss on the top of my head followed by a pat on the back, which signaled that he came into the office in a good mood.
Don't know if we were friends again though.
"I apologize for the few minutes wait, I needed to drop the paperwork to Erika so she can settle the contract agreements on my behalf." My Father explained himself as he combed his thinning white hair over and over until it got to the right position. "I didn't want to see or speak with them anyway. A complete waste of my time."
"Must be a weak contract." Nathaniel spoke with only his eyes moving about.
"Too easy. The clauses and what not are ridiculously too open for lawsuits."
They both shared a chuckle.
"Well, enough of this, let's begin." My Father waved his hand and gave a nod towards the rest of us in the room.
"Let's begin," Hamish repeated. He definitely sounded a lot more confident than before as he reached into the front pocket of his blazer. He pulled out his cellphone, tapped against the screen a few times and laid the phone in the middle of the table. I tried to figure out what was going on, since this was my first day, and honestly, I thought we would be going through an induction like any other firm would, so it confused the hell out of me when we all sat there staring at some cellphone. My Father and Nathaniel knew what was going on, they froze and kept a still position, like statues.
"Wait, aren't we going to do some sort of introduction or more contract signing?" I lightly clapped my palms with the glass table, while my frown and pursed lips spelled out a-n-n-o-y-e-d right on my face.
I really couldn't help myself.
Nathaniel was the only one out of the three to show his amusement with my innocence, and he even snickered to himself while closing his eyes. My Father was no where near as amused as his partner, he sighed heavily at me - he always said I opened my mouth too much for my own good. But neither of them said a word to answer me at all, which made me glare and cross my arms, because I was actually serious with what I bloody said and they looked down at me. They may be my new bosses, but they didn't have to undermine me and my new role in their firm. Both of them bugged me as much as Dominic has.
Thank goodness for Hamish, possibly the only sane and normal person in the room - other than me.
The man smiled at my innocence and reached over to tap on my hand twice. "Well Annie, you signed into the firm as a Senior Associate Attorney, and because of that, both Mr Lawler and Mr Walsh agreed that you would be able to handle a new case straight away before we tell you all the rules," He explained to me with a less harsh and less condescending tone. "To simply put it, it's like a learn as you go process."
"Do I, at least for the time being, get someone else as a second chair?"
My Father tilted his head up and down as he tapped his finger on top of the sleeve of his white shirt. His nose flared as he said, "The contract negotiation between the companies could possibly take longer than I figure, and since this morning, Erika is unavailable."
"You may ask Dominic, but he may start to get busy since a folder already dropped on top of his desk," Nathaniel mumbled. "There are other lawyers in the firm available for your assistance, some interns and law students too. If you wish to have a more experienced lawyer, I could offer my assistance." His smirk made me shrivel back down to hide into the toes of my heels.
"A great person to schmooze would be Judge Cole-" My ears perked up as soon as I heard the name being said out loud. Was this what Dominic meant that the man was going to make my work life easier? The name sounded common to everyone, I overheard some interns ask about the particular Judge on the way to the meeting room.
"Dominic said the same thing when we went to have dinner with Judge Cole and his wife," I blurted out without realizing it.
Nathaniel and my Father exchanged looks, they both seemed intrigued by the new information I openly gave to them. However, their expressions looked displeased as my Father grunted and said, "Be careful, that Cole is a sly Judge, despite being the easiest to convince."
"Although, I think him knowing that she is your daughter and officially one of us could work in our advantage." Nathaniel added while rubbing at his chin. "He's always been fond of dirty blonds."
Both my Father and I flinched to the comment, and we gave each other a nervous look before he cleared his throat and said, "Just make sure that you don't let him be the only person you rely on, Marianne, Judge Cole only works in critical situations."
"Well, don't forget, Annie, I'm also here as a consultant." I heard Hamish speak up right before I could type in every word said into my head within that span of time. They all knew something that I clearly didn't, but it didn't feel like the right time to push it through - it'll be to my advantage later on. And it already sounded like everything and everyone must've already been prepped for my arrival.
"I just needed to know, since I'm assuming that working as a public defender is a completely different role to a corporate lawyer." I became nervous at the thought.
Nathaniel nodded. "Your assumption is correct."
That didn't help ease my nerves at all. I may have signed up for this, but I wasn't prepared for a case given to me straight away. They must have faith in me if they thought that I could handle a case so quickly, and I had known or got a subtle hint from anyone at all, it would've made the situation a lot less fidgety and no confusion. I imagined making a fool of myself in front of the first meeting with the client, then it skipped to the failure of not going to trial but did, and of course, the stupidity in court. The laws may be the same and such, but how Lawler & Walsh lawyers do their thing may be the opposite of how I did it. And I seriously don't want to be the laughing stock in the firm as my Father and my fiancé's reputation is on the line if I did - maybe even Nathaniel's too.
Judgmental eyes. Disgusted expressions. Voices yelling at me in shame. Ugh.
Hamish saw the worry all over my face and gave me a warm smile. "You'll be fine," He said to reassure me that it will be before he went back to business. "So to brief you, Annie, the man in this recording is your client, he's a senior executive in their business, but a recorded phone call to one of their clients is about to ruin their CEO and other executives in the said business. And to be frank, the man breached a lot of clauses in his contract, but the business want to keep him and are set to ruin the client that holds the second copy of the tape."
"Are they aiming for a settlement?"
Hamish shook his head. "No, they've attempted that in a private meeting prior to getting in contact with us, and well, the client doesn't want anything to do with money."
"What do they want then?"
Nathaniel shifted on his seat and sat up straight, a show of interest when I began to show my interest in the case brought forward to me. He bent forward to lean his elbows against the table, a stable curve on his lips made it clear to me that he liked my enthusiasm, and it freaked me out a lot more. I avoided exchanging glances with him, instead, when I wanted to take a break from looking at Hamish, I panned to the other end at my Father, who sat half-interested with what went on. Probably because he already had something going on for him.
"That's why we're called in. They want to try and settle everything away from court. Their business is new to us, so you may need to do your research, but if you prove successful, there's a chance we may get signatures and represent a new business."
"It's a definite success." The challenge that came from the briefing filled me with adrenaline.
Everything became all too real.
This was their life, their world, and I've just been thrown into the deep end without a warning.
And I don't know what it is about it, but it felt great.