AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You remember the lawyer I asked you to look into for me?”
“Course.”
“We’re heading to his office.”
I have another lawyer already, of course. He looks after all our family interests. Which is exactly why I don’t want to use him for this particular task. No, this new lawyer Curse has done some research on for me isn’t one of our family’s trusted contacts. He’s not even Sicilian.
His name is Gabriel Hades. And he is going to help me rewrite my will.
The law firm of Hades, Mason & Gould is located in the heart of Toronto’s financial district, taking up the whole upper half of a glittering glass office building. Despite only having three guys listed in the name, it’s a massive operation with more than one hundred attorneys, associates, and paralegals employed here.
Several of them try to stop Curse and I as we stride right past their cubicles and offices, heading for the one with Gabriel Hades written on the door.
“Excuse me!” says a middle-aged blonde woman from a desk outside the sleek door. “Can I help you? Do you have an appointment?”
“No. But I’ve been in contact with him,” I tell her. “He’ll be expecting me.”
“Can I at least get your name so I can – excuse me! Sir!”
The woman’s voice fades to a spluttering chirp as Curse reaches for the office’s door handle. He doesn’t need to actually press down on it, though, because the door swings inward, opened from the inside.
The first thing I think is that this guy looks younger than someone who’s the earned the reputation he has. In Curse’s research on him, I’ve seen him called everything from shark to devil to demon. I guess his last name kind of fits.
“You Hades?” I ask. I want to make sure I haven’t gotten a hold of some junior lawyer who doesn’t know tits from ass.
The eyes behind his sleek glasses are a very pale, steely grey. They move meaningfully to the name listed on his door.
“If I’m not, then I imagine I’d have some explaining to do as to why I’m alone in this office.”
“Mr. Hades,” the woman says breathlessly as she hustles over in clicky shoes, her cheeks very red. “I’m so sorry. These men don’t have an appointment. And I tried to-”
“It’s alright, Margaret,” he cuts in. “After our correspondence earlier this month, I expected to see at least one of the young Titones show up here eventually.”
“Young?” I ask him. “I doubt you’re any older than I am.”
“I’m forty,” he replies coolly.
“Really? No shit,” I say.
Despite her boss’s assurances, Margaret looks like she’s about to blow a fucking gasket. If her cheeks get any more red I honestly think they might pop, like over-filled water balloons.
“Mr. Hades,” she huffs, “Your schedule today is very full. Perhaps if these… gentlemen… would like to make an appointment, I could-”
“We’re not in the habit of making appointments. Or being kept waiting,” I say.
“Reschedule Garrison Oil and Gas,” Hades tells his assistant. She looks like she’s about to argue, but he silences her with a single look. It’s a look I recognize. A sort of look I’ve given countless times before. The kind of look I learned from men just like my uncle.
Gabriel Hades may be a swanky lawyer wearing a nice clean suit up here in his big shiny office, but there’s something brutal in him. Something that I recognize, that I can sniff out the way a dog goes digging for blood.
I’m not sure if it makes me trust him more…
Or less.
But either way, when he holds the door to his office open, Curse and I both go through it.
I flinch at blinding brightness. The whole far wall of his office is made of glass, and February sunlight, normally kind of sickly and weak this time of year, is blasting right through.
“How the fuck can you work in here?” I croak, holding up my splinted hand to shade my eyes. My head pings with pain as flame-like light glances off of every surface.
