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Two days after I move Eloise into the hotel, I look up from my desk when Gabriel storms into my office. From the look on his face, it’s obvious the secret’s already out.
“How’d you get Taylor to spill?”
He glares at me, shaking his head. “She didn’t. She didn’t have to, Alistair,” he grunts. “I’m a good fucking lawyer. I can smell bullshit when it stinks.”
“You’re welcome to use the shower in my private bath?—”
“It’s reckless,” he growls quietly, stomping over and dropping into one of the chairs across the desk from me.
“I know what I’m doing,” I mutter back.
“Do you?”
“She couldn’t stay with him, Gabriel,” I hiss. “The man’s a psychopath.”
“I’m not denying that,” my brother sighs tiredly. “But exactly what the fuck do you think the outcome is of you shacking up with Massimo’s wife?”
“She’s at a hotel, Gabriel, not in my bed.”
“Yeah? And which bed have you been in the last few nights?”
Touché.
“There’s been zero indication from fuckstick that he suspects anything. Their marriage is a sham. He doesn’t have any interest in her, doesn’t even touch her. He married her in exchange for the smuggling operation he got from her father. That’s. It. You can relax.”
“Can I?” Gabriel mutters. “What happens after Eloise returns from her business trip,” he air-quotes. “Is she going to be our perpetually on-the-road lawyer?”
I shrug. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea!” he spits. “Reality is going to catch up to you, Alistair.”
“Gabriel, I’m an orphan with a murky background who went on to graduate law school and found one of the most prestigious firms in New York before the age of thirty-four.” I smile wryly. “I stopped believing in reality a long time ago.”
He smirks. “Okay, fair. I’m just…”
“Worried about me?” I grin. “I know. Thanks.”
“I mean, somebody has to be.” Gabriel exhales and glances at his watch. “Okay, I have to run and go over my notes.”
I nod grimly. As much as I hate to admit it, Charles was correct. Judge Hawkins’ schedule did have an unexpected opening this week, and she agreed to move our court time up. So tomorrow is the day we’ll be dropping our iron-clad alibi and blowing this case out of the water before it even sets sail.
“You’ve got this, brother.”
Gabriel stands, buttoning his jacket. “I know.”
I snicker. “Asshole.”
There’s a knock on my office door, and we glance up as Katerina walks in.
“Mr. Black?” She nods at me. “I just had a call from Mr. Carveli’s assistant.”
My eyes snap to my brother, whose jaw is clenched.
“What the hell did they want?” I mutter, dragging my gaze back to Kat. When I do, my gaze slips down to her hand at her side, holding a set of keys on a pink lanyard.
It’s her spare set that includes the key to my office and one to my locked file cabinet of VIP case files, and I’ve seen it on her person or desk about a million times. But for some reason, seeing it here in my office is making something ping in the back of my head, like a memory I can’t quite access, hidden behind a fog.
I frown at the lanyard, trying to cut through the haze in my mind.
