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I look away, feeling sick.
“I have to go to work, Massimo.”
“Yes, you do,” he says quietly, unblinking. “Because you’ve been there over two weeks, and I still don’t have what I asked for.”
“I—I’ve been busy, okay?”
“M-hmm, I’m sure,” he growls dryly. His eyes narrow on me. “Where the fuck is my father’s will, Eloise?”
“I don’t have it.”
“Clearly,” he snarls. “But where is it?”
I shake my head. “I don’t?—”
“Stop saying that word and start giving me answers I can use,” Massimo hisses.
I take a shaky breath as fear drags its nails over my skin. “Okay, well…” the wheels in my head spin uselessly for a second before they latch onto something. “Who was your father’s attorney there?”
“Alistair,” Massimo growls. “Alistair was his attorney.”
I bite back a shiver. “Then it’s in Alistair’s office.”
The emotions that wash over me the second I say it are…awful. I feel gross, and used, and conniving, and devious, and all the things I hate being.
“Go on,” Massimo grunts.
“The name partners…they keep the private records of VIP clients in their offices, locked up.”
My husband smiles viciously. “Then unlock it.”
“I—”
“No excuses,” he growls. “Do whatever it takes, wife.”
His hand drops from the door. I swallow, shuddering slightly under his piercing, cruel stare before I turn and reach for the doorknob again.
“Oh, and Eloise?”
I freeze.
“Don’t forget that you live here, like a fucking queen, thanks to me. Even more, your sister lives her life, unhurt and unmolested…”
My face goes white as I slowly turn to face him. Massimo’s mouth twists cruelly.
“Also thanks to me,” he murmurs. “I want you to remember that whenever you think you’ve heard something through an open office door. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes,” I choke, nodding.
Massimo smiles a shark’s smile. “Wonderful. Enjoy your day at work, dear.”
My palms are clammy as I walk up the staircase from “the pit” to the second floor of Crown and Black. The small of my back feels slick, and I swear I can hear the Mission: Impossible theme in my head as I surreptitiously glance behind me. God, I must look suspicious as hell.
Timing is everything. Gabriel is meeting with a client on the first floor. Taylor and Alistair are both out of the building; her for court downtown, and him for an off-site deposition. And I know exactly when Katerina takes her lunch hour.
Sure enough, she’s not at her desk outside Alistair’s office as I approach with a to-go coffee cup containing the fancy chai latte with two shots of espresso that he occasionally has her get him from the ultra-trendy café down the street.
I’ve noticed that occasionally, one of the associates or junior associates will bring little “gifts” up to the partners—nothing crazy, just small things like a coffee, or a brownie from the bakery across the street. Taylor highly discourages it, because it’s obviously people attempting to curry favor and it creates an awkward, unspoken competitive atmosphere. But it does happen here and there.
