Chapter One
Mikael Kelly
She sat in front of me, confident and composed, legs crossed, an unlit cigarette dangling between two fingers like she was auditioning for a noir film nobody asked her to be in.
I watched her without opinion. Or at least I tried to look like I had none. This was the queen everyone whispered about in board rooms and behind closed elevator doors.
The woman who forged iron out of corporate mergers and somehow made “tycoon” sound like a job title instead of a personality disorder. Sometimes I wondered if the rumors about her were true. Not today’s story, though. Today’s story was apparently going to be about a cigarette she wasn’t supposed to be smoking in my office.
“How can I help you, Ms. Wright?”
She smiled or smirked. Hard to tell with people like her. She had the kind of expression that costs more than my rent. Did she genuinely think my time wasn’t valuable? I bill by the hour, not by the aura.
She finally lit the cigarette. I opened my mouth to tell her this was a non-smoking building, and then remembered mid-syllable —that she owned the building. My mouth closed itself. Smart mouth, for once.
“My husband,” she said, exhaling smoke like punctuation, “the love of my life, needs to be put in place. You see, his latest...” she paused, savoring the word like it tasted bad . “his latest toy is rather ambitious, and I need to remind them both of their place.”
Of course you do, I thought. I’d heard the gossip. Open marriage. Very modern. Very expensive, apparently.
“You need to be more specific,” I said, because vague threats don’t hold up in court, and neither do vague retainers.
She tapped ash into the crystal tray on my desk that I did not own and did not remember buying. “When we married, we signed an NDA and a lifestyle agreement. I manage the assets and the company. He manages his appetite.” Her eyes drifted to the window, bored, like she was watching traffic instead of describing her marriage. “Whomever he wants to sleep with is fine by me, as long as she doesn’t enter my home or spend our money.”
“And now?”
“Now she’s living in one of his penthouses. He bought her a car. Gave her a black card.” A humorless laugh. “Apparently that’s lifestyle for a young woman these days. You know how it is in your twenties. You start out grateful, then you get greedy.”
This is unhinged, I thought. Out loud, I said, “Do you have a copy of the agreement?”
“Already emailed to you.”
I opened my laptop, scrolled through the document while she watched me like a woman who’d never once in her life been kept waiting. The contract was airtight. Ruthlessly so. I’d give her that much.Whoever drafted this thing had earned every penny.
“So what exactly do you want to do?” I asked.
“He needs to remember our agreement, and she needs to remember who he’s married to.”
I rubbed my face with both hands, buying myself three seconds of not having to respond to that. “Let me look into it.”
She sensed the hesitation because women like her could smell hesitation through a closed door, and rose smoothly to her feet, Hermès bag sliding onto her shoulder.
“Don’t disappoint me, Mr. Kelly. They told me you were ruthless.”
I scoffed before I could stop myself. “I am ruthless, and I abide by the law, but this is insane. Your arrangement with your husband is a mess dressed up as a contract.”
She just shrugged, like insanity was simply a line item in her budget, and walked out without another word.
I sat there a moment, frowning at the space she’d left behind. This was going to be work. My fees were not cheap, but this was going to need actual work.
I grabbed my jacket and decided to do some digging the old-fashioned way. Go talk to people and scan databases. I needed a proper jurisdication for this.
Yes, I’m a hermit by nature. I like silence, takeout, and not making eye contact with strangers. However, running a law office means occasionally remembering I have a face and using it in public. So I headed to the snooker club. My boys would be there, and if there was one thing they were better at than pool, it was gossip.
