Chapter 2
There were only so many hours in a day, and on this particular one, Mary Quinn Astrid had wasted far too many of them tonight with her mindless chatter and schemes.
In public, to avoid arguments she was mother, but privately, I hadn’t thought of her as such since I was a naive little boy still hopelessly craving her love and affection. Neither of which she had ever shown so much as a drop of to me or to any of her other children.
So in my mind, she was always Mary Quinn Astrid.
It was fitting to use all three names when thinking of her, like how society referred to any sociopathic killer.
Under usual circumstances, when her meddling pissed me off this much, I would head to the gym and work out my frustrations on a punching bag.
Unfortunately, with the situation such as it was, that was a luxury I didn’t have tonight.
Mary Quinn Astrid’s antics had reached the toxic point of actually impacting my career, so much so that I had to work even harder to keep my upward mobility and reputation intact.
Not that I didn’t already put in more hours than everyone else in my entire office. But as pompous as it sounded, my privilege required me to work constantly. If I didn’t show up and prove myself to be the better man each day, then people would say I hadn’t earned my job and that my daddy bought it like he bought my brother’s cushy military officer position.
Not that my brother didn’t work hard, he did. But strings were pulled, and because of that, he lost a fair bit of respect, and it had taken far more time and effort to regain it than if he had just earned the position outright.
He had people who were paid to respect him, a clear-cut chain of command that rendered his subordinates’ smack talk mostly unimportant. It didn’t matter if a soldier didn’t respect the man giving the orders. Those orders still had to be followed.
The way I viewed it, for better or worse, the armed forces required people to be sheep. You did what you were told when you were told, and unless your parents paid for a position, you worked your way up, or didn’t, in a logical manner. Independent thought and initiative were generally not rewarded.
Lawyers, even ones who worked in public office, were not sheep. They were sharks.
Every last one of them would make it their mission to take me out if they smelled blood in the water.
If they didn’t respect me, my days as an effective district attorney would be numbered, and I would be replaced at the next election.
Like Machiavelli’s prince, I had to be respected and feared at all times.
This was why, after dealing with the walking headache that was my mother, I was back in the office instead of at home or at the club enjoying a drink and maybe a waitress.
The office was dark and quiet. Peaceful. And although I didn’t like it when I had to come in this late, I preferred it like this. There were no office politics to navigate, polite small talk to engage in, or other social niceties to observe, wasting my time. I didn’t even have to lose work time wondering who was gunning for my job or, worse, who was actually good enough to do it.
This time was perfectly productive.
Occasionally, when it was like this, I would sit back and wonder what it would have been like if I hadn’t insisted on proving myself in the public sector. What if, by now, I was a named partner at some large corporate law firm, and I could work from home most days? Where my office would always be completely devoid of the mindless chatter of office gossip and drama.
Not that I hadn’t run into the occasional intern or first year ADA burning the midnight oil trying to make a name for themselves. A trait I admired, and I always made sure to note the names of the people I saw here often. I kept track of which assistant DAs and staff were dedicated to their jobs, who had a well-formed work ethic, who was ambitious, who was too ambitious…and who was lazy and lacked any ambition at all.
At least I hadn’t seen any evidence of anyone using the quiet of the office to sneak a little extra-marital affair or rendezvous with a prostitute, a trait I admired less and which I knew happened in some of the private firms around town. Many of the higher-end escorts in the city slept with a lawyer or a judge to keep their records clean. They called it “community service,” which would have been amusing if it weren’t so accurate. Or perhaps that was what made it funny?
I wasn’t sure. My sense of humor had been crushed under my workload in law school and never recovered once I entered the public sphere.
Those men all joked that a bit of stress relief in the office made them more productive or made it easier to deal with the pressure of their jobs. I had always thought they were making excuses, but after the day I’d had, part of me wondered if I shouldn’t follow their lead. Not for stress relief but to work out some of the tension and frustration running through my muscles.
Maybe taking my frustration out on a woman’s pussy…
Feeling her under my control.
Forced to take every inch of me inside of whatever hole I demanded.
Forced to obey me.
Forced to do as she was fucking told.
All with no ulterior motive. Just a clean exchange, a simple quid pro quo that didn’t demand more of my time than I was willing to give, ending in the dopamine rush of an orgasm. Couldn’t hurt, right? At the very least, it would clear my head.
There was a madam who was very respected in the area. She kept her girls clean and honest. A number of the men who went that route used her if they weren’t blackmailing some other poor girl into it. I could get her number and see if she had anyone available this week.
With all the focus I’d been putting on my career, it had been too long since I’d been between a woman’s thighs.
I turned the corner into the bullpen and saw the light on in my office. I frowned. Something wasn’t right. My office was supposed to be locked with the lights off, precisely how I left it.
There were spare keys in the desks next to my door, one for my secretary and one for my paralegal. It stood to reason whoever was in my private office had gotten one of those keys. The only question left was who was going to be fired for doing so.
Of course, it could be someone other than an employee.
Although I had been keeping a tight lid on it, it was possible my secret investigation into the Irish mob’s business affairs in New York had been leaked. With the right bribe, all information was for sale. Even sensitive files from the district attorney’s office.
Not knowing who I would be facing, I stormed into my office with the idea of taking whoever was inside by surprise since I did not have the benefit of my gun, which was in my center desk drawer.
The office was empty.
My narrowed gaze scanned the file cabinets lining one far wall. None of the drawers were opened or seemed to be disturbed. The same could be said for my desk. If someone was in here attempting to steal files, they were either the neatest criminal I had ever come across in my career or I had interrupted them before they’d had a chance to ransack the place.
My head then jerked to the side at a dull thud coming from across the room. There was a sliver of light under the bathroom door. Setting my leather briefcase on the desk, I stretched my arm over its expanse, pulled open the center drawer, and withdrew my Smith and Wesson .38 revolver.
The average citizen assumed a semiautomatic pistol, like a Glock, was superior to the old-fashioned revolver. They were wrong. A macabre perk of being an attorney was access to gun data.
The revolver had a sixty percent higher fatality rate than a Glock. It was a more efficient gun if your intent when shooting was to kill—as mine would be.
Adjusting the gun’s grip in my hand, I moved to the closed bathroom door, being careful to approach it from the side and not straight on, in case the perpetrator should suddenly swing it open and emerge shooting.
There were more thuds and bumps, the scrape of a shoe against the tiles, then a couple of muted bangs as if something had been knocked over on the sink’s marble countertop.
What the fuck?
Judging by the noise, there was a struggle on the other side of the door.
Had two people broken in?
If they were fighting one another, then their intent was not to conceal themselves from discovery.
Which meant it was not someone affiliated with the mafia.
I was back to my original hypothesis.
It was someone from my staff.
Was one of them testing the boundaries of their job by bringing a lover into the boss’s office for an illicit thrill?
It would be a bold move but ultimately stupid and career-ending.
There had already been too much time wasted today.
They needed to get the fuck out and hope I didn’t recognize them.
Lowering the gun, I threw open the door.