Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Camille
“Mr. Alexander.” Camille glared at the man from across her desk. “You are not listening to me. No, I cannot force your wife to show up for meetings. She has handed all control over to her lawyer. The fact that he is willing to meet with us at all is a major concession.”
“But I don’t want to meet with him. I need to see her.” Nicholas Alexander III was looking more like a sulky boy, pouting at her from his chair. “You’re my lawyer. You’re supposed to get me what I want.”
“I’m your lawyer. I’m supposed to help you through your contention of the divorce and to clarify the sections in the prenup that are unclear,” she snapped back. “That does not mean you’ll get everything you want.”
She was down to her last nerve with him. Blinking at her as if shocked she would dare speak to him in such a manner, he stared like he was seeing something different than before.
“So, you can’t get her in for a meeting?”
“No.”
“Well, then, I don’t want to give her anything.
If she wants me to agree to splitting the assets I earned after we got married, then she’s going to have to come here and say that to my face.
” His face was getting very red, and Camille doubted seeing it would do anything but convince his ex that she was making the right move.
“I don’t think she’s going to agree with that. We can move things along much faster—”
“I don’t want to move things along faster. If she’s going to leave me, she’s going to have to fight for it.” He slammed his fist down on the chair, and Camille throttled the urge to reach across the desk and slap some sense into him. “She doesn’t get to be free of me that easily!”
“Then we will end up in court, where you will lose everything she’s currently willing to concede.
She will still leave you, and she might even do so with some of your company’s shares.
I’m not going to be a party to dragging this out just to massage your ego or whatever it is that’s causing you such distress.
Either we meet with Mr. Johan again and figure out an agreement that benefits you, or I’m going to tell him we’re prepared to go to court, where you can potentially lose everything. ”
Mr. Alexander gaped like a fish, which would have been funny if she wasn’t so damn frustrated with him. She couldn’t enjoy his comical expression when all she wanted to do was throw him out the window.
“We’ll see about that,” he huffed, getting to his feet, glaring at her. “I am paying you to get me what I want.”
“What you want isn’t possible,” she replied coldly.
“We’ll see about that,” he repeated, as if saying so would make it true. Turning on his heel, he stormed out of her office and slammed the door behind him. Camille sighed and rubbed her temples.
She had no doubt he was heading straight to the partners to complain, but she’d told him the truth. If he wasn’t going to be cooperative, there was nothing she could do for him, and complaining to the partners wasn’t going to change that.
However, she did send off an email to Freddy requesting another meeting and noting Mrs. Alexander’s presence was requested as well.
That way, she’d done her due diligence, and when he told her fuck no, she could pass that along.
Which she was very glad for an hour later when Donaldson Junior appeared in her doorway, glaring at her.
He liked her even less than Donaldson Senior did, or at least wasn’t as good at hiding his condescension.
“What’s this I hear about you not giving Nicholas your best efforts?”
The accusatory note in his voice put her back up immediately. Rather than answering him immediately, she finished typing out the sentence in the brief she was working on before looking up and folding her hands in front of her on her desk.
“I don’t know,” she said evenly, meeting his gaze with every evidence of calm serenity.
It always pissed him off more when she remained calm, no matter how he acted, and she was petty enough to keep her emotions under control for that reason alone.
“I have no idea what Mr. Alexander told you, though I can tell you that I don’t appreciate being presumed in the wrong when you haven’t asked me anything about my discussion with him. ”
Junior glared at her before covering his expression and sauntering in, looking down his long nose at her. Rather than sitting down, he stood just behind the chairs on the other side of her desk, looming instead of putting himself on an equal level with her.
“Well, Camille, Mr. Alexander is very upset with the service he’s receiving from you. Please, tell me how your discussion with him went, from your side.” Derision dripped from his voice, making it clear he didn’t think she had a single defense.
Little prick.
“Mr. Alexander wants meetings that include his wife, which is not something I am capable of providing him when she has no interest in attending any meetings with him. Her lawyer has been very clear that she will not be present and that he’s been authorized to handle all the negotiations.
The fact she’s still willing to negotiate, when she has proof of him cheating, is a miracle and frankly, one that Mr. Alexander needs to appreciate more.
However, I don’t think his interest is in saving himself money.
It’s in torturing his wife by dragging the proceedings out.
” She raised an eyebrow at Junior, pretty sure he was aware of this.
He flushed, his gaze darting away. Yup. Guilty.
Clearing his throat, he reached up to adjust his tie.
“Be that as it may, it’s our job to procure satisfactory results for our clients—” he started to say, but Camille cut him off.
“It’s our job to procure satisfactory divorces,” she corrected him.
“As I said, Mr. Alexander is lucky his wife is willing to have her lawyer talk to us at all. She could easily insist on going straight to court, and she’d probably get everything, or almost everything, that’s on the table.
However, if you think I’m doing a poor job, I’m happy to hand over the negotiations to you.
Despite the benefit of Mr. Alexander’s billable hours, I’m not a miracle worker, and if he’s not satisfied with my work, perhaps he would be happier if you handled things. ”
As she expected, Junior started to bluster. He knew it was a losing proposition as well as she did, and he didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Asshole.
“Just, do your best to make him happy,” he finally said after what seemed like a whole minute of sputtering. Lifting his chin, he turned on his heel and hurried out the door, though he didn’t slam it behind him the way Mr. Alexander had.
Whatever. At least they were both out of her hair now. Camille considered that a win.
Freddy
“You know there’s no way Brittany is coming to any of the meetings, right?” Freddy asked. He hadn’t been able to keep himself from calling Camille after he’d gotten home from work—officially off the clock—under the pretext of talking about the Alexanders.
Really, he just wanted to hear her voice, but it was a good excuse. And it gave him something to do while he heated up his dinner. Frozen chicken noodle soup. Yum. He had a tendency to make things in large batches to heat up later. Cooking for one was rather tedious.
Camille snorted.
“That was my cover-my-ass email, thanks to Mr. Alexander making a complete ass out of himself today. It’s not that he doesn’t care about the money, he does, but he cares way more that she’s leaving him.
I get the feeling if he’d been the one to initiate the proceedings, he wouldn’t be bothering with any of this. ”
The sheer exasperation in her voice set off all his subbie instincts. This conversation would be so much better in person, preferably on the couch with her feet on his lap so he could massage them. If only.
“All Brittany wants is for him to leave her alone.” Freddy shook his head. “I’m pretty sure she’s planning on moving as soon as she can to make sure she never runs into him again.”
“That’s probably smart. Her being the one to leave him has been a hit to his pride or his ego or whatever, and that’s never good with an entitled jerk.”
She sounded incredibly tired, and Freddy’s fingers itched. He wanted to be able to help.
“I tried to offload him on one of the partners today when he came in to chew me out for not keeping Mr. Alexander happy, but no go. It was worth a shot. I seriously need a new job.”
Freddy facepalmed.
“Actually, I forgot to tell you—”
“Not at your firm,” she interrupted him. If her voice had been anything but teasing, that might have hurt, but as it was, he could tell there was no malice in her words. “I don’t want to mix a new relationship with a new job. But if you hear of any openings anywhere else…”
His heart was buoyed that she’d referred to them as a ‘new relationship.’ He was incredibly pleased to be able to give her a lead.
“Actually, one of my firm’s partners mentioned to me that she has a friend who asked her to keep an ear out for promising, experienced lawyers who might be interested in making a change. I’m not sure what firm her friend works at, but I can find out.”
“Please do,” Camille said fervently, sounding pleased. “That would be great. My patience with Donaldson is at an all-time low. I honestly don’t know how I’ve been working there this long. It’s like I’ve been in a fugue state or something.”
“I bet it wasn’t as bad when you first started,” Freddy replied.
He’d seen it happen a lot, not just in abusive relationships, but in toxic workplaces.
“Things tend to get worse as you get used to it, and inertia can make it hard to get out, and the next thing you know, you turned around and you’re the frog in boiling water. ”
“The what?”
He laughed at her scandalized question.
“You haven’t heard that before? If you put a frog directly in a pot of boiling water, it jumps out immediately. But if you put it in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it adjusts and doesn’t realize it’s in danger because it’s a slow process.”
There was a long moment of silence. Hopefully, he hadn’t grossed her out, but it was a true fact and a good metaphor for a lot of situations.
“You know, I think that’s exactly it,” she said thoughtfully.
“Because it wasn’t this bad at first. They were never the best employers, but they’ve gotten steadily worse, month by month, and they sure as hell didn’t treat me this way when I first started working there.
I got used to more and more bullshit from them, and it was so normal, it’s as though I didn’t notice it anymore. ”
“I’ll talk to Zoey tomorrow and get her friend’s firm’s name,” he promised.
“Thank you.” He couldn’t see her smile, but he could feel it.
“Of course.” He chuckled. “Maybe you’ll have a new job before the Alexanders are done, and you can pass them off.”
She laughed.
“One can only hope. The way Mr. Alexander is dragging this out, there might be more truth to that than I would wish. I’m so done with his bullshit, though, so I’m going to push for him to wrap things up. And not just because of… us.” She said the last sentence a little hesitantly.
“Trust me, I don’t blame you, and I would never think that you would undermine a client professionally because of a personal relationship,” he reassured her.
“You’re too ethical and too good a lawyer for that.
There really isn’t much you can do for him, and honestly, I’m going to be pushing to move things along faster.
At this point, I think it’ll be easier to hash things out in court than dealing with him directly, though I hate to do that to you. ”
“Do what you need to do. I’m going to try to get him to sign, though. Then if we go to court to fight about it, we go to court. If he annoys the judge as much as he annoys me, there’s a chance they’ll close things out even faster.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
“That would be nice.” He cleared his throat, making a completely awkward segue, but they’d exhausted this topic, which wasn’t much fun to talk about, and he wasn’t ready to get off the phone with her yet. “How’s your mom doing?”
“She’s good, thank you.” Camille’s voice warmed, changing to a completely different tone with the new topic. “I’m going to see her tomorrow.”
They ended up talking for an hour, not about the Alexanders or work, but about their lives. He was perfectly happy to sit and listen to her talk about her mom and some of her childhood, and he shared some of his stories as well.
Hearing about how she’d decided to become a lawyer resonated with him.
She wanted to help people, which he could definitely see as part of her personality.
Working for Donaldson must be killing her.
First thing tomorrow, he was going to talk to Zoey and get things started for Camille—any firm would be lucky to have her.
It was infuriating that the partners at Donaldson either didn’t recognize her worth or, worse, realized what she was worth and handed her a bunch of crap, anyway. By the time Freddy went to bed, his mind was swirling with the possibilities.
Did he want to be Mistress Camille’s white knight in shining armor, coming to her rescue?
Yes. Yes, he did.