CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
DAVID
David tapped his fingers in a battle rhythm against the underside of the desk as the defense attorney droned on. He had been sitting in court for four hours already, and the ancient air conditioning units weren’t cutting it against the unseasonably warm day. He wanted an ice-cold Perrier and a cigarette, maybe two.
“Could you stop that, please?” Whitney, his co-counsel whispered to him as she inclined her head towards him. It was an elegant gesture, almost entirely hidden from the jury by the fall of her box braids.
David withdrew his fingers and curled his hand into a fist in his lap, heaving his own similarly subtle sigh. The defense attorney was laying it on thick, even doing a show of getting choked up at the thought of the terrible distress his client had endured being accused of robbing an audiovisual store. David found it a little melodramatic for a breaking and entering case… Still, he was bound and determined to send someone to jail today, and he couldn’t do that until the other team shut up and let him work. He needed a win, especially after the disorienting kiss with Rhys and the pathetic way he had gotten to his knees in an instant, ready to do anything to earn Rhys’s approval and keep his attention. He was a grown man, for God’s sake; he should have more restraint than that.
David’s scowl deepened as the memory of Rhys’s vetiver aftershave rubbing off on his skin invaded his memory. It made him hot and irritated, ready to set something on fire or slam Rhys McGowan against a wall and prove once and for all who set the pace of this relationship.
Whitney leaned in a little closer, her chic Chanel and linen scent invading his space. He had worked with her before, and she was generally an asset: whip smart, nerves like steel, didn’t overstep boundaries. Now, however, she was giving him a look that reminded him of Lorena, or Rhys, or anyone else who thought they knew him well enough to meddle.
She scribbled down a message on the legal pad between them, surreptitiously enough that the judge wouldn’t notice.
You seem really on edge today.
“I’m fine,” David muttered, resisting the urge to roll his eyes as the defense read out a letter penned by his client’s estranged daughter.
Whitney scribbled down another note.
You haven’t been able to sit still all day. I can hear you grinding your teeth. Do you need to call a recess?
The judge gave David a warning glance. He smiled back politely, then snatched up a pen and wrote his own message under Whitney’s tidy handwriting.
We’ll be to closing statements soon. I’d rather just get it over with.
The minutes crawled by on bruised hands and knees.
David suddenly felt parched, the inside of his mouth burning hot and dry as the Sahara. He swallowed thickly, willing himself to focus. Maybe he was reacting to the new protein powder he had been mixing into his breakfast shakes.
He finished his seltzer, then leaned over to Whitney’s side of the table and nodded at her untouched glass of water. In an emergency, he would settle for still. Whitney looked a little baffled, but she nodded her permission.
David snatched up the glass and finished off the water in one breathless go, Adam’s apple bobbing. It banished the sandpapery feeling in his mouth, but it was hard to say if it helped the claustrophobic heat pressing in around.
He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, waiting for the world to stop tilting on its side. A couple members of the jury were looking at him now. He could feel the eyes burning through his blazer, boring holes into his skin.
Whitney gave him a look that was halfway appalled, halfway concerned. She took up her pencil and left him another note, underlining it this time.
You look like you’re about to pass out.
David wrapped his fingers around the edge of the table, willing the world to stop spinning.
I’m not asking, I’m telling,Whitney wrote. Request a recess.
David shook his head. They were moments from closing statements. He could do this.
I started this case and I’m finishing it,he wrote back, then ripped the page from the pad as quietly as he could and balled it up in his hands.
If she pushed him one more inch, he would tear into her, and there would be no thought to it, just animal instinct. He was exhausted, and the day was only going to get longer. Being sweet to his co-counsel was not high up on his to-do list.
“Listen, prick,” Whitney began, deathly soft, but then the judge’s attention was on them both. David pushed himself up into a jelly-kneed but erect position. The defense attorney had wrapped up his spiel and was taking his seat with pleading cow eyes.
“Mr Aristarkhov, is the prosecution prepared to proceed with their closing argument?” the judge asked.
Whitney gave him a look that told him in no uncertain terms that if he went through with this, they would not be working together again.
David took the loss.
“Yes, your honor,” he said, buttoning his blazer. It didn’t do anything to make him feel less smothered, but it made him feel more put together. Whitney leaned back in her chair, eyes burning, and pressed the statement notes across the table to him with chill crispness.
David paced out into the center of the court, relaxing into his well-worn stage, and glanced down at the paper in his hand. He had been over it a thousand times already, memorizing the rhetorical contours of his parting shot, but the crowded typeset on the page was suddenly illegible. He didn’t know if his vision was blurring or if he had spilt water on the page and smudged the ink. Either way, he could barely make out the subheadings.
“Mr Aristarkhov?” the judge prompted. “Are you ready to proceed?”
David threw her a smile. A little too slick and desperate for the circumstances, a little more nightclub bathroom than courthouse. His kneecaps were floating freely, sending a sick feeling right to his stomach. He very much wanted to sit back down, but that was impossible. There would be no losing face. Not now, with everyone watching.
David folded the statement in half and swallowed hard. He could wing it. It wasn’t ideal, and it hadn’t made him any friends in law school, but it was a skill he could bust out when necessary.
“Theft,” he began, reminding himself to project to the back of the house. “Is not a victimless crime.”
That wasn’t exactly the strongest hook, since he was pretty sure no one was going to fight him on that.
Come on, Aristarkhov,he urged silently. Think. Adapt.
“In addition to the financial, material, and emotional damage done to the victim, theft destroys trust between neighbors, weakens community ties, and undermines entire local economies.”
Too broad; he was swinging too broad. He needed to bring their focus back to this crime, this wronged woman.
“Ms Gonzalez is a single mother,” he pivoted wildly. “She works two jobs to support her seven year-old daughter and ten year-old son. This shop is the cornerstone of her livelihood, and–”
A lightning bolt of pain shot through his skull, through one eye and up into his cranium. It was searing enough to snatch the breath from his lungs, and he doubled over at the waist, one hand clamped over his eye.
He dimly registered a worried gasp from the jury, the screech of Whitney pushing her chair back in a hurry. The judge was saying something, but the sounds garbled together in his ears until even his own name was unintelligible.
SON OF ANATOLY
The voice rumbled through his head, foreign and oppressive and undeniable.
“Fuck,” David said through gritted teeth. “No.”
The one journalist in the room clamored forward, shouting questions and wondering aloud if anyone should call an ambulance. And the jury, mortifyingly, was staring at him. Gaping and whispering and looking around with panic in their eyes.
Not here. Not now.
David turned to the judge to plea his way off the floor by any means necessary. Her face swam through the shocked tears that had jumped into his eyes.
“Your honor, I–”
The pain came again, in a sickening one-two punch that sent him gripping a nearby wooden banister for stability. His vision went black and violet at the edges, just like it had done that terrifying day in the study; only this time instead of darkness, he saw a flash of white.
White so high and broad he couldn’t see the end of it, until his mind’s eye focused on a sliver of horizon in the distance. Snow. He was having a vision of snow blanketing barren, rolling hills. Someone in the fever dream spoke to him, out of sight but close to his ear, in a voice smooth and cool as the ice spheres served in whiskey.
Are you sure this is a sacrifice you’re willing to make? I won’t ask again.
David felt in his chest the emotions of the person whose dream he was invading, felt the strain it took to keep chattering teeth and pure terror out of the words.
Do I look like a man who’s unsure of himself? It’s a trifle compared to what you offer. Unless you’re nothing more than a common liar.
The strange voice hummed in pleasure, and a wave of bone-deep cold washed over him as the biting edge of a knife was pressed into his palms. There was a sting, and then the steady drip of blackening blood onto snow.
On the contrary. I am the very best.
David reeled out of the vision with a gasp. The blaring fluorescent lights overhead illuminated a courtroom in a disarray: the judge standing to order around the bailiff while the jury moved around in their box like startled pigeons. Whitney was at his side, her strong grip an anchoring presence on his bicep.
“David, what happened? Do I need to call somebody?”
David opened his mouth to brush her off with a soothing explanation.
But for the first time in his life, no words came. He couldn’t get so much as a syllable out, couldn’t form a single pleasantry or half-truth, not even a white lie. He was left staring at her, exposed in the middle of the courtroom while the journalist eagerly dictated the details of his downfall. He could see the headline now: Hotshot Lawyer Chokes Under Pressure.
“I have to go,” he finally managed.
The judge was calling for order, getting more demanding every time, but David couldn’t face her. He had already lost the only thing that mattered out there on the floor in front of everyone: his composure. The damage to his credibility was already done and would be served up piping hot in the evening paper. He had to get out of there. Preserve whatever professional dignity he had left.
David snatched up his briefcase and coat, striding down the aisle towards the courtroom doors without making eye contact with anyone. His skin was on fire, either from sickness or humiliation or both. And for a moment, he didn’t think he would be able to make it to the door without another episode.
David shoved his way into the men’s bathroom, nearly knocking over another lawyer in the process, and locked himself in the stall. He sagged against thewall, gasping for breath. He was either going to make it through this conscious, or he was going to black out and come to an hour later on the floor of a municipal courthouse bathroom. If he was smart, this was the moment he would call someone who understood, who could come pick him up discreetly and take him to a quiet place to ride it out.
David fumbled for his phone and pulled up Moira’s number.
It rang through to her voicemail.
David swore. Then, making up his mind, he dialed Rhys.
Under other circumstances, reaching out to Rhys like this would be humiliating. But after the horror show in the courtroom, a greater humiliation wasn’t possible. He had handled the worst of his blackouts and stomach-emptying on street corners in college alone, without anyone there to hold his hand or worry about him. If he lived through that, he could live through this.
“Hey,” he croaked when Rhys picked up on the other end. “Are you busy right now?”