Chapter 43
43
SAMANTHA
I wake sometime after dawn. A mourning dove is outside the window; her soft flustered cooing sounds like a lullaby luring me back to sleep. Braiden lies beside me, his breaths deep and even.
When I stretch, my thighs ache. My arms are sore. I can count the tiny muscles between my ribs.
Staring at the ceiling, I think about an old joke—there’s no such thing as bad sex or bad pizza. I don’t know about the pizza part, but sex with Braiden is always fantastic. Plain vanilla fucking—the way we did it in the basement of the Hare construction site—is like making an argument in district court, having a judge rule from the bench in my favor. Wearing my collar, even when I top—or try to—is like winning in the court of appeals.
But surrendering to Braiden completely? Accepting the truth, that he’s my Dom, and I’m his sub, that he’s the one in complete control… The power he gives back to me, protecting both of us with my safeword… The trust I put in him… The absolute skill he has to draw out the strength in me…
All of that is like getting a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court.
Once I start thinking about being a lawyer, I can’t forget the stack of papers we took from Russo last night. I can see the edge of the pile, on top of the dresser. Braiden left the documents there, next to my clothes, before we headed to the shower.
I need to know what’s in those pages.
On the one hand, they don’t matter at all. Russo is dead. I killed him. Those papers could include signed confessions to tax fraud, bribery, extortion, and murder, and Russo won’t serve a single day in jail.
But on the other hand, I have to know what they say. I have to learn why Russo called me to his home in the middle of the night. I have to find out if I truly earned his trust after weeks of coddling him at the freeport.
Braiden stirs as I slip out of bed. His fingers trail over the warm sheets I’ve left behind, and his brow starts to furrow.
“Go back to sleep,” I whisper, kissing his cheek.
He frowns for a moment, but then his breathing evens out.
Padding as quietly as I can, I retrieve the stack. While I’m at it, I pick up Braiden’s T-shirt from the floor. I slip it over my head when I get to the armchair beside the window. Sitting, I start to read by the light that comes in at the side of the curtain.
The documents are damning.
I’m looking at shipping records, detailed invoices of goods going in and out of Russo’s freeport gallery. There’s a list of names and numbers, the payments he extorted from local businesses. I find another list, the bribes he paid to city and state officials.
But that’s not all. When Braiden cleared off Russo’s desk, he grabbed everything. There are half a dozen envelopes at the bottom of the stack.
I open the first one, and I bite back a gasp of surprise. It’s filled with hundred-dollar bills.
There’s a name scrawled in the upper left corner of the envelope: Mauricio. I look at the others. They all have names too: Bruno, Dario, Aurelio.
But the last one doesn’t have a name. It’s the heaviest one of all. I slip open the flap, and there’s the money, wrapped inside a sheet of paper.
The page is covered by awkward printing, all caps. MIMI says the first line, and $1500. CIARAN $800. MIKEY $450.
This is the milk run. Braiden’s milk run.
But it isn’t. I’ve picked up something in the months I’ve spent working down the hall from Braiden. The amounts are too small, by at least a factor of ten.
And then I realize what I’m holding. Madden made the milk run. Madden paid his tithe. But he didn’t pay his Captain. He wasn’t working for the Fishtown Boys.
Madden paid his new boss. Madden paid Russo.
There’s one last page, at the bottom of the pile. It’s a partially completed tax return, as if Russo honestly believed I could assist him in declaring Madden’s milk run tithe as income. Or maybe, somehow, in some twisted way, as a business deduction.
Was that Russo’s intention? Was he finally ready to confide in me? To trust me as a lawyer?
Was he going to ask about Madden? About why his trained lap dog disappeared? Russo was never stupid. He had to suspect Braiden took out Madden, even if there was no proof.
Or maybe Russo only meant to taunt me. Show me one document in exchange for some perverted sexual favor, then hide away the others. Show me everything, then lock away the documents and say they never existed.
I need to preserve all this evidence now. I know too well how accidents happen, how a fire might destroy everything. The federal government will never use this information to prosecute Russo, but every page here is a goldmine for Braiden.
We’ll make copies. Put some in the safe, here in the house. Put others in a bank vault. Secure them in Braiden’s gallery at Diamond Freeport.
But for now, until we can do something official, I can take pictures.
I dig my phone out of the pocket of the jeans I wore last night. It’s low on battery, but there’s enough to run the camera.
But first, I thumb open my texts, drawn by the bright red badge that says I have a new message.
Sonja
Let’s discuss.
She’s attached a document with a terrifying title: Final Order.
Catching my lower lip between my teeth, I tap the screen.
There’s a cover page: My name. The number of my proceeding. The date.
There’s a summary finding: The Committee on Professional Ethics has unanimously concluded that Samantha Mott is unfit to practice law. Her license is hereby revoked, and she is ordered not to practice law within the state of Delaware.
There are five pages of reasoning. Five pages to sum up my entire legal career. Five pages to honor Gianni and Giorgia and the nameless man on the mountain.
It’s not enough. It’s more than I can bear.
I read through it again, every single word. Even though my stomach feels like it’s being gnawed by bears, nothing in the opinion is a surprise. The panel despised what I did eight years ago. They were suspicious of my work at the freeport. They were revolted by my connections to organized crime.
Sonja’s text invites me to discuss the opinion with her, but there’s nothing to say. The decision is final. I cannot appeal.
It only takes a moment to forward the document to Trap Prince and Alix Key. I put their email addresses at the top of the form. Under Subject , I type: Resignation Letter. Under that, I type: Effectively immediately, I resign from my position as General Counsel for Diamond Freeport.
I think about adding more. I could say I’ll talk to my successor, that I’ll help transfer files and responsibility, but Trap and Alix know all that. I could tell them how much it means that they stood by me through the media storm, but they know that too. I could say I’m grateful that they’ve been there through everything that’s happened with Braiden—from our wedding to our fights to…now—but there’s no need.
So I read my single sentence one last time, and then I hit Send .
Almost as an afterthought, I forward the opinion to Teddy Newland. FYI , I type into the subject field. This time, it’s easier to send the email.
The loss of a dream should be more dramatic. The end of an era should come with bright lights and trumpets. Instead, my legal career ends when I thumb off my phone and set it gently on top of Russo’s papers.
Standing, I glance over to the bed. Braiden is watching me, propped up on one elbow, his hair mussed, his eyes sharp. He waits for me to speak, but when I stay silent he slips back the corner of the comforter.
“Come on, then,” he says. “Come back to bed.”
And I do.