Chapter 3
lawyers
LEXI
The lawyers were assembled in the living room, judging me with stinky side-eyes as I trudged out of the bedroom.
Yes, I’d thrown on some clothes and brushed my teeth. I’m a civilized Midwesterner. I wouldn’t bobble around braless in front of strangers.
Half a dozen serious-faced lawyers glared at each other from the couches and chairs in the living room, while Ueli and Dusha occupied the space between the conversation grouping and the bedroom door.
Ueli checked his phone and surreptitiously rolled his eyes at whatever he’d seen. He muttered to me, “There’s coffee and breakfast on the sideboard.”
The lawyers twisted in their seats to see who had emerged from the bedroom, two of them half-rising, but they lost interest and sat back down when they saw me walking toward them. Their dark suits looked laser-printed on, none of their cuffs a little too long or too short at their wrists or ankles.
Meanwhile, I was wearing jeans and a frilly blouse I’d bought for my hope chest. Socks kept my feet warm enough because the air conditioning geysering from the ceiling vents fell to the carpet.
The deep pile’s chill soaked through my cotton ankle-highs as I padded around the furniture to where some yogurt, fruit, and pastries were laid out beside the coffee pot. I piled muffins on a plate.
One of the women attorneys looked me up and down and shot a no-way glare at the lawyer beside her, but the other five kept it professional.
Fine, I’d go first. “Nicolai will be out in just a minute.”
More glances, more shuffling of behinds on the couch.
One of them started, “About this contract he is proposing—”
All of them started arguing with each other like each had been waiting for the trigger-pull of the starting gun.
“Post-nuptial contracts aren’t a thing,” one dude-lawyer started, his medium-length, medium-brown hair falling around his ears.
His dark suit trousers looked like he’d be medium-height, too.
“This agreement should have been signed before the ceremony or not at all. And since it wasn’t signed before, then it shouldn’t be signed at all. ”
“I’m here to act as her attorney, but Romanov is paying me. This is definitely a conflict of interest,” one of the women said.
“These clauses he sent last night are insane. There’s no way he wasn’t coerced into writing these. Romanov is being taken advantage of,” the medium-guy expounded, gesturing by rolling his wrist at the ceiling.
“Alexandra is the one being taken advantage of.” A different lawyer, not the one who’d judged my clothes, twisted in her chair to talk at me. “Aren’t you? He married you without a pre-nup, maybe by coercion? Were you drunk? Drugs? Were you not of sound mind? Because you should have been protected.”
I stirred cream and sugar into the black depths of my coffee.
The eggshell-thin china cup looked like a specimen from my friends’ moms’ generational china collections.
I needed a mug, a big mug, for the amount of coffee my brain was craving.
“I wasn’t drunk, and I’m not saying anything more about the wedding until Nicolai is out here. ”
“You weren’t drunk?” One of the other lawyers, a guy, asked. His wiry black hair was sculpted close on top and faded to shaved halfway down his skull. His dark eyes examined me like I was a contract clause. “That begs the question, who was drunk?”
“Nicolai said he will be out in a second,” I told them again. “If I say what he said, that’s hearsay, right? So it doesn’t even matter.”
Some of the lawyers rolled their eyes. One said, “This isn’t a trial.”
“Did you see the livestream?” one asked, the guy who was too sharp for me to say another word around. “I found it this morning. Romanov was wasted. He looked roofied.”
The woman lawyer who’d announced she was my lawyer cranked herself around to pin me to the sideboard with her intent stare. The beads on her long braids clicked around her shoulders as they swung. “Don’t say another word.”
I wanted to argue with that guy about Nicolai being roofied, but when your lawyer tells you to shut it, you shut it. That much, I’d learned from internet videos. I sipped the still-bitter coffee and turned back to add another sugar cube.
Another lawyer asked, “When is Mr. Romanov going to join us?”
I glanced at my designated lawyer, who nodded, before I said, “He’s in the shower. He’ll be out in a sec.”
The entire flock of lawyers perching on the furniture slumped in their seats and gazed out the windows or picked up their phones.
Yeah, the guy who paid their bills wasn’t present. No need to look alive. I stuffed a muffin in my mouth and gnawed on the dry crumbs as I started to meander back to the dining room table, but Nicolai opened the door and strode out of the bedroom like he’d been waiting to make an entrance.
Every single one of the lawyers sprang to attention and turned to look at him. The Black guy who’d said Nicolai looked roofied was the first on his feet. “Mr. Romanov.”
Seriously, Nico was not just a better actor than I was, but his theatrical timing was impeccable. I should be sitting at his feet to learn the craft.
The reflex to watch someone and analyze their effect on other people’s reactions was a technique I’d learned my freshman year of high school in theater class, but I hadn’t been doing it for a long time.
The habit had petered out when I’d been around Jimmy-my-Ex’s family because it hadn’t been worth the mental effort anymore.
Because I’d given up not just my ambition, but my art.
Oh.
My tongue scooped the dry muffin crumbs in my mouth, and I tried to swallow them.
One of the other lawyers, an older guy, stood and tugged at his trouser legs. “Now that we’re assembled, Mr. Romanov, maybe you could tell us what the actual hell is going on.”
“Today’s meeting should be quick,” Nicolai said. “We’re dissolving the marriage. I understand that Nevada has a no-harm-no-foul annulment clause for people who marry and then think better of their actions. We’ll be utilizing that option.”
My jaw dropped, and the coffee cup sloshed too-warm coffee over its gilded rim onto my finger.
Three of the lawyers, including the sharp guy who’d stood first and accused me of roofieing Nicolai, sat and leaned back in their chairs, crossing their legs and smirking at each other.
So those people on that side over there were his lawyers, including the smart one who was cherry-picking what I’d said and the woman who’d rolled her eyes at my jeans. The two teams had conveniently grouped themselves on opposing sides of the coffee table with the bowl of shiny apples.
I shot Nicolai death glares from where I stood across the room, my spoon clinking like a chain ratcheting as I stirred my coffee. “I didn’t agree to that.”
The lady who’d designated herself my protector crossed her arms and braced herself like she was on a rocking ship. “My client says she didn’t agree to that.”
I appreciated this woman.
Nicolai stood quietly, not leaning on a doorframe or chair. “An immediate annulment is the best option.”
Confronting me in semi-public wouldn’t make me cave. “I told you that I won’t leave you in this situation.”
The lawyers were eyeballing each other. Nicolai’s smart one on the right asked, “What situation?”
Nicolai said, “It’s a private matter,” just as I yelled across the room, “I mean it! I’m not going to abandon you like that.”
The older attorney on the couch looked at my lawyer, who was still on her feet and braced for battle. “Mediation or court?”
I should have started negotiating for money as soon as Nicolai had said we were done. If I were smart and demanded cash to leave, I might have landed on my feet.
But I wasn’t smart. Stupidly loyal, yes, and that was why Jimmy had been able to take advantage of me. “Nicolai,” I said. “I won’t leave you to deal with them alone.”
I knew I should give up and state a figure, and Nicolai would pay pretty much any amount I named.
But every cell in my body fought against deserting someone in trouble.
That video had been a threat directed at me, and I wasn’t going to ditch Nicolai and let him take the consequences. I’d signed that marriage license yesterday, knowing bad people were trying to control him.
This was just a very specific, horrible detail.
My lawyer lady turned to face me. “I’ve got some advice for you, woman to woman. Don’t stay with a man who doesn’t want you. Especially one you married only a few days ago and don’t have a pre-nup with. We can negotiate this in court so that you won’t lose anything at all.”
“It’s not that,” I told her. “There are other reasons.”
“There are no other reasons,” Nicolai said, crossing his arms. His sarcastic mimic was embarrassing. “This marriage is over. Indeed, it never was a real marriage.”
The sharp lawyer-guy on Nicolai’s side said, “I reviewed the livestream of the wedding, Mr. Romanov. You were obviously not of sound mind. A legal annulment is an easy affair. We can ask for damages if she slipped something in your drink before the ceremony.”
I scowled at that guy who was insinuating something really nasty.
“I wasn’t even around Nicolai when he got wasted that first night.
Those bad decisions were all his own,” I said, just as the lady-lawyer on my side shook her head at me so violently that her braids shimmied down to their beaded ends.
Against the advice of counsel, which meant I was doing something dumb, I pressed on.
“Did you see the video on social media from the Omnia last night, where Nicolai was introducing me to all his friends as ‘my wife?’ Did you see the even better wedding rings that he bought for me yesterday and then we had blessed at the same church by the same priest?”
I splayed my left hand near my face, and a fortuitous beam of sunlight hit the ginormous diamond in the center.
Rainbow sparkles laser-beamed all over the living room.
My lawyer lit up with a huge grin, and she spun to face the other lawyers in feline victory. She did shoot back over her shoulder, “You should shut up now, but that sounds like it will be very, very useful. This is going to be fun.”
One of the other lawyers who’d been quiet thus far groaned. “Oh, God. When Victoria has fun, we lose money.”
Nicolai had barely swayed on his feet through all that. “Lexi, it’s over. This marriage has been a debacle from the start, and it has to end before someone gets hurt.”
Yeah, I got the secret message. I just wasn’t playing his game.
Before I could retort, my lawyer said, “You did not just threaten my client, Mr. Romanov. I’m sure that’s not what you intended.”
Nicolai Romanov was a good guy, and he’d given a damn about me these last couple of days when no one else had.
He’d literally scooped me up when I’d been living in my car and eating the cheapest crap I could find in gas stations.
He’d bought me a suitable dress with Clementine’s help so I wouldn’t be embarrassed at the party with his friends.
He’d been secondhand mad when I’d told him about Jimmy literally leaving me at the altar during our wedding, and he’d publicly kissed the stuffing out of me in front of my ex in the casino, just so I could have a little bit of petty revenge.
And it had been excellently petty.
He’d allowed me into his circle of friends when no one else in the whole dang world would have cared if I’d fallen off my suitcase, collapsed, and died on the hot Las Vegas street.
An image flash of Jimmy and his sisters and his mom and her stepping over my twitching body without a downward glance imprinted on the backs of my eyelids when I blinked.
If Nicolai hadn’t walked into my life, I would still be out there, hungry and unshowered, desperate and destitute, and alone.
“The threat wasn’t from him,” I told the lady-lawyer, Victoria, who seemed to be on my side. “Nicolai wouldn’t threaten me.”
Her knife-sharp look made me want to step back, but I was already leaning my butt against the sideboard. I couldn’t back up any farther.
Ueli leaned toward Nicolai. “Was there an incident?”
“Nothing to speak of,” Nicolai muttered.
Ueli rocked back on his heels. One of his pale eyebrows dipped.
I called out to Nico over the lawyers’ heads, “I won’t abandon you.”
“Nevada is a no-fault divorce state,” my lawyer murmured to me. “You can’t stop him from divorcing you. He doesn’t need your consent.”
“That’s right, we don’t need your consent,” the too-smart lawyer on the other side piped up, not like he’d just been reminded, but like he’d been waiting for a gotcha. “Mr. Romanov, we can draw up those papers for your signature right now.”
Narcing to Ueli about the torture-murder video might make the situation more difficult for Nicolai, but it might keep him alive if Ueli knew.
But Nicolai raised the wager before I got a chance. “Lexi, you have to leave. I won’t allow this charade to continue.”
“No, I won’t.”
His level gaze was devastating. No regret, no emotion at all, laced the flat tone of his words. “Ueli, remove her.”
Ueli and Dusha started walking around the couches, their eyes pinned on me, their intended victim. “Nicolai, don’t do this.”
His voice was a cold metronome. “I told you I would have them remove you. I meant it.”
Not even a blink.
He thought this was for my own good, but he didn’t know what the right thing to do was.
The problem was that I didn’t know, either.
I just knew I didn’t want to leave him to face it alone.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” I blurted. “You can’t throw me out. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Humiliation flooded every cell in my body. Jimmy’s church had promulgated that wealth indicated God’s favor, but poverty was your own fault, a sign of laziness and lack of ambition. My lack felt shameful.
“Ueli,” Nicolai said.
The two bodyguards stopped, but their gaze never shifted from me.
My lawyer frowned, the first time I’d seen her hesitate.
That smart lawyer on the couch watched the bodyguards’ confusion. “An annulment would be quicker with her cooperation and signature, a few weeks instead of six months or longer. Throwing her out would be counterproductive if you want this over with quickly.”
Nicolai was staring right at me, his silvery blue eyes widening as, I swore to God, I could see the flywheels click into place and his brain sort out everything I’d said and he’d seen over the last few days. “Lexi, with me, now.”
I set my coffee and muffin on the sideboard but didn’t move. “We can talk in front of the lawyers if that’s how you want to play it.”
He backed up a step and opened the door to the bedroom. “Now.”
My lawyer, Victoria, raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.
I had to remember that even though she’d seemed to be on my side, Nicolai Romanov was paying her.
I practically dragged my toes like a sullen toddler as I circumnavigated the sitting area and stomped into the bedroom.