Chapter 3 Hailey
Hailey
It was the surprise in the man’s eyes that caught Hailey’s attention.
They were like a cartoon character’s, the whites bulging so violently that she thought they might pop right out of his head.
Her mind made quick work of the input it was receiving from the next table over: a charged silence spiraling outward from his general direction, those eyes, the strange, raspy squeak coming from his lips, the hands gesturing madly at his own throat.
Definitely choking.
A quick glance at her fellow diners, and Hailey’s assessment was confirmed.
So was the bystander effect: everyone stared, and everyone waited for someone else to do something.
Hailey’s lunch partner, a potential associate hire with an impressive track record in personal injury, blinked at her blankly. He’d never get a job out of her now.
Hailey stood, took three quick strides to reach the man’s chair. He was already turning blue.
“I’m going to perform the Heimlich now,” she told him as she swung his legs sideways.
He shook his head, and Hailey ignored him.
He was big and clearly reluctant; better to keep him seated.
She reached her forearms around him, feeling the starchy roughness of his shirt through the thin fabric of her silk sleeves.
He was as wide as a fridge; her hands barely met on his chest even though her body was pressed tightly against his back.
Still, her fist found the sweet spot under his ribs, her thumb bone angled for maximum leverage.
Lucky for him she worked out, at least occasionally, so the difference in their sizes didn’t matter.
Her first thrust cracked two of his ribs.
The pain roused him. The man struggled to stand, with Hailey still attached to his back, her biceps unwilling or unable to release their hold.
He flapped around like a marlin on a boat deck, and she saw the half-eaten T-bone on his plate recede farther and farther below her.
He was lifting her off her feet, and still she couldn’t feel him breathe.
Her legs scrambled, found chair and then floor.
Too late she saw the man’s eyes roll back in his head, felt his backward momentum.
In a panicked misfire, her arms pulled him even closer toward her, her hands trying again for the target at the base of his sternum.
She found it just as the heel of her Chanel pump gave way beneath her, sliding across the floor and leading the way down for the rest of her body, and his too.
Blackness closed in as the full weight of him landed smack on top of her.
When she opened her eyes, the man’s sweaty face was inches from her own. He was conscious and extremely, extremely concerned.
“Don’t move,” he said to her, and from far away she could hear paramedics parting the crowd. “Don’t move, hon, something could be broken. You could have internal injuries. You’ve been unconscious.” The color was back in his face. His cheeks were flushed with embarrassment.
Hailey sat up, fought the cartoon stars in the corner of her vision. The back of her head hurt, but not as badly as her ribs. The man watched as she pressed a hand to her side and gasped in pain.
“I think you broke a couple of mine as well,” he said. “I could sue you, you know?” But his eyes were grateful.
“I’m okay, really,” Hailey told him, gripping the hand he extended. “And I wouldn’t try that. I’m a lawyer.”
“Me too.” He held her arm as she got to her feet, and before she could stop him, he pressed her to his chest in a massive bear hug, right there in front of an entire restaurant full of Cleveland’s white-collar workforce.
They clapped and cheered, and for a wild minute, Hailey wished that Mack had been there to see it.
* * *
By 3:00 p.m. Hailey was all patched up, with fresh makeup and a spritz of perfume to hide the sweaty, steak-y smell that clung to her blouse.
She took her place in the conference room across from Rebekah Rainier, who was, in a manner of speaking, their small firm’s biggest client.
Rebekah was closing in on a divorce settlement of almost $7 million, although she was doing her best to screw it up.
Today’s meeting was a strategy session to get her back on track, and Rebekah had brought her business manager (whatever that meant; she had no income and didn’t work), her mother, and, for some completely unknown reason, a man she had matter-of-factly introduced as her hairdresser.
“I just don’t know that I can fight David anymore,” Rebekah was saying to Hailey and two junior associates.
“You can’t do battle with a sociopathic narcissist. My personal stress levels are unsustainable.
I can hardly function. I’m not living my life, I’m just existing.
While he’s over there in Europe fucking everything that moves. ”
“We don’t have any proof of that,” Hailey told her. “And for our purposes it doesn’t really matter anyway. What concerns me here is the change in custody arrangements—”
Rebekah’s phone rang. As she answered it, she held up a finger for silence, and Hailey came to the sudden realization that she had never hated anyone as much as she hated this woman.
She watched as the silicone blobs that stood in for Rebekah’s lips gave instructions to someone who was obviously packing up her house, a Crystal Lake McMansion worth less now than when the Rainiers bought it thanks to the “improvements” Rebekah had overseen.
“Don’t damage the shoeboxes,” Hailey’s client was barking.
“And I want the clothes packed hanging. And don’t crush them. ”
The pain in Hailey’s ribs made tolerating this almost impossible. “I don’t recall being told that you are vacating the marital home?” Hailey said as Rebekah hung up the phone. “That has big implications. That’s abandonment. That’s what we’re trying to hit David with.”
“How could I abandon him when he hardly even lives here?”
It was a fair point. Rebekah’s husband had indeed spent many a night away from Cleveland in the past six months—Hailey’s team had tracked his movements—and yet the man’s presence couldn’t have loomed larger in his adopted city.
Rainier had swooped in two years back with big plans to revitalize Cleveland’s eyesore of a lakefront.
He had sunk many millions into a deal to buy the old chemical plant that ate up acres of valuable shoreline, and local columnists fizzed with anticipation about what Cleveland’s white knight had in mind for the land, how he was working on a new stadium, condominiums, a shopping pavilion, a marina.
Right then, though, Hailey happened to know that Rebekah was right: the man was in Europe.
On vacation. Hailey had seen Rainier’s social media, had stalked him moving through Paris with his and Rebekah’s young twins.
She had seen snaps of them outside the Louvre and rowing along the Seine in a little boat—the three of them smiling the squinty, happy smiles of those who had time and money for adventure.
And Hailey, with the ball and chain of the new house and the looming outcome of this settlement keeping her firmly planted in northeastern Ohio for the summer, had been insanely jealous of this man even as she plotted to carve out a chunk of his net worth.
Yes, some of it was probably staged for the courts, and yes, maybe David Rainier was committing a little adultery in between family outings, but the fact remained that Rebekah hadn’t seen her children in months and had never thought to complain about it.
Until today.
“I just don’t think I can fight him anymore,” Rebekah was saying again.
“He always wins. I just want to have my babies with me and move on. If I take the place in Short Hills, I’ll get the kids sometimes, he’ll give me an allowance .
. . it’s not like I ever want to get married again anyway, not after what I’ve been through—”
“Wait, what?” Hailey’s cool professionalism, honed by a decade of watching couples humiliate themselves, bolted from the room like it was on fire. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying I want to move on. I want to put this behind me.”
“That part comes after the actual divorce, Rebekah.”
“My mental health can’t wait that long. I’ve got to handle this another way.” Rebekah’s mother was nodding in agreement, and Hailey’s heart began smashing against her tender ribs. She had to have this wrong.
“Are you saying you’re no longer going to divorce him?”
“No.” Rebekah tilted her head and flashed her Chiclet veneers in a way that made Hailey want to reach across the table and strangle her.
“I mean, of course I’m going to divorce him.
” But just as the air returned to Hailey’s lungs, Rebekah came out with a doozy: “I’m just going to divorce him mentally and spiritually, as opposed to legally. ”
It took Hailey a beat or two to comprehend the Rainiers’ plan: Rebekah would stay married to David.
David would let Rebekah live in their other McMansion back in New Jersey, give her an allowance, let her see the kids, though they’d live with him in Manhattan.
There would be two very separate lives, but no divorce.
And no divorce settlement.
“I’m sorry to bring this up in front of your . . . companions”—Hailey threw a grim smile in the direction of her client’s entourage—“but you already owe this firm a quarter million in fees. Does David know that he’ll be absorbing this debt?”
“You’ll have to talk to him about that,” Rebekah said, getting to her feet. “He’ll just stonewall me, and I’m not in any state to cope with this.”
Hailey fought the urge to drag her back down to the table.
“Rebekah, this firm made an exception for you when we extended you a line of credit. I made an exception for you, as a woman and as a mother, because I knew David had all the assets and all the power. But this outstanding legal bill is your responsibility. If there’s going to be no divorce settlement to take our payment out of, it will have to be paid outright.
As soon as possible. This is a business, and we did a tremendous amount of work on your behalf.
” Almost eight hundred hours of work, the last time Hailey checked.
Not to mention that they had paid outside experts and asset tracers to try to find David’s money.
Even the firm’s bank knew about this pending settlement, was actively waiting for it.
“You’re so full of crap,” said Rebekah, and Hailey noted that her client’s mother didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow as the tone went nuclear: “I was in no state to make any arrangement with you. You didn’t give two shits about me.
You just saw the dollar signs and went for it, so now you can take it up with David. Good fucking luck.”
The associates fled the room almost as fast as Rebekah and her flotsam did.
Hailey stayed. She put her head down on the cool surface of the marble table and visualized Rebekah Rainier getting hit by a high-speed train, then dying in a fiery plane crash, and finally getting torn apart—slowly, lips saved for last—by a rabid dog.
Even then, though, Hailey still wouldn’t see any money.
Rebekah had nothing in her own name, and David Rainier had huge pockets, probably even deeper than they knew about.
His wealth was spread all over the world.
All Hailey had been after, all she had stuck her neck out for, was a little piece of it for Rebekah.
But now, without the looming threat of the family court system and the bargaining chip of his children, the firm would have to go after David using its own resources.
They might be successful in some small way, eventually, but it would take years.
It would cost millions. It was all Hailey’s fault.
Hailey vomited into a trash can. Her head was throbbing, and even though she knew that Mack (who because of his mother still suffered from extreme paranoia about headaches) would never forgive her for it, she prayed this was a brain hemorrhage from hitting her head earlier.
That had to be an easier road forward than the one she had just veered onto.