The Devil You Know (The Devils #3)(73)

I let myself be escorted out, under all those disdainful gazes. Meg’s eyes met mine and I summoned all my hatred into that final look I gave her. She was just a pawn, but I’d never forgive her for it. I’d never forgive any of them.

Men with power had made this happen. Men just like my father, and the lawyers who railroaded my mother. They helped each other, covered for each other, did whatever was necessary to keep their little circle closed.

And they’re apparently still doing it.





44





Ben’s in a rush the next morning, the day before our first round of depositions. He’s fully dressed while I’m still blinking myself awake.

“Do we need to talk about the thing from last night?” I ask him. He swings yesterday’s jacket over his shoulder. “Yeah,” he says, giving me a too-small smile, “but not right now.”

When I get into the office, I go to my Pinterest travel page. I did have a Fiji trip on there. The link shows me an open-air villa with a large white bed, an entire open wall facing the sea.

Two days ago, it felt like a real possibility. Now, I’m not sure.

I open my email and discover Sophia has sent me photos of what is supposedly her diary, each entry detailing an incident of abuse. She says Evan hit her one night and that he threatened to kill her and the kids more than once. I’m so scared of him, she writes in one entry. I just want the kids to be safe.

Except it’s dated two weeks before the trip she took to an Arizona spa, and you don’t leave your kids for the weekend with someone you mistrust to that extent. She’d certainly have mentioned some of this before now.

I’d like to discuss it with Ben, but everything has to be tabled until we get through tomorrow and he’s so busy it’s early evening before I even see him.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t intend to be gone for so long. You probably haven’t come up for air once.”

“I took a little break to look up trips to Fiji,” I tell him with a nervous smile, testing the water.

He winces. It’s a half-second at most, but I see it. I turn away, distractedly shuffling through files. Inside, though, more bricks are added to the wall I wanted to rebuild the night he slept at his own place, the one I started building in earnest last night when he suggested I’d stalked someone.

I could ask him if the conversation with Fields has changed things between us, but why would I bother? It’s obvious it has.





The depositions begin early the next morning in a conference room at the Ritz-Carlton.

The first witness, Michelle Mitchell—Fiducia’s only female manager—has clearly been coached, so she doesn’t offer us a single useful word. Every question is answered with, “I don’t remember” or “Not to the best of my knowledge.”

Next up is Ryan Venek, who acknowledges he was in a fist fight with another employee and still got promoted. He also admits that yes, there’d been some trips to strip clubs on the company’s dime.

Lauren is next. She attests to the strip club outings, and says she was told she could only come if she was, “willing to take it all off.”

I produce receipts from two of the clubs, which show the charges billed to a corporate card. “Were these two of those nights?” I ask, and she says they were. She names every employee she remembers attending. It’s a long list.

I’ve already warned her that Aronson is going to do his best to make her doubt herself, but her shoulders sag as he asks about her affair with another employee, references a party where she drank too much, an inappropriate comment made about her boss’s attire. I complain about the relevance of the questions to no avail. Nonetheless, Aronson is a lot less smug when it concludes.

Our final witness is Rick Sandburg, the vice president who charged $15,000 at Magnolia’s Adult Playhouse.

We ask the basic questions about his role, his length of employment. I’m already smiling because I can feel it coming: the moment when Aronson realizes how much worse this is going than he thinks.

I ask about the company outings to Magnolia’s. He claims not to remember until I produce a photo of him getting a lap dance there.

“I charged it to the company card,” he then says, “but I paid them back.”

“So, if I were to subpoena your bank records,” I continue, still smiling, leaning forward, “I’d find a check to Fiducia for over fifteen thousand dollars? Let me remind you that lying under oath is a felony with a prison sentence of up to five years.”

“Miss Charles,” says Aronson, “you’re intimidating the witness.”

I am, and it’s worked. Sandburg’s gaze veers wildly from opposing counsel to me. “I’m done,” he announces, rising from his chair. “I want my own attorney present before this continues.”

Aronson looks furious as Sandburg walks out. I’m smiling like I’ve just won the lottery.

“Funnily enough, none of the strip club outings appears in the expense reports we were sent,” I tell him, sliding the hotel receipt someone clearly forged for the same amount. “How curious that it came to us as this instead.”

He rises, looking only at Ben. “I need to talk to my client.”





I remain in the conference room until midnight with Ben, Craig, Fields and another partner, hammering out what we will ask for. Aronson called Ben to say they want to settle. He refuses to speak to me. Perhaps he finds me shrill and abrasive.