Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways #1)(5)

That case turned out to be the one all Manhattan talked about that year. While my superiors were chasing white-collar tax crooks and banking fraudsters, I went after a drug lord who’d run over a three-year-old boy, killing him instantly, to make it to his daughter’s glitzy sweet-sixteen birthday. A classic hit-and-run. The drug lord in question, Denny Romano, was armed with a line of top-notch lawyers, while I arrived in court in my Salvation Army suit with a leather bag that was falling apart. Everyone rooted for the kid from the DA’s office to nail the big, bad, macho man. In the end, I managed to get Romano convicted of vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to four years in prison. It was a small win for the poor boy’s family and a huge win for me.

Deacon Cromwell had cornered me at a barbershop when I’d been fresh out of Harvard Law School. I’d had a plan, and it had included making a name for myself at the DA’s office, but he’d told me to look him up if I ever wanted to see how the other half lived. After the Romano case, I hadn’t had to do anything—he’d come back to me.

“He wants to see me back in court?” I practically spit out the words. My appetite for winning cases was healthy, but I had a reputation for coming in real hard at the negotiation table and walking away with more than I promised my clients. When I did show up in court, I made a spectacle of the other side. No one wanted to deal with me. Not the top litigators who charged a cool two grand an hour only to lose a case to me, and not my ex-colleagues from the DA’s office, who didn’t have the resources to compete.

“He wants to see you sweat it.” Traurig rolled the lit cigar between his fingers thoughtfully. “Win me a high-profile case, one that you cannot tie together in a sweetheart deal in a fully air-conditioned office. Show yourself in court, and the old man will put your name on the door, no questions asked.”

“I’m doing a two-person job,” I reminded him. This was true. I worked unholy hours.

Traurig shrugged. “Take it or leave it, kiddo. We got you where we want you.”

Leaving the firm at this stage, when I was a breath away from becoming a partner, could set my career years back, and the bastard knew it. I was going to either suck it up or get a partnership at a much smaller, less prestigious firm.

It wasn’t the way I’d wanted tonight to go, but it was better than nothing. Besides, I knew my capabilities. Depending on court schedules and the case I’d pick, I could be made partner in a few short weeks.

“Consider it done.”

Traurig let out a laugh. “I pity the unlucky counsel you are going to go against to prove your point.”

I turned around and made my way to the bar across the street, to meet Arsène (pronounced aar-sn, like the Lupin character) and Riggs.

I didn’t have principles.

And when it came down to what I wanted from life, I didn’t have any limits either.

The Brewtherhood was our go-to place in SoHo. The bar was a stone’s throw from Arsène’s penthouse, where Riggs could be found whenever he was in town and wasn’t crashing at my place. We liked the Brewtherhood for its variety of foreign lagers, lack of fancy cocktails, and ability to repulse tourists with its straight-shooting charm. Mostly, though, the Brewtherhood had an underdog appeal—small, stuffy, tucked in a basement. It reminded us of our Flowers in the Attic adolescence.

I spotted Arsène straightaway. He stood out like a dark shadow in a carnival. He was perched over a barstool, nursing a bottle of Asahi. Arsène liked his beer to match his personality—extra dry, with a foreign air—and was always dressed in Savile Row’s finest silks, even though he did not technically have an office job. Come to think of it, he did not technically have a job, period. He was an entrepreneur who liked to stick his fingers in many lucrative pies. Currently he was in bed with a few hedge fund companies that waived their two-and-twenty performance fees just for the pleasure of working with Arsène Corbin. Merger arbitrage and convertible arbitrage were his playgrounds.

I shouldered past a drunk group of women dancing and singing “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” getting all the words wrong, and leaned against the bar.

“You’re late,” Arsène drawled, reading a soft paperback on the sticky bar counter and not even bothering to take a look at me.

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“Thanks for the psychological assessment. But you’re still late, on top of being rude.” He dragged a pint of Peroni my way. I clicked it against his beer bottle and took a sip.

“Where’s Riggs?” I shouted into his ear over the music. Arsène jerked his chin to his left. My eyes followed the direction. Riggs was there, one hand leaning against the wooden, taxidermy-decorated wall, probably knuckle deep between the blonde’s thighs through her skirt, his lips dragging across her neck.

Yup. Arsène definitely meant her ass implants. She looked like she could float on those things all the way to Ireland.

Unlike Arsène and me, who prided ourselves on looking the part of the 1 percent club, Riggs loved sporting the billionaire-bum look. He was a con artist, a crook, and a delinquent. A man with so little sincerity I was surprised he didn’t practice law. He had the clichéd appeal of the wrong-side-of-the-tracks bad boy. The floppy flax-gold hair, deep tan, unshaven goatee, and dirt under the fingernails. His smile was lopsided, his eyes depthless and bottomless at the same time, and he had the annoying ability to talk in his bedroom voice about everything, including his bowel movements.