SWNOVELS Lovely Beast: Chapter 6
“Well, what’s it like working for my husband?” Brice grins at me and leans closer across the table. Robyn’s sitting on my left and Cassidy is sitting on my right, and everyone’s looking at me like they want me to dish about the case.
But if they saw the pictures of those mangled corpses, they wouldn’t be so interested.
“It’s fine,” I say and take a drink of water. We’re all out to dinner at a decent Mexican place in downtown Dallas, which means it’s crowded and the buzz of conversation has me on edge, or maybe it’s the fact that I spent the last few days obsessively reading about murder.
“Fine? That’s all you have for us?” Cassidy laughs and looks at Brice. “She doesn’t look like it’s fine.”
“Carmine said it was a complicated case.” Brice frowns a little, looking worried. “He’s not asking too much of you, is he?”
“It’s fine, really.” I try to give them a smile but it feels wrong and I let it drop.
“I heard Angelo’s been helping out,” Robyn says and her smirk makes me grimace.
“I wonder where you heard that,” Cassidy mutters.
“Sorry,” Brice says quickly, “but ever since the wedding, I figured—”
“I’m fine, okay!” I can hear the anxiety in my tone and I try to pull it back, but the girls are already staring at me. “It’s just a hard case, that’s all.”
“I’ll talk to Carmine,” Brice says and nods to herself. “I’ll have him find someone else. I love you, Sar, and I’m not about to let you kill yourself just because you want to do a favor for my husband.”
“No,” I say quickly, “seriously, it’s not like that. He’s doing me a favor, if anything. Work hasn’t been exactly—” I stop talking suddenly, face turning bright red. I’m utterly mortified and I don’t know why I’d spill that out now all of a sudden, but the girls are giving me pitying stares.
“You want to talk about it?” Robyn asks, and I shake my head.
“You don’t have to,” Cassidy says. “But we’re here for you.”
I hold up my hands. “Look, I’m really fine.”
“You keep using that word but I don’t think you know what it means,” Robyn says with a grin.
“I’m just tired and cramming a lot to get myself up to speed.” The waitress returns with our meals, and I stare down at the line of lovely looking tacos, and my appetite is completely gone.
I wasn’t kidding about work, but I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I’m at the bottom of the totem pole and even though taking on this Carmine case is big business, I still have at least half a dozen other attorneys sniffing around acting like I can’t handle anything. Even the big shot at the end of the hall, this massive trial lawyer named Aldrick Genette, has been stopping by to give me pointers that are basically thinly veiled insults.
Nobody thinks I can pull this off.
Not even me.
But the girls take pity and the subject changes. I sit back and mostly listen while Cassidy discusses her training business, and Robyn tells a particularly raunchy story about a Tinder date gone wrong, and I keep catching these looks from Brice. I know what she’s thinking, but I wish she’d leave it alone.
When dinner’s done, we say goodnight, and I’m left out on the street trying to decide if I should go back to the office for a few more hours or if I should head home. Brice sidles up next to me while her driver waits nearby.
“Must be nice,” I say, nodding at the limo.
She smiles and shrugs. “I can’t complain.”
“I know what you’re about to ask.”
“You do?”
“You’re worried about me, aren’t you?”
“There are some red flags.” She smiles at me and tilts her head. “But you never let that stuff get to you, do you?”
“It’s not in my nature.”
“Which is why I’m so worried.” She takes my arm and leans against my shoulder. “We all know what my husband does for a living. I love that man but his business is a little bit…”
“Illegal? Messy? Violent?”
“I was thinking complicated, but sure we can go with all of the above.”
“You know what’s strange? Even despite all that, I still want to move ahead with this case.”
“If it’s about the money—”
“It’s not.”
She pulls back and studies me. “Then why?”
“It’s about winning.”
She looks surprised. “Winning? Really?”
I pull away from her and start walking. She falls into step and the car drifts after us like a massive, sleek black puppy dog, except there are guys with guns inside of it and thankfully, they’re on our side.
“You met my parents, right?”
“Once,” she says. “Sophomore year they came to visit. Remember that?”
“I remember,” I say and glance at the buildings. Mom was already drunk and Dad made it clear that he wanted to be anywhere else. When his beeper went off, he practically jumped at the chance to fly back early for a surgery the following day. “They’ve been like that my whole life.”
“Like what?”
“Mom’s been overbearing, almost obsessive, but only insofar as it reflects back on her. Dad’s the total opposite, he’s been too busy being Mr. Super Surgeon to ever give a shit about his daughter. They raised me to hit hard and finish things, and Mom would always tell me that winning is the only thing worth doing.”
“Oh, honey,” Brice says with a sigh. “I can only imagine how that might’ve fucked you up.”
I smile tightly. “I try not to think about it, but here we are anyway. I need this case exactly because it’s too much for me. I need it to prove that I’m not just the spoiled brat daughter of a brilliant and rich surgeon and a socialite alcoholic.”
We walk in silence for a bit. I feel vulnerable and strange, and maybe it’s the baby making me say all this, but it actually feels good to tell someone about my family dynamic instead of bottling it up.
“You probably know this already, but you don’t have anything to prove to anyone,” Brice says and when I give her a look, she only shrugs. “I really mean it. You’re smart and successful and gorgeous, and I wish I had your hair—”
“That’s not true. The hair part, the rest is dead on.”
She laughs. “I’m only saying, don’t put yourself in a tough spot just because you think your parents want you to.”
“It’s not really for them. It’s more for… the person I see myself as. The person I want to be, but I’m not sure I actually am. If I can’t take on a case like this and knock it out of the park, then am I really as good as I think? It’s as much about proving to myself that I can do it too.”
Brice nods and slowly stops walking. She faces me, her expression serious, and she takes my left hand between both of her own. It’s strange and I don’t love the contact but I don’t pull away either—I’m being vulnerable for once in my life so why not go all the way? She takes a deep breath and looks me in the eye.
“Sara, I think you should walk away.”
My eyebrows raise. “Okay. That’s direct. But why?”
“Because I think it’s more dangerous than Carmine’s letting on.”
I let that slowly sink in. I know something big is going on here, or at least something extremely shady, but this feels like the start of something.
“What do you know?”
“Nothing concrete, only I heard him on the phone with Angelo last night. They were talking about… well, Carmine was talking about his enemies.” She clears her throat and tightens her grip on me. “The list is very long.”
“Angelo’s just trying to find out who we need to look into, that’s all.”
“They’re not the kind of people you want to get involved with. No, don’t give me that look, I know I’m not one to talk considering I married Carmine. But I didn’t have a choice in that, I just—”
“You love him.”
“Exactly,” she says quietly and sounds exhausted. “I don’t want you to get sucked into something bigger than you can handle, that’s all.”
“Don’t worry about me. Angelo claims he’s basically my bodyguard. And despite his many personality flaws, he can be… useful.”
She nods miserably but slowly her smile returns. “Are you sure there’s nothing going on with him? I know you two, at the wedding—”
“Nothing,” I say quickly and pull my hand from her grip. “I promise. Strictly business. We have boundaries.”
“Yeah, right. I know all about boundaries and how quickly they evaporate.” She steers me toward the car. “Come on, let me drive you home.”
“No, really, I’m fine—”
“Sara, stop it. I have a rich and powerful husband, at least let me spoil my friends a tiny bit.”
I sigh as she opens the door to the limo. “Who am I to turn down a ride?”
“Exactly. Let’s go.”
We get into the back seat and the conversation turns to more mundane things like movies and TV, but I keep hearing her warning in the back of my head.
This is bigger than me. This is deep, and I might drown.
But I’m barreling forward anyway.