Page 49 of Unwillingly His

Busted, but that didn’t mean I had to let him know he had won.

“I understand.”

“May I inquire as to where you are off to this morning?”

I turned and looked him in the eye as I pushed my shoulders back, a position of strength my father had taught me. “No.”

“Be back on time. Otherwise, the master of this house will be displeased.” He looked down his nose at me. “Maybe then he will take my suggestion and put you to work with the rest of the entry-level staff instead of giving you a free ride you do not deserve.”

“You don’t know what I do and do not deserve.”

“I know enough,” he said, turning on his overly polished heel and walking away.

A cold fire burned in my belly, fueled by rage and embarrassment. It didn’t slip my notice that even my anger was now cold.

Even when I tried to slam the door behind me, it simply glided shut with a very unsatisfying click.

This house was the worst.

I called an Uber, put in my new card info, and went straight to my lawyer’s office.

The ride wasn’t too bad, and I had even managed to calm myself down a bit. I had every intention of walking into that office and tearing him a new one, but I was at least calm enough that I could act like a well-mannered lady while doing it.

Logically, I knew a hysterical woman never got what she needed, only ridicule, and I needed the lawyer’s help. And for him not to send me a bill until whatever we were going to do was done.

When I stepped out of my car, I got an alert from my banking app informing me I had $163.00 left on my card. All of the poise and composure I had managed to find instantly evaporated.

“You have to get rid of him,” I said when I stormed into my lawyer’s office, his secretary trailing after me, telling me I couldn’t go in there.

My incompetent attorney was just taking a sip of his coffee when I came in, spilling it down his cheap, ill-fitting suit.

I hoped it burned.

It was a cruel-spirited thought, and I immediately regretted it.

Then he shot me a look of annoyance like I was a child who was running wild and interrupting his work instead of a paying client who needed his help.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad.

This man was supposed to be on my side. He was the only help I had, and he saw me as a nuisance.

I didn’t understand it. My father had used this firm exclusively for nearly twenty years, so they stuck me with what I was hoping was a first-year associate nepotism baby.

I didn’t give a fuck who his uncle was. After the amount of business I gave this firm, how was I not treated better?

“Ms. Deiderich, did we have an appointment?”

“No, your secretary is refusing to schedule anything. Apparently, you are all booked, so I thought I would come down here and see if you could fit me in between meetings.” I made a show of looking around the empty room. “What do you know? It looks like you have time now.”

“Ms. Deiderich, please, this is not how things?—”

I held up my hand, cutting him off as I took a seat on the other side of his desk. “What he is doing cannot be legal. He is ruining my life.”

“There is nothing I can do,” he said, grabbing napkins from a drawer and dabbing at his shirt like it would do anything.

He gave up and hit the button on his phone, asking his secretary to get him a new shirt. The snotty bitch asked if he would also like her to get security.

“Do it, and I’ll bring my complaints to your boss’s boss, and then I will take out an ad in the Washington Post about this firm intentionally tanking cases. I will ruin this firm and your career. My father may be gone, but my name still carries weight.”

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