Page 37 of Indiscretion

She sipped her wine. “So what’syourwar story?”

Very few people knew the reason I’d gone into criminal-defense work. Ben did, but he was tight-lipped like me and didn’t discuss a friend’s private life. I wasn’t even sure why I’d mentioned to Naomi that Ihada story, but maybe her sharing made me want to gain some respect from her.

“I grew up in a family that was pretty well off. My mom didn’t work, we had a summer home, and I went to private school. My dad was an executive at a brokerage firm. In seventh grade, I came home to a team of federal agents swarming my house. There were like thirty of them. My mom was standing on the lawn crying, holding my little sister. I think Sarah was two or three at the time.”

“The feds were there for your dad?”

I nodded. “The firm he worked at was being investigated for running a Ponzi scheme.Hewas being investigated. The feds froze all of my parents’ assets, and all of their friends and family quickly scattered. No one wanted the stench to attach to them. My mom wound up selling her mom’s jewelry to pay for a terrible lawyer, and I remember the guy kept pushing my dad to take a deal because there was so much evidence against him. My dad wouldn’t, though. He was steadfast that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and he was being set up to take the fall. Long story short, my dad was convicted and sentenced to twenty years. Nine months into his sentence, he committed suicide in prison.”

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

I nodded. “Thank you. But it gets worse. Not long after, a guy who worked at the same firm in the accounting department was diagnosed with end-stage heart failure. He was never accused of anything and hadn’t been part of the case in any way. One day, he walked into the local precinct and admitted that it had been him who cooked the books and funneled hundreds of millions into an offshore account. He handed over all the proof to clear my father of any wrongdoing, because he wanted to make things right before dying.” I scoffed. “Make things right forwho, I don’t know. But that’s what happened. Years later, when I was in law school, I got my father’s case files from the DOJ under the Freedom of Information Act, and I had my mom get my dad’s attorney’s files. I was still a student, and I could’ve poked a million holes in the government’s case that his attorney had missed.”

“So you decided to go into criminal law to try to stop that from happening again?”

I nodded. “White-collar cases are complex. The people running scams are usually smarter than the prosecutors and the defense attorneys. So you have to work harder to put on a defense for an innocent person.”

Naomi sat back in the booth. “Wow. So we’ve both lost a lot because the legal system failed people.”

“I’m not going to lie, the money is pretty damn good, too. But that’s not why I went into the field.”

“That story makes me look at you differently.”

“Yeah?” I drank my beer. “Like maybe you want to come home with me and make me forget for a little while?”

She smiled. “No chance. But maybe, just maybe, you’re not as big of a jerk as I thought.”

“Give it time.” I winked. “I’ll make you question that opinion.”

We both laughed. Too soon, our drinks were empty again. I gestured to her glass. “You want another?”

“I should probably get going.”

Disappointment hit me harder than it should’ve. “Alright. I’ll call you an Uber.”

“Oh, you don’t really have to do that. I can just take the subway.”

I swiped my phone on and called up the app. “No way in hell I’m letting you take the train after two drinks.”

The Uber was only four minutes away, so I quickly closed the app, and we walked outside to wait together.

“Thank you for the drinks,” Naomi said. “And the ride home.”

A black Acura pulled to the curb. I double checked that the license plate matched the driver assigned and opened the rear car door. “This is you.”

“I guess I’ll see you at the next event the happy couple hosts.” She smiled. “Maybe it will be a baby shower next year.”

A bizarre panic washed over me. Pregnancy was nine months long, and I didn’t think Ben and Lily were going to start a family for a few years. The thought of not seeing this woman for any extended period of time made me feel off-kilter. An odd tightness gripped my chest.

Naomi waved one last time and folded into the back of the car. When she reached for the door, my off feeling turned into a full-blown panic attack. I grabbed it just as it was about to close.

“Wait!”

Naomi’s brows drew together. “What’s wrong?”

Apparently I’ve lost my mind.“Come work for me. The job is yours if you want it.”

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