Page 110 of The Suit

“And she followed their instructions to the letter.”

“She never gave them the email.”

“Kit, I don’t know what you think you know about Beulah, but I promise you it’s not correct. She’s the Queen of manipulation, and you’re too smart to fall into her fucking trap.”

On the other hand,Iobviously wasn’t.

“I know everything about her. We spent a lot of time together over the Memorial weekend, and I’ve spoken to her every day since. We had dinner the night you broke into her hotel room.” Kit snarled at me. “She was going to tell you everything.”

I looked over to Murray, my jaw twitching. “Did you know about this? These lies she’s fed Kit?”

He placed coffees down on the table for Penn and me, “I don’t think they’re lies, mate. Think she might be genuine this time.”

Un-fucking-believable.

First she’d conned my best friend’s girlfriend, and now my best friend.

Beulah Holmes really was the devil, and not in a good way.

“Look, Rafe,” Kit’s tone softened slightly, “I’m not taking anything away from what you both did in school, but that place she worked had her trapped, and she’s been trying to find a way to make it right.”

What a load of bullshit. That firm was exactly the right place for her to work…

“Wait, what do you mean worked? Past tense.”

She pointed to the paper Murray had dropped on my desk earlier. “How do you think that happened?”

“There was a data leak.”

“Yes, and who do you think leaked it?”

I looked up at Murray whose face was blank, then back to Kit and shrugged. The article hadn’t said, but what she was insinuating was absurd.

“Beulah did.”

Yep, absurd. “No, there’s no way.”

“She did, Rafe. She’s not the person you think she is.”

“She’s exactly the person I think she is! And if she shopped them, it’s only because she…”

But I couldn’t finish that sentence because I didn’t have a good enough reason for why she would have done it. Not under pressure. Give me an hour, and I’d come up with something valid.

“She did it because she realized how bad the firm was, how deep the illegal practices were, and how she’d never be able to escape it,” Kit’s eyes met mine in challenge, “and because she’s fallen for you. And you’ve fallen for her, and what’s more, you know deep down I’m right, otherwise you wouldn’t currently look and smell like you’d been sleeping in a dumpster.”

I stood up, almost causing Penn to fall off his chair from the speed.

“Okay, that’s… we do not… I’m telling you right now, I may have, at one point in recent time, thought I liked her, but I have not fallen for Beulah so, get that out of your head and stop listening to anything your boyfriend says to the contrary.” I shot a scowl at Murray who was wisely staying silent. “Good for her for telling the authorities, but that doesn’t change anything. She did it because she knew I was onto her. She did it to get out of going to jail. Nothing Beulah Holmes does is ever not self-serving.”

“She set up a meeting with the FBI before you found out about the email,” Kit replied smugly, her arms crossed over her chest.

Why could I not think of a counterargument? Where had all my courtroom wiles vanished too?

“Beulah Holmes lives in Chicago,” was literally the best thing I could come up with and had practically nothing to do with the subject at hand.

“You’re right, she does,” Kit agreed, and my stomach knotted for no reason.

Or no reason I wanted to acknowledge.

---