Page 99 of The Suit

“Really? Because you seemed pretty adamant when you ran out of the club last night.” He poured out three coffees and passed them around. “How did you end up here anyway?”

Penn and I looked at each other; it was obvious neither of us knew the answer to that question. I couldn’t actually remember getting here.

“Who knows,”

“OH CRAP!”

Murray and I both looked at Penn who was holding his phone in one hand and half a bagel in the other and waited for the explanation.

“Guess I don’t get any time to sweat it out. I’ve been summoned.” He threw his phone on the table then picked up his coffee and leaned back in his chair, far too casually for someone who was about to get reamed out by a) his grandfather, and b) one of the most formidable businessmen of the twentieth century. “What? I’m not going to see him withthishangover!”

“Did you hit your head last night?” Murray leaned over the table to feel Penn’s forehead, only to have his hand smacked back.

“Possibly.” He shoved the remainder of his bagel into his mouth, then started making another.

I raised my eyebrows at Murray over the rim of my coffee cup. He returned my silent question with a look of his own. Yeah, neither of us knew what the fuck Penn was doing.

“Okay then, Raferty, your turn.”

“My turn, what?”

“You’re telling us that after the last two weeks of ‘the best sex of your life’ with Beulah, her coming to Cliffside for the weekend, not to mention allowing Penn to dress her for the baseball, you’re just going to let her go and be okay with it?”

I snatched up a piece of bacon and snapped my teeth into it. “Yep.”

His eyes narrowed at me. “And you don’t feel any different?”

“Nope, why should I? I’m angry because I now have more work to do, but her, I should have expected. This is exactly the type of shit she used to try and pull at college, only this time I let my dick convince my brain she was legit, and I fell for all of it, like a fucking patsy.”

What a fucking patsy.

“You fell forher,you mean?” Penn mumbled, his mouth still so full of bagel it was almost hard to decipher what he said, but from the way he and Murray were both staring at me I got the gist.

“No, I fucking didn’t!” I snarled, my mood blackening quicker than Penn’s eye from that time he missed catching Ace Watson’s first home run ball, and it hit him square in the face. I, however, didnotmiss the look he shared with Murray at my outburst, and instead of ignoring them I got up, grabbed my bagel and coffee, and stormed back to the couch to lie down.

That’ll show them.

This mess was all their fault in the first fucking place. If it hadn’t been for their stupid bet, I’d never be in this position. I’d never have been brainwashed into thinking Beulah might be a decent human being under the years of games and deceit.

I’d never have underestimated her desperation to get back at me.

Not to mention the damage she’d caused my client, because obviously that’s what was really important. Obviously.

I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, a half-drunk coffee cup balancing on my chest just over the ache which seemed to be growing by the minute. I was giving myself thirty minutes to get my shit together, hit the shower, then get back to work to salvage something from this gigantic cluster fuck.

Beulah Holmes was dead to me. I’d just decided.

Now I needed my heart to get the memo.

19

Beulah

“Agent Diggs, I will remind you once more that my client is here voluntarily, so it would work in your favor if you stuck to the topic at hand, namely the sustained and deliberate intent by Feather Smythe Jones and Partners to not only build a complex web of offshore accounting practices intended to launder billions of dollars, evade tax payments, and circumvent government sanctions, but offer it as a legitimate service to high-net-worth clients.”

Agent Ray Diggs glared at Professor Grannery, but he did stop talking… or rather stopped interrogating me about the Pierson case he lost last year. Picking up his papers and tapping them on the desk to straighten the edges, he pointedly laid them back down.

“Interesting you brought legal representation with you, Beulah.”

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