Page 7 of Laws of Love
Saving the notes that she wrote, she pushed her tablet aside. She could have taken them on her computer, but she’d always felt as if it were rude to type when someone was trying to speak. Even if you were doing it for a good reason. Aiva also liked to take notes after she’d heard from her client, not during. That way, she could repeat it back to them as she wrote it, and it solidified the information in her head.
Opening the folder, she took out the printed text messages placed on the left-hand side. If she had to guess, she would say there were at least thirty pages of them. Just from the first page she read, she could tell that Mia was a certain type of pest. Demanding, to say the least, and she didn’t even know the woman.
By the time Aiva finished reading page two, she found Mia was also entitled. If Knox did something, it wasn’t good enough from Mia’s own admission, and she wanted more.
When she’d gotten through the first five pages, she discovered that the woman was manipulative as well. She liked to use their daughter, Yasmine, as a tool to get Knox to do what she wanted. Aiva hated those types of parents. She always enjoyed knocking them down a notch. Male or female.
Aiva only got through the first seven pages before she was putting the printed text messages back. She was already sick of reading the other woman’s words. So, she put them aside and pulled out the prenup. It wasn’t very long, just three and a half pages. It was standard, and there were no loopholes that she could find in it, but that didn’t mean that the opposing counsel wouldn’t try to. She suspected they would go into mediation just from the text messages she’d read.
There was even a USB inside with a sticky note on it titled voicemails. Aiva looked at it, debating whether she wanted to put herself through that just yet. Especially if the nature was anything like the text messages.
Instead, she opted to read accounts that were typed up of incidents where Mia had purposely kept Yasmine from Knox, with witness statements. It seemed he’d definitely taken the advice into account. She was sure that the texts alone would be enough to get him full custody, though she wasn’t sure if they would be enough for supervised visitations.
Placing everything back into the folder, Aiva placed it in one of her drawers and locked it away. She would look at it more a bit later. There was an hour before she needed to be in a mediation meeting, and she hoped this would be the last one for this couple. They’d been going back and forth for almost four months now, and Aiva felt as if they were just dragging it out at this point.
Hopefully, they would reach an agreement, and she could be done with them because even her own client was giving her headaches.
Aiva walked into her house, placed her bag by the door, went into the kitchen, and grabbed a bottle of wine from her wine refrigerator. She needed a drink. The mediation session had gone on longer than it should have, but in the end, they reached an agreement.
She poured herself a generous glass of wine and went to her bedroom. Taking her shoes off, she sat her wine down on the dresser. She placed the shoes in her walk-in closet, removed her suit jacket, undid the top button on her blouse, and pulled it out of her pants.
Grabbing her glass and leaving the room, Aiva went to the living room. She grabbed her phone from the side of her bag and sat down on the couch. She wasn’t in the mood to cook and decided to place an order for Italian food.
Turning on the television, she went to her DVR, and found the last episode she’d recorded. She watched the episode and got comfortable starting the relaxed weekend she had planned.
4
Knox looked at his ringing phone with a sigh. He was in no mood to deal with Mia. He knew her well enough to know the conversation wouldn’t be civil, and if, by some chance, it started that way; he knew it wouldn’t be for long.
Grabbing his tablet, he brought up the camera, making sure the time stamp option was enabled. He propped it up with the stand, so he was in the frame and started it, before answering the phone on speaker.
“Hello?”
“Why are you ignoring my text messages?” Mia immediately questioned.
“Hello to you too, Mia,” he replied. “And I responded to your text. I told you I’d take Yas to her appointment.”
“You know that isn’t the one I’m talking about!”
Knox sighed. “Will you stop yelling?” He was sure that Mia didn’t know how to communicate with him without yelling.
“I wouldn’t have to if you did your fatherly duty,” Mia responded.
Knox had to physically bite his tongue because his parenting skills weren’t the ones that should be called into question. He knew Mia did it to piss him off. To rile him up. Knox wondered when she’d realized that just because she spouted bullshit, it wouldn’t make it true.
“You and I both know Yas doesn’t need any new clothes. Especially since I just gave you one thousand dollars two weeks ago to get her some,” Knox informed her, since Mia’s text message was asking him for five hundred dollars to get Yasmine some clothes.
“Well, that wasn’t enough. Yasmine wanted other things, and we couldn’t get them because you didn’t give us enough to do so.”
Knox wasn’t stupid. He knew that if he gave the money to Mia, it wouldn’t go towards anything for Yasmine, as he was sure most of the money he’d given her to go shopping for their daughter two weeks ago hadn’t. Not that Mia neglected Yasmine’s needs. It was that with as much as he gave her; he knew it wasn’t all being used on the five-year-old.
“Okay, then I’ll take her after her dentist appointment,” Knox responded. “Text me the stores you went to, and I’ll take her back.”
“Ugh! That is not what I asked you to do!”
“No, but it gets the same result, correct? Yas gets the clothes she wants.”
“You’re such an asshole,” Mia informed him before hanging up on him.
