Page 22 of Bonus Daddy
She was pale and nervous instead of sunny and confident. Dampened and dull when she was typically vibrant.
“I’ve never seen you in black.” I rested a hand on her lower back and directed her through the door.
She shrugged stiffly. “Kenneth always insisted I dress like this. It was easier just to appease him. Today will go more smoothly if he has one less thing to criticize me about. He despised when I wore color. Especially pink.”
“I like your pink.” I frowned. “You don’t look like yourself.”
“I’m not myself. When I have to interact with him, I can’t be. It took me years to find my way back, and now, this is an uncomfortable costume I wear for a few hours to keep the peace.”
I gritted my teeth, keeping the rest of my thoughts to myself. How dare this fucker make her feel anything less than incredible? Normally I went into these kinds of meetings cool and collected,but my fingers were already itching, and the need to punch something was already welling up. I rubbed my bruised knuckles and focused on remaining calm as we rode the elevator up to the office.
Our New York office was state-of-the-art. We could be considered fancy, but it had nothing on Kenneth’s lawyers. Though being fancy didn’t mean a lawyer was good at their job. It had more to do with how much they charged and what types of cases they took on. Usually those involving corporate bullshit rather than helping actual people.
This place was famous for doing private equity transactions, so it made little sense for Kenneth to hire them to help him with his divorce. Yet here we were.
His attorney, a woman in her forties with a severe gray bob, did her best to maintain a calm, confident façade as we ran through the custody status, but I saw through the bullshit. She was completely out of her element, seemingly unable to even recognize the New Jersey statutes.
Good. I’d take every advantage I could get.
I crossed my arms and stared down Jess’s ex.
Gray hair, perma-tan, the unlined forehead of a man who took his Botox regimen seriously. Then there was the “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. Even though the mother of his children was sitting across from him.
He was even more repulsive than I’d anticipated after I’d read the case files and done my own research online.
“There is no need for your client to oppose our motion to relocate,” I said to the attorney, though I didn’t look away from the asshat across from me.
He didn’t react in the slightest.
“We will oppose,” the attorney said crisply. “He is the children’s father.”
“Kenneth,” Jess said, her voice strained. “We’ve talked about this. The girls would be so much happier in Vermont. I did what youasked. I didn’t force visitation, and I’ve been flexible. I would never keep them from you.”
The impassive expression he continued to wear made me want to choke him with his thousand-dollar Hermes tie.
“Okay, then.” I shuffled my files and got to work, laying out exactly what would happen, when he would be expected to appear in court, and how we’d use his opposition to this request to reopen the child support calculation.
His eyes widened when I dropped that truth bomb.
“And given that you exercise no visitation rights and have moved out of state yourself, I can’t imagine a judge being sympathetic.”
“We’ll see,” he said.
“It won’t be a Manhattan courtroom,” I replied. “It’s Jersey, and if I know one thing about the Jersey legal system, it’s that they really hate deadbeat dads.”
His face paled, even as he kept his expression flat.
As his lawyer took her turn, asking me questions about basic procedure she should already understand, tension radiated off Jess, making the air thicker.
If the woman across the table worked for me, I’d have fired her. Lo would wipe the floor with this woman in court, and she hadn’t even sat for the bar.
“They’d love to see you,” Jess said to her ex, somehow maintaining a kind tone.
Her ability to treat this fucker with any respect whatsoever only proved she was a much better person than I was.
“Kit is playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music next Friday. She’s the youngest musician invited to showcase.” Her lips tipped up in a barely there smile. “She’s been working so hard on this very difficult Bach piece.”
My chest squeezed. I had no idea Kit was so talented.
