Ever After (8 page)

I started laughing, too. It
was
pretty funny, come to think of it. The way that the bastard had such a startled and humiliated look on his face. I replayed the scene on the television, and Scotty pointed at the screen and doubled over laughing again. “Look, Nick, look at that!” she screamed, pointing at the screen and laughing. “Look at the way he hangs his head. And that dirty look he gives to the screen. Can you just imagine what’s going through his mind?” Scotty stood up, put her hands on her hips, and said in a deep voice, as she imitated what Mr. Lucas was probably thinking in the video -  “that little cunt, I’m going to get her.” Then started laughing again.

Aaron walked in, trying to see what we were laughing at. “What’s so funny?” he asked in his baby voice.

I walked over to him and picked him up. “Nothing, little tyke. You wouldn’t understand.”
To say the very least.

Nevertheless, Aaron started laughing too, and clapping his little hands. I kissed the top of his head, and he squirmed down and went over to Scotty. She picked him up, and he touched her nose, and she started playing peek-a-boo with him, and that made him laugh even harder.

She looked over at me and said “let’s go out tonight, to dinner. I’m feeling pretty antsy right now, hearing that news, and I would love to get out of the house.”

So, we ended up at a pizza place, just the three of us. I kept looking over at Scotty, thinking about how nice it was to be with her and the little tyke. I could picture us doing this with a child of our own sometime soon.

That was a very happy moment in time for us, and I hoped that it would never end.

Of course, I knew, even at that moment, that such a moment in time could never be recaptured. Like any given moment in a person’s life, it appears, and then vanishes, as if it never happened. We were in a protective bubble, where life seemed to be taking a turn for the better, at last. We even had a waiter take a picture of us, so that we could always look back on that evening fondly. The evening when we finally attained something that both of us badly wanted.

The evening that neither of us really were thinking about the consequences.

Chapter 11

Indeed, our perfect little bubble that we were in after Mr. Lucas did his perp walk on camera did come to an end, two days later.

I had just gotten into the office, feeling pretty smug as I watched the DVR of the perp walk again, for perhaps the 100
th
time since it happened. Scotty and I had actually spent the previous evening doing just that, after we got home from the restaurant. We watched the DVR over and over again. Usually we made love a couple of times before going to bed, but not that night. There was something that was even more pleasurable to us than sex, and that was seeing the humiliation and rage on that monster’s face.

I got to work on one of my design projects, looking forward to Scotty herself coming into the office at noon that day. She was checking out different sober living facilities for her mother, so her morning was full. I wanted to help her, of course, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

“No, Nick, I love you for that. But I have to feel that I’m doing something for my mom and Aaron. I can’t stand the feeling that you’re doing all the heavy lifting. I feel bad enough that you had to force me to talk to Angie. I’m embarrassed about that, in fact. I have to take control of my own life and my responsibilities at some point. I love you for wanting to always hold my hand, though.”

“Okay,” I said, knowing that she was right. I did have a tendency to want to micromanage, and I had to work on that myself. “Call me when you find the right place.”

“I will,” she said.

So, when she called me at 10 that morning, I figured that she was calling about one of the facilities that she visited.
There were so many in the city, and Loretta was looking so much better every time she Skyped Scotty, that Scotty was hopeful that her mother would be released in a few more months. Scotty wanted to make sure that Loretta had her transitional plans already in place when she arrived in the city.

“Hey, sexy,” I said. “What did you find out?”

I was immediately concerned, however, when Scotty didn’t talk into the phone, but I could hear her sobbing.

“Scotty,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

She said nothing, but just kept sobbing into the phone.

“Where are you?” I asked, my design plans forgotten.

At that, Charlie got on the phone. “Mr. O’Hara, Scotty wanted me to give you the message that she’s going home right now.”

Oh, crap. Now what?

“Okay,” I said, and then went down to George’s office after hanging up the phone.

George looked up from his own project when I walked through the door. “Well, hello, Nick. What can I do for you?”

“Uh, I have to go home. I’m going to just go ahead and take my work with me and do it there.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll let anybody know who needs to talk to you that they need to contact you at home.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Then I headed home in my Jag, feeling apprehensive to say the very least. I had no idea why she was crying, and my imagination was getting out of control a little bit. Did something happen with her mother? With Aaron?

I couldn’t really think of what else would happen to make her lose control in that way.

I finally got to the loft, and Scotty wasn’t there in the living room. I went to bedroom, and she was lying in the bed under
the covers. I could hear her whimpering, and her hand reached for the Kleenex on the nightstand, and she blew her nose.

I immediately crawled into bed next to her, and she wrapped her entire body around me tightly. “Thank you so much for coming home,” she said.

“Of course. After hearing you cry like that, what kind of person would I be if I just kept working?”

I stroked her hair for a little bit, and kissed her forehead. “Do you mind telling you what has gotten you so upset?”

She looked at me, and then looked away. “I’m so ashamed,” she said.

“Ashamed? Why?”

She hesitated for what seemed like forever, her tears streaming down her face. “I got a phone call,” she said.

“Who called you?”

She just shook her head, and cried some more.

“Scotty,” I said. “Who called you?” I wondered if Loretta was okay. Or, god forbid, something happened to Jack. That would devastate Scotty beyond measure.

“It was a man. He was calling from the firm that Mr. Lucas works at. He told me that I was a lying whore, and that everybody was going to know about that. And that he has friends at our firm, important friends who are senior partners, and that they were also going to be told that I’m a lying whore. He told me that he was going to personally see to it that my reputation is trashed, and that I was going to end up losing my job because of the bad publicity that is going to be generated from this.”

What she said threw cold water on my face. I didn’t expect that the backlash would be happening this soon, or in quite this way.

“Oh, shit,” I said. I was going to have to fix this, and soon. “What else did he say?”

“He told me that I needed to go to the police and tell her that I made all of it up, and to be convincing, because the charges won’t be dropped just because of my say-so. He told me that I needed to go down and retract my statement within the next 24 hours, and, if I don’t, he was going to go straight to Richard and Greg and tell them that I’m not to be trusted and that the entire firm is going to be dragged through the mud because of me and my ‘bullshit allegations.’”

Richard and Greg. How convenient that he would have an in with the two partners who were closely aligned with Portia, therefore were out to get Scotty from day one.

Somebody was obviously talking to the people over at the bastard’s firm. It sounded to me like the person who called Scotty must have known about the drama that occurred over Portia’s ouster and also the drama that occurred when Portia tried to get Scotty out. Either that, or it was all a coincidence, and it just so happened that this anonymous caller was friends with the very people who hated Scotty the most in the firm.

I tried to tamp down my rising blood pressure and rage at this person who called Scotty, for trying to intimidate her like that. I had to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Of course, the obvious suspect in this kind of shenanigans was Portia herself. She had quickly found a new firm to torment, and the atmosphere in the office had lightened considerably after she was gone. I was relieved that she was able to move on so quickly, because I was expecting her to become an issue to Scotty and me. So far, that hadn’t happened.

The only thing about this was how would Portia know about Scotty and Mr. Lucas? How would she know to feed this man information about who hated Scotty in the firm? She would have had to have known that Scotty was the unknown victim in the Paul Lucas case, so that she could give the unknown caller information on just who to contact to do the maximum damage to Scotty’s reputation. After all, if this anonymous asshole called somebody who loved Scotty – in other words, anybody who was not named Greg, William, Richard or Mark – that person would just tell the caller to go to hell.

At least, I hoped that they would.

But give the information to any of the four men who were up Portia’s ass, and Scotty’s reputation bashing would catch fire. Although these men acted like they were my best pals now, I knew that they secretly wanted revenge against me, and they would do anything they could to make sure that I suffered for causing the tragic loss of Miss Barbie Bitch.

It’s like the line in
The Untouchables –
they send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue. I got Portia out, now they want Scotty out.

“Scotty,” I said. “Please calm down. I’ll fix this. I will, I promise.”

“How, Nick? He’s going to tell the people who have my number that I’m falsely accusing Paul Lucas. I mean, I’m quite sure that most of the firm probably knows about the predator’s arrest, because it has been big news. I mean, it’s not every day that a 1% gets taken to jail, let alone taken to jail for something like this. Now, this anonymous caller is not just threatening to let my firm know that I’m behind Mr. Lucas’ arrest, but that I created stories out of whole cloth to do it. And he also said that he was going to tell these partners that I seduced Mr. Lucas and aborted his baby to spite him.”

“Aborted his baby? What the hell?”

“Yes,” Scotty said. “Apparently this asshole who called me managed to get ahold of my hospital records for my D&C, and he wants to use that as proof that I aborted Mr. Lucas’ baby.”

My blood pressure was soaring at that point. Just soaring. What good were HIPAA laws if just anybody can get any record they choose if they knew who to pay off to do so? And how could that person even find out that Scotty was in the hospital for a D&C in the first place?

The entire thing was getting weirder and weirder.

Well, one thing was for sure. I was going to have to do some serious damage control to make sure that this story didn’t get out around the firm. Of course, Scotty didn’t do any of the things that this asshole caller said that she did, but, in the wrong hands, that kind of gossip could ruin her. And Scotty was absolutely right – the arrest of Mr. Lucas was big news, at least locally, because of who he is. Since the arrest was big news, any kind of gossip about his accuser, and false rumors about said accuser’s motivations for pressing charges against the bastard, would also be big news.

I realized that I was just staring at Scotty silently. My mind was trying to process the best way to go about this situation. The best way that
did not
involve Scotty backing down and telling the police that she lied about the entire thing.

Scotty looked at me expectantly. Her tears had finally dried, but she had a very lost look in her eyes. My heart just broke. She had to go through so much at the hands of his monster, and, it seemed that she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. If she wouldn’t have gone to the police, then she would have continued to be in danger, because Mr. Lucas might have gotten to her again. And, the alternative, her going to the police, was going to possibly result in her reputation being dragged through the mud. Would the firm fire
her for something like this? Quite possibly, if there was enough damaging gossip that reached some of our major clients. Clients who were associated with the hedge fund that Mr. Lucas operated, and clients who were financed by the firm that employed that goddamned asshole.

Why I never even thought about this angle, I didn’t know. It never even occurred to me that Scotty pressing charges against the sadistic monster might result in Scotty’s career being tarnished. I never thought about the fact that there were a great many firms in this city who were dependent upon Mr. Lucas’ firm and Mr. Lucas himself, and the capital that his firm provided.

“Nick,” Scotty said, “you haven’t said anything. Could I lose my job over this?”

I was quiet, trying to think about the solution to all of this. I wanted so badly to tell her not to worry, that it would all blow over, and that the firm would never fire her over idle gossip. But I knew that wasn’t true. There were quite a few contractors and clients who had professional ties to Mr. Lucas, and the smear campaign against Scotty was going to be starting in earnest. Once that horse got out of the barn, it might be all she wrote. All she fucking wrote.

Finally, I took a deep breath. “Love, I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass. That’s never been my style, as you know. And, I love you too much to lie to you.”

“Go on,” Scotty said, her green eyes getting huge with fear.

“Well, we knew that you were opening up Pandora’s Box with this. Taking that bastard down was always going to be complicated. And, I apologize, but there was an angle that I just didn’t consider when I urged you to do it.”

“What angle was that?”

“That Mr. Lucas, as a hedge fund manager, has a professional relationship with many of our firm’s top clients. This gossip that this anonymous caller is threatening you with could very well mean that the firm might want to let you go, if only to preserve the firm’s relationships with these important clients.”

Scotty looked down, and I could see that this angle was something that she never considered, either. “Oh my god,” she said. “I mean, when that man called me, it upset me that he called me a whore, because that was what the monster always called me. It triggered me, as Adele would say, because him calling me that made Mr. Lucas’ own accusations against me echo in my ears. That was why I was crying hysterically, I think,” she said. “I mean, I was also upset, very upset, that this man was threatening to tell the firm about my alleged lies about Mr. Lucas, but, mainly, I think that I had a moment where I was remembering all the times that the bastard called me a whore.”

“Oh?” I said. “You mean, you didn’t actually think that this whole scenario would threaten your position with our firm?”

“No,” she said. “I mean, its idle gossip, right? I felt ashamed that I would have to possibly tell the partners what happened to me, so that they could have my side of the story to counteract what the gossip about me would be. I hated that, but it never even occurred to me that my job actually would be threatened. Now, you’re telling me that I could very well lose my position over this.”