Page 1 of The Perfect Deception

Chap­ter One

After read­ing the email from his fa­ther, Adam dropped his head in his hands and mas­saged his tem­ples. Freez­ing rain pat­tered against the win­dow of his of­fice, the sound of it mak­ing his head pound. An­other dead­line missed? This made the third time that a case he was work­ing on was tanked due to mis­fil­ing a mo­tion or miss­ing a dead­line. How the hell had this hap­pened? His stom­ach turned at the tone of his fa­ther’s email. He had to fix this. Now. As he walked the long hall­way to his fa­ther’s cor­ner of­fice, he glanced at his friends and co-work­ers out of the cor­ner of his eye. None of them seemed to have this prob­lem, or did they? Out­side his fa­ther’s of­fice, he paused to draw a slow, steady breath. He hadn’t missed the dead­line. His pa­per­work was com­plete. It wasn’t his fault. His fa­ther would have to be­lieve him.

With a nod to his fa­ther’s sec­re­tary, Di­ane, he knocked on the cherry wood door. He heard a muf­fled “come in,” and he en­tered. His fa­ther didn’t look up, so Adam sat in the black leather ex­ec­u­tive side chair across from his fa­ther’s mas­sive ma­hogany desk, crossed his arms, and waited to be ac­knowl­edged while star­ing at his fa­ther’s shock of thick, white hair. He’d spent count­less hours of his life star­ing at that proud head. The scratch of the foun­tain pen on the lined le­gal pad grated against his eardrums, but he re­frained from in­ter­rupt­ing him, even if he sus­pected the writ­ing was a stalling tac­tic. It usu­ally was. Noah Man­del was the best cor­po­rate lawyer in the state of New Jer­sey, and had forged his rep­u­ta­tion care­fully. Adam knew bet­ter than to mess with him.

From the time Adam was seven years old and his mother walked out, his fa­ther had made it clear that work came above all else. When Noah’s wife left, she’d taken what­ever af­fec­tion he’d pos­sessed. Adam learned early on that at­tach­ments to peo­ple, even those re­lated to him, could be fleet­ing and only caused pain. Main­tain con­trol, pro­tect your rep­u­ta­tion and never let any­one get too close.

Fi­nally, his fa­ther laid his pen on the desk and fixed his hawk-like gaze on his son. That stare still made Adam flinch, even at twenty-nine years old, but he re­sisted the urge and main­tained his out­wardly smooth façade. His fa­ther hated signs of weak­ness, per­ceived or oth­er­wise. The two men re­mained silent, un­til his fa­ther spoke.

“We have a prob­lem.”

“We?” Adam asked.

“Don’t get cocky.”

“I didn’t miss the dead­line.”

An­other si­lence greeted that state­ment. “That’s what you said last time, and the time be­fore that.” His fa­ther slid the let­ter from the court across his desk. “This let­ter says oth­er­wise.”

Adam frowned as he skimmed the let­ter. His gut tight­ened. The dead­line to file the re­spon­sive plead­ing had been last Mon­day at mid­night. He’d given his para­le­gal, Ash­ley, all the ma­te­rial she needed to file, had seen it in her pos­ses­sion and left the of­fice. But this let­ter from the ad­ver­sary stated the court had never re­ceived it. There­fore, their ad­ver­sary was fil­ing a de­fault, re­quest­ing the court to is­sue an or­der that they won the case. In other words, Adam’s client lost. “I have no idea what hap­pened, Dad. I gave her the mo­tion and told her to file it. Did any­one ask her about it?”

“Yes, Ash­ley says you never gave her the fi­nal doc­u­men­ta­tion.”

“That’s in­sane. I gave her ev­ery­thing she needed in a manila en­ve­lope for her to mail.”

“Did you see her mail it?”

“No, I left to go out with some peo­ple from work.”

“So you were drink­ing.” His fa­ther’s eye­brows raised in dis­ap­proval.

“I had two beers. I wasn’t drunk. I never have more than that when we go out. And that was af­ter I gave her the ma­te­ri­als.” His rep­u­ta­tion was too im­por­tant to him, and too es­sen­tial for his ca­reer, to ever lose con­trol. Two beers with co-work­ers was his max.

“I’m not ac­cus­ing you of drink­ing on the job. No one has ever smelled al­co­hol on your breath.”

Adam re­frained from cring­ing at the com­ment.

“But your ea­ger­ness to go out and party made you sloppy. Again.”

One time. He’d rushed through an as­sign­ment for a case one time two years ago and his fa­ther never let him for­get about it. He’d been metic­u­lous since then, but his fa­ther didn’t care. “No, Dad, I wasn’t sloppy. I made sure ev­ery­thing was in or­der be­fore I left.”

“So what hap­pened?” His fa­ther leaned for­ward, his gaze pierc­ing.

Adam gripped the arm­rests un­til his fin­gers ached. “I have no idea.” Why wasn’t his fa­ther in­ter­ro­gat­ing Ash­ley?

“So you don’t re­mem­ber? Now you’re black­ing out when you drink?” His fa­ther glared at him. “I thought you said you only had two beers.”

“I did. Why isn’t Ash­ley here be­ing ques­tioned?”

“Be­cause I’ve al­ready talked to her and she swears you never gave her any­thing to file. Be­tween miss­ing this dead­line on the mo­tion, mess­ing up the dead­line for fil­ing that ini­tial com­plaint on the Bradley case, and your slop­pi­ness two years ago, you’re prov­ing that your head isn’t in this game.”

“Dad, the Hyde case was two years ago and the Bradley case was a mis­un­der­stand­ing.” The ex­cuse sounded lame to his ears, but he wasn’t go­ing to give away any more in­for­ma­tion. Not un­til he fig­ured out why his cases were sud­denly be­ing called into ques­tion. “I’ve been on top of things since then, I swear. Maybe some­thing is fishy with Ash­ley. She’s been act­ing odd around me lately. We should be look­ing into her and why she’s fab­ri­cat­ing this story.”

“I didn’t raise a son to slough off blame to some­one else. This firm has our name on it. That means the buck stops with me. And you. It’s dis­hon­or­able to try to blame some­one else for your mis­takes. Do you have proof that you gave her the mo­tion? You didn’t have one with the Bradley case, didn’t you learn your les­son this time? And why, if you were so con­cerned about do­ing your job cor­rectly, would you have left be­fore the fil­ing was com­pleted? You don’t need me to an­swer that ques­tion for you, do you?”

Adam flexed his fin­gers as he waited for the bar­rage of ques­tions to stop. “I’m sure there was some­one around who saw me give her the file, Dad. As for leav­ing be­fore she fin­ished fil­ing, since when do I have to mi­cro­man­age a para­le­gal?”

His fa­ther held up a hand. “Adam, that’s enough. Our name is on the door. This is my firm. You have a stan­dard to live up to, one that you are fail­ing at, at the mo­ment. I’m not go­ing to warn you again.”