Page 80 of The Perfect Deception

“What are you go­ing to do?” Tracy asked.

Dina glared at her friend and gripped the edge of the ta­ble. “Not a freak­ing thing. I’m done. He hasn’t ex­plained any­thing to me and he thinks I set him up. I wouldn’t know how to fix things even if I wanted to.”

“You don’t want to?”

“The guy who sup­pos­edly cares about me thinks the worst of me as soon as some­thing goes wrong. Why would I want to be with some­one who can’t give me the ben­e­fit of the doubt?” She fid­dled with the baby’s rat­tle and squeezed her chubby fin­gers.

“No, you’re right. Only…maybe there’s some rea­son he jumped to that con­clu­sion. Maybe there’s some­thing you’re miss­ing.”

“Trace, he never even told me his fa­ther fired him. I don’t want to spend any more time on this. I just want to for­get he ever ex­isted.”

Of course, that was go­ing to be as pos­si­ble as switch­ing night with day. Ev­ery­thing re­minded her of Adam.

Tracy pushed a cup of tea to­ward her and she held the hot mug be­tween her hands, try­ing to warm them up. She’d been freez­ing for two days now, ever since Adam had bro­ken up with her. Noth­ing helped.

“I can’t be­lieve he said those things to you,” Tracy said.

“Me nei­ther. I should have stuck with my gut in­stinct with him. I knew he was a phony. I called him Mr. Flashy­pants,” she said with a sob. Clear­ing her voice, she con­tin­ued. “He never was my type.”

But as she left Tracy’s house and re­turned to her own apart­ment, her in­ner voice whis­pered to her.

Yes, he was.

A week later, Adam ad­justed his tie, combed his hair and shot his cuffs. Step­ping out of the re­stroom in the black and grey mar­ble lobby of the third largest law firm in Man­hat­tan, he strode to the el­e­va­tor and punched the but­ton for the fifth floor. When the doors opened, he stepped into a rose and gold car­peted re­cep­tion area and ap­proached the desk. An older woman with per­fectly coiffed white hair looked at him over read­ing glasses perched on an aquiline nose.

“May I help you?”

“I’m Adam Man­del. I have an in­ter­view with Matthew Stevens.”

“I’ll page him.”

She pointed to the buff leather sofa, but Adam paced in­stead. This was his third in­ter­view this week. He should be thrilled the head­hunter had found law firms look­ing to hire, but af­ter the pre­vi­ous two in­ter­views, he wasn’t hold­ing out much hope.

The door opened.

“Adam? I’m Matthew. Come on in.”

Adam fol­lowed the older gen­tle­man down a labyrinth of hall­ways un­til he reached the cor­ner of­fice. Un­like his fa­ther’s, which was dark and stately, this one was airy with floor-to-ceil­ing win­dows and filled with clean lines from a glass ta­ble that served as a desk, sleek mod­ern fur­ni­ture and geo­met­ric rugs. He sat in the black leather mid-cen­tury mod­ern chair Matthew pointed to and rested his right an­kle on his left knee. The pseudo-re­laxed pose was sup­posed to hide his anx­i­ety.

“So, Adam, I took a look at your ré­sumé and you’re in a good po­si­tion to be look­ing for a new job. But I have to say, I’m a lit­tle con­cerned about some­thing.”

Adam’s stom­ach knot­ted. He had his an­swers pre­pared, but he’d hoped to get fur­ther into the in­ter­view process be­fore us­ing them. “What are you con­cerned about?”

“The rea­son you’re leav­ing your fa­ther’s firm. Thomas, your head­hunter, has given me great can­di­dates con­sis­tently, which is why I called you in for an in­ter­view, but I’ve heard the whis­pers about you rid­ing on your fam­ily’s rep­u­ta­tion and miss­ing dead­lines, re­sult­ing in your los­ing cases. I’m not sure I can af­ford to hire some­one like that.”

Adam moved so both feet were on the floor, leaned for­ward in his chair and met Matthew’s gaze square on. “I didn’t do it.” He held up his hands. “Rather, the very first time, months ago, I botched some­thing I was work­ing on. It was my fault. I was care­less. But the other two? I swear that I gave ev­ery­thing to my para­le­gal to file. I have no idea how the fil­ing didn’t hap­pen. I know she says I never gave any­thing to her, and maybe I’d be in­clined to be­lieve her once, but twice? I’ve learned my les­son and in the fu­ture, I’ll ei­ther file the mo­tions my­self or wait around for proof things were ac­tu­ally filed, even if it means stay­ing in the of­fice all night. I know you have no rea­son to be­lieve me, but I’m telling you the truth.”

“Then why did you fa­ther fire you?”

The mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion. “I can’t say for sure. I know that he has to look out for his firm’s rep­u­ta­tion and he can’t af­ford to lose clients.” He shrugged. “When your name is on the door, the only way to con­vince a client a mis­take won’t hap­pen twice is to fire the lawyer who sup­pos­edly screwed up, even if that lawyer is in­no­cent.” Or your own son.

“You didn’t ask him?”

Adam ran a hand over the top of his head. “My fa­ther and I try to keep our re­la­tion­ship in the of­fice sep­a­rate from that of a fa­ther and son. He had to do what he thought was best for the firm in gen­eral.”

Matthew sat back and twirled a pen­cil be­tween his fin­gers. “But if things hap­pened as you say they did, why would this go where it did?”

“Be­cause the par­ale­gals were start­ing to rebel. They were talk­ing pub­licly that they were be­ing thrown un­der the bus. The firm can’t func­tion with­out them, and if they left, it would be hard to hire oth­ers.”