Page 85 of The Perfect Deception

“Ouch!”

Oops. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m anx­ious to find out what you wanted to tell me.”

Cheryl gri­maced as she rubbed her leg through her black wool trousers. “That’s okay. Yeah. So, you know how Ash­ley ac­cused Adam Man­del of not ac­tu­ally giv­ing her the forms she needed?”

“You mean the mo­tion.”

Cheryl waved her hands. “Yeah, what­ever, the mo­tion.”

“Yes.”

“Well, she made it up. All of it.”

“Why?” Dina leaned for­ward. “Why would she do that?”

“Ap­par­ently, Adam is com­pet­ing with some­one else at the firm for ju­nior part­ner. The guy—I don’t know his name—is ner­vous be­cause Adam’s dad is the head of the firm. And Ash­ley has a thing for him. So she de­cided to help the guy by mess­ing up Adam’s cases. I guess this isn’t the first one she didn’t file on time. She men­tioned do­ing it a cou­ple months ago and then again this time.”

“Oh my god, I can’t be­lieve she’d play with some­one’s rep­u­ta­tion and ca­reer like that! You know he got fired, right? From hisDad’sfirm!”

“She’s a witch and she cares only about her­self and her own in­ter­ests. Well, and the other guy, al­though know­ing her, it prob­a­bly won’t last.”

Dina sat back as the waiter de­liv­ered their sushi, but she couldn’t bring her­self to eat. Her stom­ach roiled at the de­struc­tion Ash­ley had caused.

She squinted at Cheryl. “Why are you telling me this?” Her heart­beat in­creased as she waited for her an­swer.

Cheryl’s ex­pres­sion hard­ened and Dina caught a glimpse of the mean girl she re­mem­bered from high school. “She tried to steal my boyfriend.”

“But I thought she was into the other guy at the firm?”

Cheryl shrugged. “With Ash­ley, there’s al­ways some­one.”

If this was the big league, Dina wanted no part of it. She wanted to stay in her own world, where peo­ple acted like adults, where girl­friends trusted their boyfriends and vice versa, where com­mu­ni­ca­tion and not de­cep­tion solved prob­lems. But she couldn’t say that to Cheryl.

Dina picked at her food as Cheryl went into all the evil ways Ash­ley had tried to steal Cheryl’s boyfriend. Dina nod­ded and made sym­pa­thetic noises, but wasn’t re­quired to do more, which was good since Cheryl left her lit­tle time to speak. Fi­nally, when she took a break to breathe and pop the last piece of the Cal­i­for­nia roll in her mouth, Dina turned the sub­ject back to­ward Ash­ley’s ac­cu­sa­tion.

“But why are you telling me this? Why not go to the law firm or even Adam?”

“He’s your boyfriend. You should be the one who gets to do it.”

Cheryl was be­ing her ver­sion of nice to her? Dina wasn’t sure if she should be thank­ful or wary.

“But they’re never go­ing to be­lieve me. It’s hearsay.”

Cheryl grabbed her phone and tapped the screen a few times. “Give me your num­ber again.”

“Why?” She bit her lip. She didn’t mean to sound as if she didn’t want to give it out…well, she didn’t want to give it to Cheryl, but she should have hid­den her feel­ings bet­ter. Ex­cept, Cheryl didn’t seem to care.

“Be­cause I’m go­ing to send you a screen­shot of a text Ash­ley sent me.”

Dina gave her the num­ber and a mo­ment later, her phone binged. When she opened the text, she gasped.

Don’t for­get, ladies, ly­ing and

ma­nip­u­la­tion are the norm in the law

pro­fes­sion—I should know!

There was more, but red spots ap­peared in Dina’s vi­sion and pre­vented her from read­ing any fur­ther. Her anger at Ash­ley’s care­less dis­re­gard for the truth and for Adam threat­ened to over­whelm her.