Bad Boy's Honor: An MMA Bad Boy Romance (49 page)

I walked straight back to the office and soaked my knuckles under cold water. The harder you punched, the harder it hurt afterwards. The adrenaline kept most of the pain away, but they’d still sting for the rest of the day.

I’d fucked up. Any chance I’d had of stopping Zach from reporting April and me to the state bar had just gone out the window. In truth, me punching him probably hadn’t made a difference. I’d made my choice.  

I’d decided to keep PorTupe, even though I was starting to intensely dislike the directors the more April told me about them. I’d brushed off her complaints, but they left a nasty taste in the mouth. I didn’t like working for people like that, but it was too late now.

I could handle a suspension and a slap on the wrist. April might not be so lucky.

Your boyfriend chose money over your career. You’re fucked.

Zach had been taunting me all morning with a series of texts, that I’d tried my best to ignore until that last one. Apparently he had evidence that I’d committed a major breach of legal ethics, but I had no idea what he was talking about.  

His final message made it clear that Foster had refused to play ball, and now I was in serious trouble. As if to confirm that, an email popped up from Kathleen demanding that I go to her office immediately.  

We’d agreed not to act as stepmother and stepdaughter at work, and judging by the tone of this email, Kathleen had no issues sticking to her side of the bargain on that one.

I took the long walk over to Kathleen’s corner office situated on the floor above mine. I’d only ever been on this floor once before and that was to use the bathroom when ours had been shut for cleaning.  

Unlike her son, Kathleen kept her door open and she beckoned me inside when she saw me approach.

“Shut the door behind you,” she said sternly. Yeah, this wasn’t going to be a fun meeting. “Do you know why I’ve called you in here today?”

“No,” I replied. That was sort of true. I still didn’t understand what the hell was going on, other than Zach’s cryptic messages.

“This isn’t easy for me to say, April, but I’m going to have to let you go.”

Whoa, this just got real serious, real quick.

“What? Why?”  

I only had a few more weeks left, and I’d earned more than enough money to get me through the final year of law school, but the bigger problem was trying to find another job for after graduation.  

I’d now been fired by two law firms and I hadn’t even finished law school. What the hell was wrong with me?

“We’ve received a very serious allegation that you worked for the other side in the Jacob Oscar matter last year at Cooper & Cooper. As I’m sure you know, that is a serious breach of the ABA’s ethics rules, and means you may have breached client confidences.”

“Of course,” I muttered, “but I don’t even know who the other party is in Jacob’s case. Foster never gave me the details.”

I had worked on a similar legal area at Cooper & Cooper, which was why I’d been able to produce a decent memo for Jacob. I suppose the facts had been similar, but Foster had never given me any of the opposition parties’ names.

“Do any of these names ring a bell? Mendleson Co., NormArtTech, N. Gaige…”

“Yes,” I said, as my heart started pounding in my chest. “Yes, I worked for those clients, but I put them on my conflict list. I’m sure I did.”

How could this have happened?
Arrington & Hedges had draconian internal policies and procedures to catch this kind of thing. I’d prepared the conflict checklist exactly as directed.

“You did,” Kathleen said. “Foster ran a conflict check, but he must have fucked it up.” Kathleen rubbed her temples with her fingers, and sighed loudly. “I’m sorry April, this is not entirely your fault, but you have to live with the consequences. You still should have spotted the overlap and raised a red flag, but it’s Foster’s fault as well. When he sees the sight of money and billable hours, he gets reckless and plows ahead without thinking things through.”

She didn’t need to explain that to me. I’d seen first hand how Foster always put money before everything else. I thought I meant more to him than that. Apparently not. He’d had a chance to fix this, but that would have meant losing out financially. That was a step he wasn’t prepared to take. Not for me.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“I’m going to do what I can to fix this,” Kathleen explained. “But I still have to let you go. We can’t risk it looking like you’re providing us with information on your former client.”

“I understand.”  

“I wish I did. It sounds like you made a real enemy over at Cooper & Cooper. How does someone as nice as you manage that?”  

“By rejecting his advances,” I replied.  

Not to mention the fact that Foster punched him. If Foster had never showed up that night, this would probably never have happened. I would be at Cooper & Cooper now, and Foster would just be a normal stepbrother, albeit one that I would look at inappropriately whenever I saw him.

“I see. Well, like I said, I’m going to do what I can, but you’ll need to pack up your things and leave.”

I nodded and quickly got up and left. I only just made it back to my office before I started to cry. Foster had given me some incredible moments over the last nine months, but he’d also destroyed my life and had gotten me fired from two jobs.  

How could he have messed up something so simple as a conflict check? It occurred to me that perhaps Kathleen had been lying. Foster had probably never even run the check at all. Maybe he’d asked his assistant to do it. Foster might as well have “Time is Money” printed somewhere on his chest, so it made sense that he would palm off all non-billable work to his assistant.

My login privileges hadn’t been revoked yet, so I pulled up Jacob’s client file on the system. Each client had an admin folder where things like engagement letters and conflict checks were stored.  

There was nothing there. Foster hadn’t even bothered to run the conflict check. I pulled up the conflict spreadsheet I had prepared on my first day, and sure enough, the names of all the opposing parties in the Jacob case were there in black and white. If he’d run the check I wouldn’t have lost my job.

At least his office was empty right now. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me leave. I shoved the photos of Mom and Dad into my bag, and looked around my office one final time.  

Apparently fate didn’t want me to be a lawyer. Nor did it want me to be in a happy relationship. I just wish fate had passed on the message before I’d wasted two years at law school and fallen hard for Foster.

At least now I knew the real man underneath the suit. Underneath the tattoos. Underneath the thick muscles that covered his body. Foster wanted money and success. He would happily fuck me in his spare time, but the second I got in the way of his primary goal, he would throw me to one side without a moment’s thought.  

I went back to my apartment and filled out the paperwork to withdraw from law school. I didn’t have to pay tuition, but I was still going into debt for living expenses and casebooks at $200 per subject. There didn’t seem much point it finishing if I was never going to be a lawyer anyway.  

Dad had said Mom would be proud of me no matter what I did, but I doubted that included quitting. Mom had her flaws, but she never quit.  

Sorry Mom. I just can’t do this.

I should have thought this through. Why did I always have to act on instinct?  

Zach called my bluff. He went through with it. April had been fired and she wouldn’t return my calls.  

Zach had been right; I was an idiot. No matter how good I was as a lawyer, I still couldn’t control my base emotions. I’d reacted with my fists and now everything good in my life had disappeared in an instant.

I went to April’s apartment, but she didn’t answer the door. I knew where she would go when times were hard, so I hopped on a flight and went back to New York.  

She wasn’t there either. Unfortunately my Mom was.

“I want a word with you,” Mom yelled as I tried to sneak up to my room. I felt like a teenager sneaking back into the house after a night of drinking. I’d never been good at being subtle.  

“What about?” I asked grumpily.

“You know what about. Are you going to explain what the hell happened with this Jacob situation?”  

“We’ve already had this conversation. I fucked up, that’s what happened. I forgot to run a conflict check.”

“Don’t give me that crap. I know when you’re lying to me. I always have. I checked the conflict log on the database. You did run that conflict check.”

“There’s no conflict check on the system,” I replied. “I checked.”

“That’s because you deleted it. I’m the managing partner, Foster, I have ways of finding these things out. You ran the conflict check and it came back negative. How did that happen?”

“Don’t you have ways of finding that out?” I asked sarcastically.  

“I’m giving you a chance to explain, Foster. A chance to tell me what the hell is going on here.”  

What’s going on is that I’ve completely fucked everything up.

I didn’t even care about the fallout for me. I was going to get shit for this, and I’d almost certainly end up with a black mark on my record, but worst of all, I’d lost April.  

She’d done nothing wrong in all this. It wasn’t her fault that some low-life took an interest in her and made her life hell. Then I came along, and my attempts to make things better had the complete opposite effect.

“Fine,” I said, exasperated. I just want to get this conversation over with. “I deleted the file.”

“That doesn’t explain how the conflict check came back negative.”

“April made a typo in the name, and she forgot to include the complete list of all parties. I changed the spreadsheet to hide her mistakes.”

“I figured as much,” Mom said. She didn’t look the least bit surprised. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.”  

I let that comment slip by without response. I didn’t have the energy for it right now. “What’s going to happen now? Is there any way we can salvage this?”

“I already have,” Mom said. I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “I’m not just a pretty face you know, Foster. I have connections. Connections at Cooper & Cooper.”  

“You’ll never convince Zach to drop this. He’s fucking evil and he has a grudge against April. And against me as well. I may have accidentally broken his jaw.”

“Accidentally?” Now it was Mom’s turn to raise an eyebrow quizzically.

“Long story.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve had words with his father, and they’re going to keep this information to themselves. Zach hadn’t gotten around to making a formal complaint and he’s not going to.”

“How on Earth did you swing that?” I asked. Mom had achieved a lot in her career, but this was truly impressive.

“Let’s just say I have information on what the father gets up to without his wife’s knowledge.”

“Oh Mom, please don’t tell me you and him—”

“God no,” she snapped. “Give me some credit. But I know some of the women
and men
that he’s had affairs with. He won’t want that information getting out.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I guess I owe you one.”  

“You can repay me by fixing whatever it is that’s happening between you and April. I want this to be a happy family, okay?”  

I nodded. “I’m trying, but it may be too late.”  

“You’ll find a way. You’re my son.”  

Mom kissed me on the cheek and then walked off into the kitchen to start cooking, as if nothing had happened. I tried to call April and tell her the good news, but she didn’t answer. I didn’t bother leaving a message. She ignored the ten previous ones I’d left.

“Foster, can I have a word?”  

I spun round and saw Pierce standing at the top of the stairs. “I’m kind of busy right now,” I lied.  

“It won’t take a minute.”

I sighed, and walked up to the top of the stairs. No doubt Pierce had plenty to say to me after I’d effectively ruined his daughter’s life.  

“What is it?” I asked tersely.

“I overheard that conversation with your mom.”
Shit.
“Why did you take the blame for all this? You covered for April’s mistake.”

Once again I tried to shrug casually, but even after practicing in the mirror it still came across as awkward and ungainly. Was it just physically impossible for someone of my size to shrug and look nonchalant?  

“I’m the senior associate, and she’s just a law student,” I replied. “I have to take the blame when things go wrong.”

“That’s not it,” Pierce said. “Kathleen said ‘you don’t have to be a genius to figure out why.’ Unfortunately I’m not a genius. We both know that. So why don’t you explain it to me.”

Pierce was a lot cleverer than he was letting on. He might not have achieved much in his career, but he’d married two incredibly successful lawyers, so he couldn’t be stupid. And right now he was playing me. Just like Mom, he’d figured out what was going on between April and me. He just wanted confirmation.

“She’s family,” I replied. “I felt duty-bound to cover for her.”

“You’re lying. There’s covering for someone, and then there’s going to a lot of effort to keep someone out of trouble and taking the blame yourself. You stood to get disbarred for this. I’ll ask you again. Why did you do it?”

Pierce still sounded friendly, even as he accused me of lying to his face. He might not sound so friendly when he knows the truth.  

“I did it because I… I did it because I love her. I’m in love with your daughter.”

“You love April?” Pierce asked.  

Now he did look shocked. Maybe he hadn’t known after all. Or perhaps just didn’t realize I loved her. I hadn’t realized it myself until I said the words out loud.  

“Yes. Yes, I do.”  

“I had no idea. I mean, I suspected there was something going on between you two, but I didn’t realize you loved each other.”

“We don’t,” I said reluctantly. “I love her, but the feeling isn’t mutual.”

Pierce smiled, and placed his hand on my shoulder. “You know, for someone who isn’t short on experience with women, you don’t really know a lot about them, do you?”