Page 10 of Claimed By my Father's Enemies
I process this information. Discard the first three responses that form because none of them are useful. "That's a generous deal for Paula. She gets the entire liquid estate." I say.
"Very generous."
"So if it's such a sweet deal for your client, why are you sitting here telling me you quit?"
Adrian lifts his glass again. Takes another sip. Sets it down carefully on the table, adjusting its position once. Then he looks at his glass the way you'd look at something you're about to blame for a decision you already made.
"Conflict of interests." Half a voice. Almost swallowed by the bass.
"Conflict of interests." I repeat it. Wait for it to make sense.
It doesn't.
Carter shifts. A small angle toward both of us, deliberate and quiet, "Adrian is interested in Sienna."
The bass keeps going. Adrian's ice keeps melting. Below us, the crowd moves in the dark and the bartenders work their clean efficient lines and everything I built continues to function exactly the way I designed it.
Except the three of us, sitting in this elevated corner where no one approaches without permission, are now in a different conversation than we were thirty seconds ago.
I look at Adrian. He has the decency to look slightly caught, though on him it registers as nothing more than a half-second delay before the deflection arrives. He picks up his whisky. Takes a deliberate sip.
"She's old enough to be your daughter." The words come out flat and tight.
He sets the glass down. "Only if I started remarkably early. I’m thirty seven. Only eleven years older than her, Will. You should know. You're the same age as me."
"I'm younger."
"One year."
"One year counts."
Adrian blows a dismissive sound through his lips and takes another drink. "She's not what you think."
"You met her once!" Adrian is testing my patience.
"Once was enough to know she's not what I expected." He leans back into the leather, stretches one arm along the top of the sectional. "She walked into that room alone. No lawyer. Paula spent several minutes telling me what a disaster she is, and then Sienna sat down and dismantled the entire conception I had of her. Didn't raise her voice. Didn't engage with any of the provocation."
Carter shifts beside me, a subtle straightening. "So, just to be clear," he says, and there's something dry underneath the evenness, "you dropped your client because you want to date the opposing party."
Adrian considers this. "When you say it like that, it sounds unprofessional."
"It is unprofessional." Carter sets down his water.
"I prefer to think of it as ethically proactive. I identified a conflict early and removed myself before it could compromise the proceedings." A pause. "That's basically selfless of me."
"That's basically malpractice." Carter reclines back on the sofa.
I stop listening. My mind has already left the conversation and gone somewhere I don't want it to go.
Sienna.
The last time I saw her, she was sixteen. Standing in a courtroom under fluorescent light that made everyone look grey. Small in a way that had nothing to do with her size. They werereading the terms of her involuntary commitment. She sat in the front row and didn't move, didn't look around the gallery for someone who might step in. She just sat there and took it, and the composure of it was wrong in a way I couldn't name then and still can't.
I followed up afterward. Good facility. Excellent reputation. My involvement ended there.
And now she wants the house.
"...this way about her that I can't explain," Adrian is saying, and I realize I've missed part of the conversation. "The way she holds herself. Composed. Controlled. But underneath it, there's something." He trails off, which is unusual for Adrian. He's never at a loss for words. He's often at a loss for a filter. "You'd have to see her."
