Page 37 of Legal Passion
Trev just shook his head and uttered a sigh of disappointment. “I didn’t think you would ever fall.”
“I haven’t,” Stone insisted. “I’m not in love with her.” He couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. He’d vowed long ago to never make himself that vulnerable to another human being, like his hapless mother had been.
“Then why the hell are you risking your case to have sex with her?” Simon asked.
He could have denied that, too. But these were his friends. He didn’t lie to his friends, even though he suspected he was lying to himself. “I’m not risking my case,” he insisted.
“You’re not going after her like you normally would,” Simon insisted.
Simon had no idea how much Stone had gone after her, how hard he’d taken her. But she matched his passion every time. She was incredible.
Such an amazing lover and lawyer.
“She’s made a compelling case,” Stone said. “Thanks to our damn office mole giving her those bank records.”
They all cursed then in unison.
“I wonder where the hell they found them,” he continued. Because he’d never seen them. “And my client isn’t being completely honest with me,” he added. Then he flinched as he played back what he’d just said inside his head and heard all the excuses he was making. He sighed. “None of that is the real issue, though.”
Simon arched one of his blond brows as he usually did. “What’s the real issue?”
“I need to make a stronger case.” For his client and for himself.
He needed to protect them both.
“We’ve got your back,” Simon said—just as he’d told them all so many years ago when they’d met up on the streets of the city. They’d been so alone and desperate then.
Stone hadn’t felt like that since meeting them—until the other night when he’d been so desperate to see Hillary, to be with Hillary.
And he worried that it might already be too late for him to protect himself. But he’d made a promise to his client, and that one he would not break.
* * *
Hillary looked down at the witness list Stone had given her. He intended to call his client. That was crazy—even for him. Defendants rarely took the stand in their own trials. But then, that often made juries think them even guiltier when they wouldn’t.
Was that Stone’s strategy? To make his billionaire client more accessible? More relatable?
He’d done that with Ernest Rapier. And every juror had cried along with the man whose wife had tortured him for more than two decades. Even Hillary had had to blink away tears before they slipped out. But she knew she wouldn’t be tempted to cry for Byron Mueller.
The guy was brash, belligerent and in your face. And she couldn’t wait to get in his face.
And Stone was giving her the opportunity to do that, to tear apart Byron Mueller on the stand.
Knuckles brushed against her closed door. And she tensed. Hopefully, it wasn’t her boss. She couldn’t let him take this case now, not when she was so close to getting a conviction. He wouldn’t be able to do what she would to Byron; he’d be too afraid of the political consequences of making an enemy of the billionaire.
She would use that to manipulate him this time; she would use his own ambitions against him. So she pasted a smile on her face and called out, “Come in.”
The door slowly creaked open, but it wasn’t her boss standing there. Stone stood in the doorway, and he looked almost sheepish. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t have an appointment.”
“And yet no security guard called to ask me if it was okay to send you up anyway.” Was there a female one on duty today? She could see him sweet-talking a woman into letting him through. Or had he been allowed up because the guard whose grandson he’d represented was working?
He glanced at his watch. “Actually, I have an appointment with your boss.”
She tensed and narrowed her eyes. “Really?”
“No.” He flashed a triumphant grin, his gray eyes sparkling. “But he didn’t have an order out to not let me upstairs.”
She reached for her phone. “Let me fix that.” But she had no intention of calling her boss.
