Page 73 of Resisting the Lawyer (Dirty Hot Resistance 3)

“Just, trust me. Give me two weeks. I’ll tell Lana that you’re on leave.”

She hesitates but then agrees, “Two weeks. I don’t know what good it will do but, I’ll do it.”

Leaving her there is the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I have work to do. It’s as I’m leaving that I hear footsteps behind me and in the large driveway of The Smith family house, I look over my shoulder.

Richard Smith is approaching me, his brow furrowed.

I wait until he reaches me.

“What really happened to my daughter?”

“Mr. Smith…” I want to tell him but Elise doesn’t want him to know and I don’t want to break her trust in me, as fragile as it is.

“You can’t tell me, can you?” He realizes.

“I want to,” I admit. “But your daughter doesn’t like depending on anyone, not even when she’s injured so badly.”

His face turns white.

I turn to leave but I know that Richard won’t leave anything to chance. He’ll investigate this matter. So, I pause and tell him, “When the time comes and it might, I will ask you to demand custody of Sophie.”

His eyes heat up but he’s a smart man and he stares me down. “Sophie’s father?”

I nod and a terrible expression crosses his withered face, an unmatched fury and I have a feeling that if I don’t deal with Darren Hall quickly, Elise’s father will. And it’ll be brutal.

On my way home, I stop off at Oliver’s place.

I’m not surprised to see Caleb’s car in the driveway.

Oliver purchasing a home had come as a surprise to me but the sprawling house seems to befit the Britisher who lik

es to live lavishly.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Florence?” I ask when Caleb answers the door.

“Something came up,” Caleb seems annoyed.

I follow him inside and raise a brow to see a miffed looking Kendall sitting in the living room and an angry Lana pacing the floor.

Seeing me enter, she points a finger at me. “You!”

I immediately step back, alarmed. “I didn’t do it!”

Ignoring my immediate defense, she growls, “You knew and you hid it from both me and Kendall! How dare you?!”

I glower at Oliver who is leaning against the wall, scowling, and Caleb is standing in a random corner, looking just as stone-faced.

“Told you this wasn’t a good idea,” Oliver snarls.

I blink at Lana. “You guys knew part of it. It’s just Elise wasn’t ready to share so I kept it on a need to know basis only.”

That’s clearly the wrong thing to say because it pisses off both women and Kendall bares her teeth as she says, “We needed to know!”

“Where is she?” Lana demands.

Completely cornered, I know when to admit defeat so I spill the beans.

It takes a while for the whole story to come out and by the end of it even Caleb and Oliver are silent, their expressions are thunderous.

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