Hello, people!
Happy Saturday!
Usual housekeeping:
- I still don't own any of it.
- Team Momo wouldn't exist without Midnight Cougar and Alice's White Rabbit with their red pens, or without AGoodWitch, Maplestyle, Mel, and Eternally Addicted who pre-read and tell me if I'm off my rocker or not.
- thank you for all the reviews and alerts! Y'all propelled LawyerWard's story to 1,600 reviews, and I'm humbled and grateful and treasure each of them.
Reminder that the nominations for the Golden Onion Awards are still underway and will be open until July 31. All the pertinent info and the link to the nomination and awards website is in their FB group, The Golden Onion Awards (type in the search bar to find it). Don't forget to go and show your favorites some love with the nominations :)
We're going to stick with LawyerWard today, and shit's about to get a tad complicated and nerdy.
Chapter 40 – EPOV
"Did we just have our first fight?" I asked Bella while the elevator carried us upstairs to my condo.
She stood in front of me, her arms hooked around my waist, her head leaning against my chest. She'd not let go of me since we kissed and made up—literally—ten minutes ago in the underground garage.
In my haste and fury, I'd run into the garage, quite forgetting that the meeting at my parents' house would require a few props I had to retrieve from my apartment, which prompted our quick trip upstairs.
"I'd say we survived it with flying colors," she replied.
She kissed my chest, and I felt it through the thin cotton of my Oxford shirt; the responding shiver went along my spine all the way down to my cock—the traitorous bastard. But the temptation and the desire lingered—a constant state of affairs when it came to my Bella.
"I feel as chastised as a school kid. I'm sorry, baby. I was such a jerk to you."
She patted my chest and looked up at me with a smile. "You're learning. We both are. We're both very independent people, and it might take us a while to act as though we're not alone in this relationship. There are two of us now."
"When did you get so wise, my love?"
She chuckled. "I've been watching Rose and your brother for years, remember. Emmett gets his ass handed to him almost weekly. It's been a … what do they say? A series of teachable moments."
"Ugh. I don't even want to imagine what kind of pickles my brother would get himself into. But something tells me Rosalie isn't likely to give him any free passes."
The elevator dinged, and its doors opened on my floor. We both stepped out, hand in hand. After all, I only needed one free hand to punch the security code into the keypad by the door.
I'd kept myself in check in the elevator, and though I knew it wasn't the time or place for it, I needed Bella. I needed to revel in the connection we shared, in that sizzling heat we made whenever we touched. It wasn't simply lust for me—it was the physical manifestation of our love, and sometimes, it overwhelmed me in the best of ways.
I slammed the door behind me with a kick and pulled Bella toward me, caging her in my arms until she backed up against the door.
"What is it with you and doors?" she asked. Mischief danced in her eyes, and her sultry voice already had me weak at the knees.
I leaned down, my forehead against hers. "You can't outrun me like this," I murmured.
My nose skimmed along hers and captured her lips before she could answer. I savored that silky, supple skin of hers and let my tongue tangle with Bella's. Her hand threaded through my hair, and when she lightly pulled on it, I growled.
I was about to lose it, very close to saying, "screw it," to the emergency meeting, but the outside world had other ideas. Both of our phones trilled in unison, sounding, if possible, even more importune and irritating.
Reluctantly, I slowed down and let her go after a few tender pecks. "Is it wrong of me that I want to fling those two pieces of shit down the drain?"
She giggled. "Our phones, you mean? Nope. Completely agree, but—"
"Yeah, yeah. Duty calls. I need to grab my laptop and planner. Do you need anything, love?"
She stepped out of my embrace. "Apart from a cold shower?"
Refusing to be separated from her, I held out my arms, and she obliged. "Yeah, well. There's that."
"You could get me up to speed with Rebitch's latest exploit while we drive to your parents'. Also, why are we meeting there?"
She had a good point. I couldn't wait to share the news with her and hear what she had to say. How could I have thought to keep it from her in my rage? What a fucking moron I'd been.
With a rapid glance around the room, I located my messenger bag and checked that everything I needed was in there. "I'm all set. Shall we?"
"Off to war we go."
&&&StN&&&
Bella didn't wait long to pepper me with questions; I'd fully expected a barrage of them, and she didn't disappoint once we left the garage.
"So, Alistair just mumbled something about needing my crisis management expertise. Care to enlighten me?"
I couldn't look her in the eye as I wished, but I figured we'd prefer me to keep my eyes on the road. "Remember that deal she was working on with Emmett?"
"Wasn't it one of your clients? Eagle Ventures?"
She always, always kept up with ongoing projects at the firm; in fact, she made a point of consulting with the partners and their assistants for regular updates, which ensured she wouldn't be caught flat-footed if any media inquiries came through.
"The very one. We had to take her off that deal like a month or so ago."
Bella hissed. "Wasn't that when you had to fly back from Atlanta in a big hurry?"
I nodded. "Yeah. CEO wasn't too pleased with Rebecca playing fast and loose with the confidentiality constraints we'd put on the transaction."
"Remind me, what's the deal about?"
"They're selling off one of their subsidiaries at auction. Back then, it was still in the early stages, but blabbing about it to other clients—"
Bella erupted. "Oh, for God's sake! Rookie mistake. Loose lips sink ships. Okay, riddle me this. She's what, your age?"
"Yep. Your point?"
"Shouldn't she be a partner somewhere instead of trying to hack it here as a senior associate? Didn't that sound suspicious to anyone when they hired her?"
With a groan, I remembered the first bitter conversation I had with my father about it months ago. "Believe me; I've been trying to hammer that point home with the powers that be since day one. I'm not getting any satisfaction from yelling 'I told you so' now."
"Still. Let's stick a pin in it. Maybe Rose has better insights on her résumé. Back to the Eagle deal?"
The long stretch of highway that led to the suburbs where my parents lived barely had any traffic at this time of day, which made for easier conversation.
"Right now Eagle is going through the sets of bidding documents submitted by bidders. The usual stuff—post-acquisition business plan, financing, and the biggie … their mark-up of the draft purchase agreement."
Bella gave a pensive nod and motioned for me to continue.
"Emmett's team is reviewing those … I don't know, four or five versions of the marked-up contracts, building comparisons—"
"Trying to get a bird's eye view of the proposed changes and see how far apart the bidders are from where Eagle wants them to be."
I stole a glance in her direction, smiling proudly at her. "You could do Emmett's job in your sleep, you know that?"
"Thank you, babe. But no—not my jam. Y'all do the grunt work, and I'll shine it all up for the world to see. So, what did Rebecca do now?"
The mere thought made me growl in frustration. "She was booted from the team, so she should have been doing exactly nothing. Now, this is where shit gets complicated."
"You're talking like Em now," she quipped.
"My vocabulary standards end up in the toilet when I'm furious. Do you mind, love?"
She waved me off. "Nope. Go ahead; I'm all ears."
"Well, one of Em's associates—who might very well get himself a raise after this—found something hinky with the mark-up one of the bidders sent in."
She snorted. "Hinky, you say? Definitely channeling Em. What did Em's minion find?"
"There were redlined changes marked as having been made by CCM Legal. You know how all our track changes appear signed as 'CCM Legal' regardless—"
"Yeah, regardless of who's making them. The system anonymizes individual users by default. It's a privacy, branding, and consistency thing all rolled into one. Wait a minute—in one of the bidder's docs, changes labeled as if we'd made them? That's …"
Whatever Bella was about to say, the words evaporated on her lips. We'd just taken the exit closest to my parents', and our destination was now only minutes away.
"That's a huge fucking problem because it would mean we've been playing both sides. This could mean disbarment, malpractice, and damages lawsuits—PR nightmare territory. It's a clusterfuck, Bells."
"Who the fuck would do that and think they'd get away with it? No, stop. Don't answer me. We already know only one fucking person in the entire firm is that entitled, arrogant, and ignorant at the same time."
As fate would have it, I pulled into my parents' driveway as Bella finished her tirade. I turned toward her with a thunderous expression on my face. It was bad enough when it seemed that Rebecca was targeting Bella, but threatening the entire law firm? And what did she want to achieve?
"Rebecca."
A few quick explainers from the legal lingo:
- "redline", "redlined changes", "track changes" basically means revisions to a Word/word processor document that are highlighted as changes. For example, additions are in red ink and underlined, deletions are struck through and underlined, again in red ink; any text moved within the document is in green and double underlined - this is in general. You can fiddle with Word revisions settings to have changes show up as you like them, but that's the standard.
- when you hover your mouse over those changes, the doc will show you a tag with a username and a date and time. Same when you add comments in balloons, they're tagged with an author name, date and time. This is the user who made those changes, and when. This "author" label can be set to display whatever name you want. On your computer at home it will probably show your name - the system picks up the details of whoever that copy of MS Office is registered to by default, unless you change settings. In big organizations, and at least in all the law firms I've worked at, the user tag is set to appear as the name of the firm, so that ALL changes made within the firm show up as "FIRM SO AND SO", not as "User 1" or "User 2".
- before anyone tells me that what Rebecca did is preposterous, unrealistic, and it would NEVER happen ... this happened to a coworker of mine at one of the big law firms I worked at. A senior associate played both sides on a deal, exactly like Rebecca did. It caused a HUGE uproar because it's hugely problematic. Unethical, unprofessional, and ... worthy of disbarment.
- there will be more explanations and more details in the next chapter, and it's a monster - the longest chapter in the whole story (3,5k words).
We're doing a group re-read of Business Class Girl, which turns 13 years old TODAY. To join re-read, head over to my FB Group LaMomo's Lair (type in the search bar). Each session starts on Sundays and lasts through the following week, so don't worry if you can't join on the weekends!
See you all on Wednesday!