So he hired me to make a paternity suit go away for a client who had always been a huge headache for him. He was a local newscaster. A big deal in Philadelphia. He’d been an anchor on the local news for most of my life, and he’d gotten a woman pregnant outside of his marriage.
She worked as a receptionist at the station, and made it clear that she would tell anyone who would listen that she was pregnant with his child if he didn’t leave his wife. Well, that was never going to happen, and pretty soon she realized it, so she hired a lawyer. She was going to file a lawsuit against him and sue him publicly for all types of shit including child support. It was my job to change her mind about that.
I didn’t mind the job, but I don’t hurt women–especially pregnant ones, so I knew I’d have to be creative about it. It was my first job, my first “fix” for Jack, and I needed to make sure that it was done just right. No mess.
I decided to follow her for a couple of days, observing her patterns, watching what stores she frequented, the company that she kept–and then I figured it out. Her Achilles heel was what it is for most of us–family.
She had a younger brother who apparently was the apple of her entire family’s eye. A golden child. The two of us were around the same age, but he was in medical school, and planning on being a specialized surgeon. I knew that hurting him just a little bit would scare her more than anything.
He made it easy though. He was a pompous, arrogant, know-it-all who needed a lesson in basic manners. I overheard him as he rudely rushed an older woman who in his opinion was taking too long to check out of the supermarket.
She was couponing, probably on a fixed budget, and she was somebody’s damn mama. He didn’t need to talk to her like that. It was a real bitch move, him embarrassing that sweet old lady in the market that day, and it rubbed me completely the wrong way. So I took a lot of pleasure in beating his ass right in front of his pregnant sister.
The receptionist was my first “fix” for Jack, and I’ll always remember her. She was tough as hell, and held out until the bitter end. I almost had to snap a few of those kid’s fingers, but at the very last minute she acquiesced. A med student can’t be a surgeon with messed up hands.
So she agreed to recant her public statement about the client’s cheating, drop the paternity case, and to accept a monthly stipend to keep her mouth zipped. All for the beautifully dirt cheap settlement price of nine-hundred dollars a month.
No one had ever been able to negotiate that type of very one-sided deal for their clients before, and Jack’s popularity as a problem solver at the firm quickly began to grow. With his meteoric rise in the firm came my rise as well and because of that one opportunity, I will never have to see the inside of a mailroom again.
“Where exactly are we going?” I ask my boss.
“This is my first time getting an invite to this holiday party, so let me warn you now, they must want something, and most likely it’s to hire me aka you to fix something for them.”
“I thought I was your best kept secret.”
“Not from them.”
“Who’s them?”
“The Hill Family. Family full of lawyers who think they’re way more important than they really are, but even I admit that they are well connected in the tri-state area. So I have to play the game. Act like I give a shit about this party and them when I don’t.”
“Understood.”
When we arrive in front of the large colonial home, in the suburb of Penn Washington of all places, I can’t believe my luck.
What are the fucking chances?
It’sherhouse.
Juliette.
The beautiful teenaged girl, who I fell for in one fleeting afternoon, lived here years ago. I wonder if she still lives here now?
I was meeting a friend who worked in the cafeteria at her high school. He owed me four hundred dollars for covering his rent the month before, and I was coming to collect. Our meeting was brief. He gave me my money and I was on my way back to my car, when I overheard a conversation between Juliette and a guy that I could only assume was her boyfriend.
Where I’m from, you don’t talk to girls like that unless you have a real good reason. We don’t even treat our neighborhood sluts the way that he treated Juliette that day. He let his friends watch them have sex and it was her first time?
I didn’t even know her, but I was immediately proud of the way that she was standing up to him, calling him on his shit, and doing it in front of half the damn student body. But then he took it too far. Saying out loud, to anyone who would listen, that beautiful girl gave him a disease?
Thatgirl?
The girl who probably has fairies and butterflies shooting out of her asshole because she’s so sweet?
There was no way in hell.
And then when she ran away, tears streaming down her face, something in me snapped.
So I kicked his ass.
