“I’m being serious, Damien.”
“You want a legal answer, or a ‘what I would do if I were you’ answer?”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
“Not at all.”
I hesitated for a few seconds. “What’s the legal answer?”
“You take the ‘L’ right now and bide your time until the next opportunity to receive your inheritance comes, which is five years,” he said. “You take care of your business, take some time off to fall in love, and before you know it, you’re married to some girl you met in traffic and she gets to partake in your inheritance with you.”
“Yeah, no.” I shook my head. “What would you do?”
“I would find a woman who could pretend to be my wife for a few weeks, get through all the paperwork and checkpoints, and then get everything annulled.”
“That sounds shady as hell, Damien.”
“Your contract says you have to be married within the calendar year of your birthday, which is what? Three days after Christmas?”
“Yes.”
“So, you still have a little under two weeks to get that done, and then the firm will take no longer than thirty to sixty days to process everything—depending on how busy things are—and then you’re two hundred million dollars richer and officially a billionaire.”
I shook my head. “You’re missing something. It sounds too good to be true.”
“I thought it soundedshady…”
“It’s that too, but—” I paused, thinking long and hard about it. “Has something like that ever worked for anyone you know?”
“I have a twenty out of twenty record on this type of case,” he said, without hesitation. “It works, as long as you commit and don’t try to overdo it.”
“I’ll have to sleep on it and get back to you.”
“Sounds good. This call will be five thousand dollars.”
“For asking a few simple questions?”
“For askingthe best lawyer in New Yorka few simple questions,” he said. “I’m assuming you have at least ten more.”
“I do.”
“Then start asking.”
4B
JENNA
My living room was the saddest display of holiday cheer I’d ever seen.
We were weeks away from Christmas, and instead of my usual red handmade stockings, I’d hung a “Will hang later” Post-it. There was no fir tree glowing with warmth, no North Pole train circling the floor, and no sign that the holidays had even arrived.
Well, unless you wanted to count the letter hanging exactly where my tree should’ve been—the letter that explained why I hadn’t had a single second to even think about decorating for the season.
Dear Santa,
I’m only asking for one thing this year—just one tiny little thing—and it doesn’t require you to come down a chimney or carry anything heavy on my behalf at all.
Please find a way—any way—to stop the world this week during my boss’s Naughty or Nice bonus ceremony so I can slap theshit out of him with my heavy-duty stapler. Then give me a chance to kick him a few times when he hits the ground, too.
