I don’t go up to bed like I should. It’s the gym I step into instead. My weights are still on the bar above the bench I’d been lying on when she showed up, so that’s where I start.
Over and over, I lift the weights, and I don’t stop until I’m too exhausted to think about what happened here tonight.
22
“Rough weekend?”
I lean back in my office chair and cross my legs, shooting lasers at the ground beneath Spencer’s loafers. His voice grates on the only surviving nerve I have left after Friday night.
“Not as rough as today is going to be for you if you don’t turn around and leave me alone.”
“Yikes. You’re testy today,” he presses, doing the very opposite of what I want him to.
Instead of doing the intelligent thing, he slinks forward, poisoning the air in my office with his overpriced Burberry cologne. I roll my lips and slump in my chair, already drained. Despite it being early afternoon, I feel as though I’ve been here for days. My workload hasn’t shrunk from what it was the moment I arrived, and I’m realistic enough to recognize that it won’t be by the time I leave. I’ve been spacey all day, my thoughts split into a thousand different threads.
“What do you want, Spencer?” I ask dully.
“Do you ever warm up, or are you just perpetually frozen?”
Rolling my chair forward, I drop my arms to my desk and tap my nails to the space bar on my keyboard. “If you’d like me to jam an icicle up your ass, all you have to do is ask.”
His eyes fall on my saccharine smile and harden. “I want an update on the Walsh v Walsh case.”
“No.”
“You don’t have a choice. Victor is asking.”
“If that’s not a lie, then he can ask Rowena. I don’t answer to Victor.”
“We answer to all the managing partners,” he hisses, folding his arms across his evergreen suit jacket. “You don’t get to pick and choose.”
“I do when I highly doubt you’ll be taking this information to Victor afterward. If he is truly interested in an update, then I’ll send him an email before I leave tonight.”
“Are you hiding something? If you’re further behind than you want him to know, maybe it would be better if I?—”
“I’m drafting my motion to compel a crypto disclosure,” I announce, shutting him up.
Without waiting for his reaction, I reach across my desk and grab the yellow folder with the Walsh V Walsh label printed on the front before flipping it open. When I glance back up, he’s staring at me blankly, his brows lifted.
“You’re actually going through with that?”
“Obviously.”
His laugh is heavy with mockery. “Ambitious. Judges don’t love fishing expeditions.”
“Good thing it’s not a fishing expedition, then. It’s a response to the five inconsistencies in his disclosure. Including a four-hundred-and-thirty-thousand-dollar transfer into a numbered Alberta corporation.”
He blinks once. Just that single time. I take so much fucking pleasure in the beautiful sight of his surprise.
“I didn’t see that in the file.”
“No,” I say smugly. “You didn’t.”
Dropping his arms, he strolls further into my office. I look up at him when he stops at the edge of my desk and peers down at the file folder.
“Look, I’m just suggesting caution because Rowena won’t appreciate an overreach. Crypto disclosure motions can get messy.”
“Oh, well, in that case, fuck off. I don’t need your phony concern. I’m not about to let our client get steamrolled by a man who thinks he can hide assets because he understands bro technology better than the average judge,” I bite out.
