Once A Liar. A.F. Brady

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       NOW

      Everything feels status quo, not unlike any other day of my life, despite cremating my ex-wife and becoming the sole guardian to my estranged teenage son. But every person I pass looks at me a little closer, stays and chats a little longer, compassionately touches my shoulder, as if these changes were something drastic. Anna, my assistant, hands me my morning coffee as I pass her in the hallway, and a junior partner whose name I’ve forgotten blocks the path to my office.

      “So sorry to hear about your wife, Peter,” he says to me. “I hear she was a wonderful woman.”

      “Ex-wife,” I correct as I push past him and continue down the hall. As a man known to not need sympathy, let alone accept it, I can’t understand why my colleagues would still offer condolence for the loss of my ex-wife. I reach the door to my office, and I see Sinan walking toward me. I leave the door open for him to come in.

      Sinan Khan, a Turkish lawyer from London, has been living in New York and making a killing as a defense attorney since the mid-1990s. Marcus brought him on to Rhodes & Caine almost as soon as we had formed. Sinan and I share the same moral flexibility, paired with a seemingly bottomless depth of knowledge of the law. He understands me.

      “Got some stuff for you,” Sinan declares in his baritone British voice, sidling up to my desk. “I have the case files from that custody thing I tried last year. I think you can use the same case as precedent in your kidnapping trial. It’s a tiny loophole—I’m saying ants can’t squeeze through it—but you should be able to sell it.” He tosses the files onto my desk. “And Anna was about to walk in here with this stack of nonsense—” he flaps a bunch of envelopes in my face “—so I’ll just leave them on your bookcase next to the Oban.”

      “Thanks. Sit, have a drink.” I wave at a large leather chair in the corner of my office.

      “Drink? It’s 8:20 in the morning.” Sinan oozes sophistication.

      I look up at him and smile. “You Muslims and your prohibitions.”

      “Mmm,” he sneers. “I have something else for you, as well.” Sinan reclines in the leather chair and fiddles with a marble chessboard on the table next to him. “A blast from your past is on his way back out into the world.”

      “Back out? When did I ever have a client who went in?” I run my fingers through my hair, knowing full well to whom Sinan is referring.

      “You should know exactly who I’m talking about, especially since he stands pretty much alone in your guilty column.”

      “Bogovian?” I blurt when Sinan substantiates my fears. “You’re telling me Stu Bogovian is getting out? Has it been that long already?” Stu Bogovian was a New York congressman with a penchant for sexual assault. He came from an outrageously wealthy family who paid his victims for their silence, leaving Stu to never learn any self-control. I can’t believe he could be released so soon. Seems like yesterday he went to prison, not the nearly twenty years it’s really been.

      “Yes, love. Stu Bogovian is getting paroled next Thursday. Mark your calendar!” Sinan holds up his hands and twinkles his fingers in mock celebration. “You think he still hates you after all this time?”

      “Back off, Sinan.” I feel the ugly anger rising in my stomach. “Who’s representing him now?”

      “Some Harvard prat. But don’t fret, darling,” Sinan teases, “no one remembers that you were the one who couldn’t get Stu off, and from the trial transcripts, it sounds like Stu had no problem getting off!” Sinan laughs and knocks over the white marble queen with a thin black bishop shaped like an obelisk.

      “He doesn’t hate me—no one hates me.” I swallow the acrid taste of defeat. “He hates Harrison Doyle. And he hates that ADA twerp who put him away, whatever his name was.”

      “You remember the assistant district attorney’s name,” Sinan sighs, knowing I wouldn’t dare forget.

      “Someone who cared would remember his name.” I try to focus my attention on anything other than the Bogovian trial and the birth of my vendetta against Harrison Doyle. Sinan grins at me and emits a low grumbling laugh, amused to know I still get flustered. I draw in a deep breath and wrangle my irritation.

      “Are you coming to this cocktail thing tonight?” Sinan probes, changing the subject. “I’m bringing a very beautiful young man from St. Louis.”