The Lawyer by Charlotte E Hart
Chapter Nine
LANDON
Ending the call that Neve hasn’t bothered answering, I follow the waiter as he leads the way through the sub-par restaurant. I’m not entirely sure why I bothered, but she’s an odd arm of this family I need to check in with every now and then.
Ivy eventually looks up at me and smiles, half her body rising to kiss my cheek before we both sit. “That was unexpected,” I remark.
“What? I can’t show affection for my big brother?” I stop the waiter before he disappears, ordering a black coffee.
“You never normally do.” She shuffles her menu around and pretends to read it. “What do you want, Ivy?”
The menu gets slung on the table, her eyes narrowed at me, and she crosses her arms. “Why do you always think that?” Because it’s a fact. “I just wanted to spend some time with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my brother?” I chuckle and keep staring, waiting for the real reason. “Okay, not only that, I wanted to talk aboutSeffiand see how you’re feeling—” I start standing before she finishes, ready to leave. “Landon, come on. We can’t ignore this.”
“I’m not ignoring it.”
“Yes, you are. She’s happy over there, and I don’t see what the problem is.”
A sigh leaves me. Considering the amount of work I have to do today, and the fact that I’ve now discarded some of that to meet her, talking through Persephone’s melodramatic issues is the furthest thing from my mind. “I don’t have time for this, Ivy.”
“Please sit down. Talk to me. I don’t understand any of it. I never have really.”
Another sigh and I sit and watch as the waiter delivers my coffee, then ignore his offer of the house specialities today. Ivy doesn’t. She orders whatever food she wants and sends him on his way as I put sugar in the coffee.
“You really should eat lunch, Landon. It’s beyond me how you ever managed to get so big without food.”
“It’s beyond me how you’ve managed to stay so slim with the amount you eat.”
She chuckles and leans back, getting herself comfortable for the conversation I do not want to have. I pick the coffee up and stare, once again waiting for her to start. I might as well get it out of the way. It at least gives me half an hour to ignore the constant vibrations of emails and calls coming to my phone. Perhaps I can imagine a certain set of legs while I bear this.
“She phoned me yesterday,” she says.
“Did she.” It isn’t a question. Of course, she would have done. They’ve been the closest of all of us, especially considering Ivy tried to mold our sibling into some semblance of respectable when she was younger. “And what did she have to say for herself?”
“Not much other than the obvious. I suppose love does that to people.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“And she was discussing the upcoming ball. She’s a little fucking offended, frankly, that she hasn’t been invited, given that she is a Broderick. A fifty-year celebration of Broderick Media and she’s not allowed to go?”
“She’s made her choice, Ivy. She knew what it would mean.”
I sip at the coffee and then put it down, disgusted by the bland taste on offer. “What the hell made you choose this place?”
“It’s close to my place.”
“It’s horrendous, as is the coffee.”
“Stop being a snob. If you want decent coffee, try Afghanistan for a while.”
“You’ve been in Afghanistan?”
“A little.”
“Why were you there?”
“I go where the money leads me. You know that. I'd be entirely comfortable staying closer to home if a certain someone would pay well enough. Unfortunately, he's a miserly scrooge.”
My brow arches. “Not this again. You ask for too much, Ivy. We don't pay anywhere near that amount for freelancers, and you know it. I'm far from miserly; I'm simply a realist when it comes to profitability.”
“You're loss. Anyway,Seffi?”
I smirk at her tenacity and lean back in the chair. “Have you had your author interview yet?”
“Yes. Strange bloody woman. Didn’t stop talking and was clearly digging. Father made a poor choice, but honestly, this redirection isn’t going to work on me. Seffi?”
“What about her?”
“Stop it. We’re not in a courtroom and you can’t circumvent this.”
“Fine. What would you like me to say?”
“I’d like to know how you feel about it. Being such a fucking arse to her about being happy is bloody awful.”
“I’m not. In fact, I went to Paris to see for myself how happy she is. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you that.”
She looks shocked. “You did?” I nod and pick up the fucking awful coffee again, needing something to fill my stomach even if it is horrendous. “And you spoke to her?”
“No, I watched the opening of Scott’s show from a café outside, and then I left. He knew I was there. Which is why I’m surprised she doesn’t.”
“Oh. Perhaps you should have gone in and said hello?”
“The fact that I have, and still am, leaving them alone to evolve whichever way they choose should be enough of a sign that I’m reasonably accepting of the situation, regardless of the stupidity of it.”
“What a truly wonderful way of describing love. You really are a bastard.”
Her food arrives the moment she’s given me her view of sisterly affection. “Perhaps, but given our father’s thoughts on this matter, I can assure you that, for now, this is the only way forward. If she expects bouquets of flowers to congratulate her apparent contented bliss, she’s very much mistaken.” The vibrations in my pocket kick up to manic proportions, and I finally get it out to look at what the commotion is. A full pdf spread of an editorial piece for the Financial Times hits me square in the face, the title blazing—Unrest within Broderick Media.
I frown and start scanning through the document, standing in the next breath. “Look Ivy, this is all I’ve got to give Persephone at the moment. Bastard or not, this is the way I’m handling the situation.”
“Hold on, where are you going? You’ve only just got here.”
“Back to work. Some of us don’t have the luxury of lunches and chit chats.”
“Good god, you’re turning into such a fucking bore, Landon.” My head swings back to look at her. “You were fun once, you know?” Hmm. Well, those days are long gone. “Maybe you could try a laugh now and again. Might even manage to get laid by a decent woman if you do that.”
A smile spreads on my face, my thoughts running to a certain dancer. Or PA. “The last thing I want is a decent woman. I prefer them completely indecent.”
She chuckles and drives her fork into her meat. “Ewww. Go away before I’m sick. I didn’t need to know that.”
Turning, I wave my hand and hurry through the building. I don’t know what this email is, but so far, it appears to be an unprinted copy of a piece that is about to hit the headlines tomorrow morning. I call through to legal on my way through town, eyes checking for traffic as I cross the frenzied streets. They know as little as I do, but I can hear the panic in Tonya’s voice when she tells me she’s already spoken to Mike Harris—editor in chief over at the FT. He’s not budging on it, and unless we’ve got some way of stopping them, it is going to print in the morning.
Having arrived back into the offices, I go straight to mine and pull up everything relating to the piece. My hand’s on my phone before I’ve fully absorbed myself in it, another call through to Tonya so we can work through the options of having it pulled. We don’t have any, and more importantly, the Financial Times is too big for me to be able to manipulate a damn thing or pay them off. The fact that they’re suggesting that this fucking Foxton buyout has been underhanded and that it proposes we’ve not been legitimate in our dealings is, unfortunately, reasonably correct. However, questioning our next move, and morals, and what’s already happening behind closed doors in this deceptive company, isn’t the kind of news we need printing anywhere.
I put the phone down and stare out the window, pondering anything I have to counter it.
Nothing.
The door opens, and Willow walks in. “Landon, can we talk about the florists for the ball?”
“Fuck the ball.”
“Woah! Okay.” I swing my gaze to her, frown deeply embedded, and watch as she backs up. “I’ll … I’m sorry, I’ll go.”
“Do. And don’t bother me again with trivial crap. Deal with it yourself like you should. Do I look like I give one fuck about flowers?”
Her feet stop, shoulders squaring as if she’s got something to say. “Wow. I think I preferred when you’d just grunt and stay quiet. You’re in arse mode this afternoon.”
“You have no idea. Get out.” Thankfully, she turns to leave before getting another mouthful of vehemence that has nothing to do with her.
Unfortunately for her, she does the incomprehensible thing of shutting the door with her still in the room. She leans on the door, arms crossed with a folder she’s carrying in her grasp. “Care to share?” I don’t speak. Share? With her? What fucking planet is she from?
I look back at the window instead, unsure why I’m not bellowing all kinds of shit at her to leave me the hell alone. What does she think sharing will do? She does nothing but come in here, look too fucking attractive, and deal with trivialities, and now she thinks she can help me through a month’s worth of more goddamn work and marketing catastrophes by talking about it?
“Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad,” she says.
I turn the screen for her, letting her take a long, hard look at the spread on it. “It is.”
She pushes off the door and takes a few minutes looking over the information, several gasps at the content. I’m not surprised. It’s nauseating, suggestive, and points to every fault that treacherous behaviour exhibits. Not only that, it shows us as nothing but conniving megaliths of society, something which, if I’m honest with myself, we are. The suggestion that we’re also linked to the government and manipulating the general population because we’re paid to do so is also fucking annoying. Regardless of that being reasonably close to the truth as well.
“Not good,” she says. Quite. “And I’m assuming you can’t figure a way of stopping it?”
“No.”
Silence.
“Anything I can do to help?”
My eyes close, a breath heaving in and out. “No.”
And then the phone starts ringing on my desk.
Staring at it for a while, I wait until it’s rung out and then listen as it instantly rings again. I start tugging my tie from my neck, and the jacket’s shrugged off just as quick, and before I know it, I’m working at my laptop to try and minimise the damage as best as I can. “Coffee, and keep it coming,” I mutter, pulling up a list of email addresses. “No more interruptions today. Cancel everything that was booked in.”
She moves in my periphery, and I listen as the door closes quietly. She’s a distraction too much for today, and perhaps, if she hadn’t been these last few weeks, then my head would have caught this crap before it even started. Giving Ivy the time of day was a big enough mistake. The last thing I should have been doing is letting a fucking PA invade my thoughts, too.
I pick the phone up on its fourth ring, eyes scanning words I’ve already written.
Let's see what I can come up with.