The Devil You Know, page 1
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
ELIZABETH O'ROARK
Copyright © 2022 by Elizabeth O’Roark
Developmental Editor: Sali Benbow-Powers
Editor: Kelly Golland
Copy Edit: Julie Deaton
Cover Design: Lori Jackson
Photography: Rafa Catala
Model: Alvaro Torralbo
All rights reserved.
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Katie Foster Meyer, one of the best people I know and the reason I have this career.
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(Sorry I wrote about lawyers and named one Ben. I’ll try to avoid it in the future.)
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Epilogue
Also by Elizabeth O'Roark
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
BEN
When Gemma Charles smiles at you, rest assured you’re fucked. And she’s been smiling since she entered the courtroom.
Her client, Victoria Jones, is about to lose her three children. The prosecutor has provided his evidence, and you can make anything sound believable if you know how to tell a story.
Unfortunately for him, Gemma tells a better one.
She begins by proving the grounds for the welfare check were baseless. She plays bodycam footage showing a gross abuse of power by both the police and the social worker.
She proves the letter notifying Victoria of the visit was mailed after the visit. She’s blown up the social worker’s photos of the dirty kitchen floor—the only specific complaint made about cleanliness—and asks the social worker to demonstrate how, exactly, Victoria was supposed to get the floor clean while confined to a wheelchair.
And Gemma, naturally, has brought a wheelchair and a broom with her for the demonstration.
The court is laughing, the judge is getting irritated, and Gemma is in her element. She has the face of an angel—high cheekbones, wide mouth, almond-shaped eyes—but she’s too goddamn argumentative and short-tempered to do anything but fight for a living. She’s gliding across the floor like a dancer and turning the courtroom into a circus, one in which the arresting officer and social worker are the clowns. She’s clearly proven her case, but she’s still going strong because she’s so fucking mad. She wants every single person in this room to see how ludicrous and unfair the situation is.
“Miss Charles,” grouses the judge as Gemma begins to push the wheelchair out, “put that away. This isn’t drama class.” He turns to the state’s attorney. “Motion is denied. This was a disgusting abuse of power on the part of social services, and I won’t forget the way you just wasted the court’s time.”
Victoria and her family cheer. Gemma hugs them all before rushing toward the exit. I’m hidden at the back of the courtroom, but I catch a glimpse of her eyes just before they disappear behind sunglasses.
She’s crying. And I’m not sure they are happy tears.
2
GEMMA
Two Years Later
The devil on my shoulder is summoned every other Monday.
This morning, as I prepare for the all-staff meeting, he’s dancing like a flame in my chest, and I can’t seem to put him back in his place.
I flat-iron my dark hair until it hangs sleek and shiny, just past my shoulders. I spend extra time on my makeup and put on my good luck heels, which will only bring me to my nemesis’s shoulder, but will at least level the playing field a bit. When we enter today’s meeting it’ll feel less like David versus Goliath, and more like Churchill versus Hitler.
To be clear, I’m Churchill in this scenario.
I rush out the door and into the bright September sun, reaching my building with only moments to spare. Fields, McGovern, and Geiger is on the fifteenth floor of the most sterile, soulless building in LA, and that’s fitting. They’re also LA’s most sterile, soulless law firm. It’s why I chose them.
The conference room is already full when I arrive, and I’m aggrieved to discover he has beaten me in. His head—a foot higher than any other—is positioned directly across from the seat saved for me by my assistant, Terri. Has he done this on purpose? Undoubtedly. Ben Tate lives to irritate me. And he barely needs to try—the sight of his smug face is enough.
Behave yourself, Gemma, I think as I cross the room. For once, don’t stoop to his level.
I’m not normally so restrained, but it’s a big day for me. FMG is excruciatingly stingy with partnerships, and aside from Ben—who came here as a partner two years ago—someone either needs to retire or die before I can step up. Fortunately, two partners plan to retire next spring. Perhaps I can stop hoping tragedy strikes.
Terri slides me a latte as I take the seat beside her. “You’re wearing the good luck shoes,” she says with a nod at my profoundly expensive baby-blue Manolos. I’ve never lost a case wearing them. “You think this is it?”
“It had better be after they amped it up the way they did,” I growl.
Though other associates have been at the firm longer (including Craig, Ben’s bland favorite) none of them bring in anywhere near the amount of work I do, nor have they garnered the kind of publicity I have.
Gemma Charles, Junior Partner. FMG’s only female partner. It has such a nice ring to it, and God I’m going to love watching that smirk on Tate’s mouth fall away when he hears it for the first time.
He’s been my sworn enemy since his first week here, when he somehow managed to steal Brewer Campbell, a prospective client I’d spent six months courting. I’m alone in my hatred, however: the other women on staff don’t care that he’s a smug bastard and stealer of clients. They don’t care that he barely seems to notice they exist. Apparently, all you need to be forgiven around here are broad shoulders and a winning record.
Although his face doesn’t hurt either.
Even I will admit he has a face that’s hard to look away from. His features shouldn’t work together—sharp cheekbones, a nose that appears to have been broken at some point, intense brown eyes. His would be a stern face were it not for that upper lip, which is slightly fuller than you’d expect and turns him into the kind of man you think about a little too long. The kind you see when you close your eyes after swearing repeatedly to yourself that you have no desire to see him at all.
Nicole, the generically pretty blond associate sitting to his left, watches him run a hand through his thick hair, which is somehow always perfect and a little fucked-up at once, as if it was professionally done but then mussed when he banged the hairdresser afterward. Beneath the table, my foot taps with impatience.
“Ben,” Nicole says, after clearing her throat, “I was at Adney’s Tavern this weekend. I thought you might pop in.” The words sound practiced, as if she rehearsed them in the mirror all morning. She’s so fucking infatuated that she probably did.
Behave, Gemma. I pick up my phone and start looking at shoes online.
Ben’s distractedly flipping through a file. “I went home for the weekend.”
“Home?” I murmur, glancing at him. “I didn’t know humans were allowed to jaunt back and forth over the River Styx like that.”
His eyes raise to mine. His mouth twitches. “There’s a small toll. It’s really quite civilized.”
Don’t laugh, Gemma. Do not laugh. I look down at my phone, ignoring the box of donuts someone’s shoved in front of me.
“Live a little, Gemma,” says Caroline Radner, who isn’t well-placed to provide advice, given she passed fifty a while ago and is never going to make partner. I’d planned to get some of the strawberries they always have at these meetings, and now I want to refuse even that on principle.
“Gemma can’t have sugar,” Ben says, his eyes alight. “She likes to keep her teeth sharp.”
“I imagine everyone familiar with dental hygiene hopes to keep their teeth sharp, Ben,” I retort.
“Ah, but you’ve got more than average, right?” he asks.
I narrow my eyes. The running joke, among pretty much everyone here, is that my vagina has teeth. The Castrator, they call me. In theory
They think it’s a slur when they refer to me as a castrating bitch, but all it says to me is that they’ve finally realized I’m not someone to fuck with. I was someone who was fucked with a lot, once upon a time. It won’t happen again.
Fields’ assistant, Debbie, steps to the front of the room and beside me, Terri discretely sets a timer. We have a running bet about how long Debbie will speak, because even the simplest statement can take thirty minutes in her capable hands.
I text Terri.
Me: Three minutes, thirty seconds.
Terri: Three minutes, forty seconds.
“So, I shouldn’t have to say this again,” says Debbie, “but I really need everyone to label food in the break room.”
It’s going to be a long one—I can already tell. I go ahead and slide Terri a five-dollar bill.
“So many containers look the same,” she continues. “I don’t want to accidentally eat your escargot when I brought in a tuna sandwich.”
I consider pointing out that you would have to be a fucking idiot to confuse escargot with a sandwich of any kind, but it would just give Debbie something more to talk about, which is the opposite of what I want.
“Anyway,” Debbie says, “you really need to label and it’s not hard to do. I like to use a piece of masking tape, and then I just write my name on there with a Sharpie.”
Debbie continues to explain, to a group of grown humans, how food is labeled. I sigh quietly, and Ben’s eyes flicker to mine, as if he finds my irritation amusing.
One day I’m going to light him on fire—we’ll see how much laughing he does then.
When she says labeling is really important for the third time—repetition is Debbie’s favorite conversational gambit—I have to tune her out and go to my happy place…Shoes. Shoes I will buy. Shoes I wish someone would make. Right now, I’m thinking about green suede heels I saw at Nordstrom. Some people might argue that a kelly-green suede shoe has limited usefulness, particularly when it costs five hundred dollars, but with enough rationalization, I can make the math work in my favor.
“You’re thinking about shoes again, aren’t you?” whispers Terri.
I give her a sidelong glance. “What else would I think about?”
“You’re young and gorgeous. You should be thinking about a hot guy walking out of your shower.”
“What hot guy? There certainly aren’t any here.”
Her eyes flicker toward Ben, but she knows better than to suggest him to me.
“Chris Hemsworth,” she replies, and I laugh quietly.
The statistical probability of Chris Hemsworth walking out of my shower is almost zero, and if it were to happen, I know exactly how it would end, because every attempt at a relationship since Kyle has ended in the exact same way: with him accusing me of being ‘dead inside’ or obsessed with work, which is what men say if you work harder than they do. Unlike shoes, which just exist to cradle you in their green suede bosom.
“Care to share the conversation?” Debbie snaps at the two of us.
“We were talking about Sharpies, for labeling the food,” I reply smoothly. “I just asked Terri to order some.”
“It’s weird, then,” says Ben, eyes glinting with malice, “that she’d respond by saying Chris Hemsworth.”
For a single moment I picture whipping one of my heels across the table—his cry of pain, the brief triumph I’d feel before I remember I’ve done this in front of the most litigious people in LA.
Fortunately, Arvin Fields, managing partner, enters the room before I can act. Arvin is approximately one million years old, but shows no signs of retiring, and he’s still younger than McGovern, who likely remembers voting for John Adams in our nation’s third election.
“As you know,” he begins, “there are changes coming.” His speech is gratingly slow, which isn’t a product of age but more a tactic to wind us all up. He likes his underlings to be like a swarm of angry bees, fighting for dominance, stinging anything in their path.
Which is why Ben and I have both done well here. We were already angry bees when we arrived.
“At the end of this year, two of our partners will be retiring.” I sit up straighter. The announcement. “We’re hoping one of you can step up to the plate.”
My head jerks. “One?” I ask, my voice sharper than I’d like.
“Just one. Over the past decade, we’ve seen a lot less work from certain sectors, and it’s cut into our profits. We’ll be watching you very closely this winter, so may the best man, or woman, win.”
It feels like someone just put a hole in my lungs and all the air is escaping. I deserve to make partner, and instead of just giving it to me like they should, they’re going to turn it into a fucking competition. One Ben will go out of his way to make sure I lose.
My phone vibrates in my lap and I glance at it.
Ben: Uh oh :-( Sorry about the bad news.
God, I hate him so much. He has my number thanks to the company directory. He’s only used it abusively, thus far. As I have, in turn.
Me: Bad news for whom?
Ben: I thought that was obvious. It’ll be fun watching you on your best behavior for a few months, though.
Me: Best behavior? The standards here are pretty low. As long as I’m not caught in the bathroom with a client’s spouse, I should be in the clear.
Ben had a little incident at his first holiday party with FMG, during which he got caught with a client’s drunk wife. It’s the only thing he’s ever seemed embarrassed about.
I try to reference it whenever possible, obviously.
That devil in my chest is cackling maniacally while Ben reads the text, but he merely leans back in his seat, a casual smile on his generous mouth, eyes gleaming behind absurdly thick lashes.
Ben: You sure bring that up a lot. It’s almost like you wish it was you.
The skin on my neck tingles, as if he’s whispered those words in my ear—his voice soft as velvet, dark as the grave. I turn my phone facedown, ending the conversation. I wonder if I can report him, but as I go over what was said, I realize it doesn’t make me look great either.
Whatever.
I’m about to be FMG’s first female partner, at which point I will begin crushing the boys’ club here under my very expensive heels. And Ben Tate is where I’ll start.
3
My father calls more often than I’d like, which is to say he still calls on occasion when I wish he’d drop off the face of the Earth. He’s a man who always wants something from you, a man incapable of a genuine gesture. If he gives you a gift, a smile, a compliment…rest assured he is about to ask for far more in exchange.
What he wants, always, is my time and attention. None of this is done out of love—it’s simply his innate need to win at all costs. He still wants to win a divorce that took place nearly fifteen years ago, during which he stole everything from my mom but custody of me, and then he came back and stole that too.
