Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Chapter One
Luca
Present day
“What do you mean, you can’t come over for Sunday dinner?” Nick says over the phone. “You never miss Sunday dinners. It’s a ritual, like going to church and eating no meat on Friday!” I hear mumbling in the background. “Mona says that you better not be ditching us for a date,” he says and then laughs. “But don’t worry, I told her that you are taking becoming a monk very seriously.”
I shake my head, drinking the last of my coffee. “It’s not like that. We are all invited to my boss’s house for a welcome back party. What am I supposed to do? Say no?”
“Who is he welcoming back?” Nick asks, and I hear him drinking.
“His daughter. Apparently, she’s been in Paris for the past six years. It wasn’t a suggestion either.” The invitation was given to all senior and junior partners, and it was basically thank you for joining us in welcoming back Eliahn.
“Ah,” he says. “The boss talks, and you have no choice.” And he isn’t wrong. I started at Coco and Associates straight out of law school. Graduating at the top of my class had some perks, and one was having every major law firm fight for you. It was a hard decision, and I visited them all, but I just felt different when I went in for an interview there. It felt like family and not just a case.
The law firm was started some forty years ago by Leonard Coco, and he only had a secretary. From what everyone says, he would sit at the courthouse day in and day out, trying to get clients. At first, he just did family law, but then his best friend came along and took the criminal cases. Slowly, they grew, and now, we handle it all from family law and criminal law to immigration law and environmental law.
Now it is the biggest law firm in the city, fuck, almost in the country. And I am a part of that. I couldn’t be happier or scared.
Nick, Tom, and Jason also graduated from Harvard, but only Nick and I felt the need to head west. Jason is still in Boston, no doubt freezing his fucking balls off during the winter months, and Tom is smack in the middle of New York City. His condo overlooks Central Park, and he says he’s never leaving.
Out of the four of us, Nick is the only one in a relationship. According to Nick, he isn’t tied down per se; he’s just half the chain attached at his ankle. He met Mona when they started at the same law firm. He went into the relationship with his normal no-strings-attached mantra, but that quickly turned into “yes, dear” within the first month of dating. No matter how much he complains about it, he loves every single second of it.
“So you have to go to this black tie event for your boss’s daughter. How old is she?” Nick asks.
“I have no fucking clue,” I say, walking to the backyard patio and sitting down. I look back at the house that I bought as soon as I signed on to be a junior partner. It was my gift to myself for all the years that I slaved and didn’t have a life. Now at least I get to look at something and see it paid off.
I usually only get to enjoy the backyard and its solitude on the weekends. During the week, I’m at my desk starting at seven, and I don’t get home until after nine on some days, but I have no one to answer to. I am about to talk when the noise from the neighboring yard starts up. Hammers go nuts, and when I stand to look over at the backyard next to me, I see that they have workers assembling something. They must be putting in a pool. The house has been vacant for the past six months, and now for the past week, the activity level has gone through the roof. I think I’m getting new neighbors, and from what I can see, they have kids. “From what I heard, she escaped the wrath of her father when she was twenty by going to Paris.”
“Fuck, a French girl?” he says, his voice going quiet. “You know that they do anal before anything, right?”
I shake my head, laughing. “Where do you get all these facts?”
“Pornhub,” he says, laughing. “Just don’t tell Mona. She gets all territorial about my big dick.”
“My lips are sealed,” I say. “Anyway, rain check. Are you going to play hockey this week?” Another thing we picked up living in Boston is skating and playing hockey. I mean, I can skate, which is about as far as I can go, but we do like to play and let some steam off.