“Mr. Hamilton, I—” Aubrey stepped into the room with a cup of coffee. “Where did everyone go?”

“Home.” I took the cup from her, frustrated. “You’re free to go, too.”

“Are you ever going to formally give me my intern position back or am I forever stuck being your coffee and file organizer?”

“You’re also in charge of taking phone calls. That’s a responsibility you shouldn’t take lightly.”

“I’m serious...” She rolled her eyes. “As much as I enjoy having sex with you every morning with your coffee, I would like to go back to feeling like I actually have a purpose here.”

“Fine.” I took a sip from my cup. “Have you been keeping up with my current case?”

She nodded.

“Great,” I said dryly. “How do you think I should proceed?”

“I think you need to first get ahold of the man who erased your client’s identity.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

She took a folder from her purse and set it in front of me. “My parents taught me how to research someone’s background very, very well. That’s the one thing I can credit them for.” She flipped a few pages. “Your client has school records from his childhood—test scores, address changes, et cetera. There’s a record of where he attended college, grad school—even a record of the time he broke into his school’s firewall and got suspended for an entire semester. After that, there’s a short failed marriage to some woman he met in Cabo, and a few founding records for his company. But after that—with the exception of these recent allegations, there’s nothing.”

I glanced at the pages.

“Don’t you think that’s odd?” She looked at me. “How you can google someone and nothing about them pops up? How you can search several databases for information and find entire decades are missing?”

I shut the folder. “It’s slightly odd.”

“Slightly?”

“Yes. Slightly. Is this all the evidence you have?”

“It’s all the evidence you need.” She stared into my eyes. “Find the guy who erased him, or find the guy who erased you and you might have yourself another win under your belt. If not—”

“Aubrey...”

“People don’t just come out of nowhere, Andrew,” she said. “You know that, I know that, and I’m pretty sure your client knows that.”

“Now we’re talking about the client?”

“There is no record of Andrew Hamilton in any of state’s registered lawyer databases.”

“I’m not facing a trial.”

“I called every law school in the state and pretended to be an alumna searching for a fellow alum and there was no record of an Andrew Hamilton getting his degree from any of them.”

“Are you that obsessed with me?” He smirked.

“I did the same thing for the law schools in New York. That was a bit trickier, but the results were just the same. There was no record of you going to school during the years you would’ve been in attendance.”

“And this affects you how?”

“You humiliated me when you found out I lied to you.”

“I apologize.”

“Don’t.” She shook her head. “You made me cry because you told me that I was a liar for hiding the truth and pretending to be someone I wasn’t.”

“I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be the only person to classify you as a liar after what you did.”

“Yet, every day that I fuck you, every night that I talk to you on the phone, I’m no closer to getting to know anything about you.” There was concern in her eyes. “It’s always me talking about me, or you talking about abstract things that make up a blurry picture.”

“It doesn’t matter. I told you that I—”

“That you’ve never lied to me,” she said. “I believe that, and for a moment I thought that you were always completely honest with me, but when I look back, you’re only honest about what you want to talk about. Hence, the random appearance of Mrs. Hamilton, and—”

“I’ve told you about that already.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her close to me. “So, I’m not going to waste my time rehashing shit I’ve already gone over with you.”

“Just...”

“Look.” I pressed my finger against her lips. “You’re the only woman I’ve fucked regularly in six years.”

“Am I supposed to be proud of that?”

I pulled her into my lap. “You’re the only woman—only person actually, that I talk to outside of my hours at this office, the only woman I’ve ever fucked over the phone, the only woman who’s been in my car, and the only woman who’s lied to me and still gotten me to stay...”

She sighed, staring back at me.

“Now,” I said, “if you don’t mind, I’m going to fuck you in this chair. And when we’re done I’ll kindly show you how to research someone the right way, because contrary to what you think, my client does have a background.”

“No, I double checked everything and I—”

I pressed my lips against hers. “After I fuck you.”

Consent (n.):

A voluntary agreement to another’s proposition.

Aubrey

Subject: New York /Your Panties

For the record, I did go to law school in NYC. I was the valedictorian of my class.

—Andrew

PS—If you stash one more pair of your wet panties/“For your fetish” notes in my desk drawer, I’m going to assume that you do want me to sleep with your pussy over my face. My tongue has been aching to do that since I first “met” you so there’s no need for unnecessary hints...

“Aubrey?” My mother’s voice took the smile right off of my face. “Aubrey, were you listening to your father just now?”

“No, I’m sorry.” I sighed, dreading that I was still sitting at a dinner with them.

They’d called me the second my rehearsal was over and demanded that I drive home so we could all ride to our “favorite” restaurant together. It was where all their country club friends ate regularly, and I knew they just wanted to come here to assert our seemingly perfect family image.

“Are you listening now?” My father raised his eyebrow.

“Yes...”

“We brought you here so we could tell you that...I’m running for governor in the next election,” he said.

“Do you want my vote?”

“Ugh, Aubrey.” My mother huffed and snapped her fingers for the waiter. “This is one of the happiest moments of your life.”

“No...” I shook my head. “I’m pretty sure it isn’t...”

“All those years of hard work, building our firm to be one of the most impeccable in the city,” she said as she looked into my father’s eyes, “it’s about to payoff in a huge way. We already have a few verbal commitments for the campaign’s budget, and since we’re going in on the same side as the incumbent—”

“You have a really good chance of being governor.” I cut her off. “Congratulations, Dad.”

He reached over the table and squeezed my hand.

My mother couldn’t seem to shut up. “We’ll have to take new family photos—stocks, you know? Photos we can give to the press for their write-ups, so you’ll have to wear your hair in something other than that ballerina thing.”

“It’s a bun.”

“It’s an eyesore.”

“Margaret...” My father chided. “It’s not an eyesore...It’s just—”

“It’s just what?” I looked back and forth between them.

“It’s important for us to look like a cohesive All-American unit on the campaign trail.” My mother took a glass of wine from the waiter and waited for him to step away. “We may have to make some stops together as a family.”

“You’re running for governor, not President, and what twenty-something do you know travels with her parents during a campaign just for photo-ops?”

“Our opponent has twenty year old twins who are homeschooled,” she said. “They travel to third world countries every summer to help the poor and I’m pretty sure they’re going to be at every stop on the campaign trail.”

I snorted. “Why are you trying to compete with genuine people? Don’t you think they’re the type that deserve to win?”