"I'm in real trouble, Vin." I couldn't help the quaver in my voice, the tears that threatened. "I'm afraid." There, I said it.
"I'll make some calls."
"No. I don't want you involved. I need you to stay clear of me. I need you and your wife and baby to be safe. Understand? I can't talk my way out of this. If I pop my head up, DiSalvo will take it off. I can't let you run the same risk."
"Evan, you know the connections I have. I can arrange protection. Whatever you need." He was pleading now. I looked to the ceiling, bidding the tears back down.
"The firm is yours, Vin." God, it hurt to give it away, but I knew it was the right thing to do. I knew because I hadn't done the right thing in a long, long time, so the feeling was alien to me. It felt wrong, so I knew it had to be right.
"No, Evan-"
"Yes. It's yours. You'll need to rebrand. Cut the dead weight, get rid of some associates. I'd keep Cassie and Drew for sure. Revamp your client list. The rest is up to you. As soon as I get off the phone with you, call Castille and tell him I said that his retainer never went through and that we need him to pay it again. Now, of course, it did go through, but he probably won't check and will just repay the same amount over again. That should cover your costs for the work so far and give you a little cut on top of it. Once it goes through and you've got the money in hand, fire him. He's a ticking time bomb. Wash your hands of him. Ship all his records back to him. Destroy the files in our computers. Burn that shit if you have to. If he threatens to complain about the double retainer-"
"Give him the Pallida treatment." Vinnie finished for me.
"Exactly. Tell him you have no problem spreading his filthy laundry out for all to see."
"Okay."
"Good. I'm going to need you to dump any clients that are tied up in Castille's mess. Get the cross-check list Drew made and go through it on a slash-and-burn basis. Cut anyone ever connected with DiSalvo or with any families you don't know or trust. It'll keep you safe, though it will definitely hurt your bottom line. But you'll get new clients, so I'm not too worried. You know the back storage room with the double locks?"
"The forbidden zone?"
"That's the one. The keys are taped to the underside of my middle desk drawer. I need you to have all DiSalvo's files taken out of that room-every last box-and put into a storage facility of your choosing. Somewhere in Jersey. Just leave the information about the location with Trish at Sal's. I'll pick it up from her later today."
"Evan, what are you planning? I mean, I'm getting the general idea that you are going to do something reckless. Don't. You'll never be able to practice again. You'll be disbarred. Ratting on DiSalvo? You'll be hunted."
"I'm already hunted. This will turn the game right back around on him. And I have ways of disappearing."
"This is dangerous." There was a knocking sound, as if he were bouncing his forehead on his desk again.
"I knew that when I started all this."
From the day I accepted DiSalvo's dirty money, some small part of me had known a reckoning was coming, one way or another. Maybe it was my upbringing talking, fire and brimstone and all that, but here it was. I was at the edge of the precipice, looking into the inferno below. I'd been dancing on the edge for years. Of course, I never believed it would blow up in my face this completely. But I wasn't going to jump into the flames. I was going to push DiSalvo in and listen to him scream. The headache receded and left revenge, the kind served cold, in its place.
I sat up straighter, forcing myself to stop slumping even though no one could see me. "Now, I added you onto the firm accounts a couple of years ago. If you go to the bank or anywhere, you're listed as an authorized user. Get on my laptop; I have a Word document with all my passwords and accounts listed. The password to get into the sheet is Tybalt. That gives you the keys to the queendom. If anyone asks, I had a mental breakdown and I'm on a long vacation."
He laughed, though it was a sad sound. "No one would ever believe that you had a mental breakdown. I'll say you ran away with a smoking hot law clerk and are living out dirty fantasies on a beach somewhere in South America."
I sniffled. The tears dropped onto Lincoln's light blue shirt, making dots of royal blue appear here and there.
Vinnie sighed again. "There has to be another way."
"There isn't."
"I don't know if I can do this without you."
"You can." I wasn't worried for a moment. Vinnie had the chops to pull it off, not to mention I was leaving the firm account pretty flush.