“I’m sorry to leave you with this,” Casimir continued, “but I suggest that you all look for new employment. If you need a reference, I will be happy to provide one. I believe that Val and Josie will be too busy with their own legal and civil defenses to write references.” Casimir looked at his phone one more time and thumbed something on the screen. He held out his hand to Rox, and she moved closer to where he stood on the desk. Holding his phone near his mouth, he looked right in her eyes and said into the phone, “Go.”
“What did you do?” Rox asked him.
“One minute.” He looked out over the room, surveying everyone assembled there. He spoke loudly and said, “I regret that this law firm is ending in this manner. Swindling our clients was a criminal and unethical act. I tried to handle the problem in-house. My plan had been to close down the office in stages so that we could find positions for everyone at other firms, but they fired me yesterday, and the problems are too extensive.”
Another woman called out, “Are we going to be arrested?”
“I can’t imagine that would be the case. Val and Josie seem to have inserted these clauses after the paralegals had signed off on them. It appeared to be their actions alone.”
A sigh of relief lifted into the air above the assembled admins and paralegals.
A voice called out of the crowd, “Where will you be, Cash?”
Cash? Oh, yeah. Cash. Rox shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around all the names.
He said, “I’ll be overseas for few days. I will email Wren and Melanie with my phone number, and they will disseminate it.”
The glass doors at the front of the office slammed open.
Rox spun, her fists up and ready to commit mayhem on whomever was coming to attack her and Casimir. Time to fight fire with fire and salt the Earth.
Two columns of men in black fatigues marched in and drove a wedge through the crowd toward Casimir and Rox. Bulky belts circled their waists, providing them with multiple deadly options. They didn’t have their guns drawn, but they all wore snapped holsters on their hips.
So many of them. Better to run.
She shrank closer to Casimir’s legs, ready to push him toward the fire exits.
Casimir hopped down from the table and stood beside her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “The cavalry has arrived.”
Rox recognized one of the dark-clad guys leading the twenty or so men as Hugo Faure, Maxence’s head of security who had been in charge when they had flown to The Devilhouse, and she blew out a pent-up breath.
For a second there, that battalion of men had looked like the government’s men in black had shown up to kidnap them for knowing too much about certain unidentified aircraft.
Hugo Faure stood next to Casimir, his back toward him, facing out at the crowd. “How bad is this situation?”
“Just a group of friends.” Casimir shoved his phone into his pocket.
“I’ve seen friendlier people behind a rifle,” Hugo said, watching the crowd.
“They’ve had some bad news,” Casimir told him, his voice low, “and they’re about to have a very bad day.”
Rox stood close to him, and one of the men in black gave her a quick side-eye from behind his dark sunglasses and then continued to examine the law firm’s staff around him.
Hugo touched his ear. “Let’s go.”
The security men condensed their formation around Rox and Casimir, and the phalanx moved as a single group toward the doors. The crowd of admins and paralegals parted as the security men stiff-armed them aside, and Rox hurried to keep up with the long-legged men.
She walked out the glass doors of the law office just as Hugo muttered to Casimir, “Mr. Grimaldi said that you had extensive security at your compound.”
Casimir smirked. “Maxence might have been mistaken.”
“Damn it. He does that all the time. It drives his uncle and myself mad.”
Casimir laughed out loud at that.
Hugo grumbled, “So His Highness has not had proper security the whole time that he was in California.”
Rox stopped in the hallway leading to the elevator and whirled around. “What did you call Maxence?”
Surely Hugo was being sarcastic.
Surely he was calling Maxence an entitled little prince-jerk because he was a spoiled rich kid.
Yeah, that made sense.
Of course, the security guy would disparage the man who had built a school with his own hands in an African war-ravaged village and was too skinny when he came back because he gave his food to little girls. There was lots of privileged, entitled attitude to mock there.
Yeah, that made no sense at all.
“Mr. Faure!” Rox called out because she was a proper little Southern girl. “What did you call Maxence?”