Black Rainbow (5 page)

Sighing, she opened the door that led out of the kitchen and into what I could have only assumed was a garage. It was filled with nothing but boxes.

“What is this? Hoarders?”

“First of all, hoarding is a serious medical condition, one that I do not have, and secondly, what happened to ‘no judgment’?” She crossed her arms over her chest and I couldn’t help but notice her breasts as they rose.

“Excuse me,” she said, interrupting my ogling, “are you staring at my boobs?”

“Yes,” I replied, “but again, we aren’t judging each other.”

Shaking her head at me, she turned back into the garage, and pulled out a pair of boots for herself and a pair of sandals for me.

“Good thing my sister’s feet are huge,” she chuckled

“So is my sister’s. She used to buy big shoes, and ask for a small box to take them out of the store with her.”

“Ha! I thought my sister was the only one.”

Smirking, we didn’t really go deeper than that, nor did we need to. We hunted around for the microwave, and interestingly enough, it was a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

P R E S E N T

That bastard was gunning for me, I could feel it. This was only the sixth class, and he had already given us a pop quiz. The moment he said the words, his eyes flickered over me. It was as though he meant to challenge me right then and there. Plus, with his Darwinian style of teaching, if we all failed, he’d kick us out without a second thought. I had heard a rumor that all Professor Black needed was a total of twelve students to be in his class, and at the moment, there were twenty of us. And on the first day, there had been over fifty.

Everyone he kicked out would go to the other law professors, in the hopes of sitting in on their classes. It was said that only the top twelve students got offered a position within his firm after graduation. This group of students were known as the twelve disciples, and come hell or high water, I was determined to be a part of the twelve.

I had spent the last week reading everything I could find on Levi Black. To students, he was
El Diablo,
but in Law circles, he was called
The Cleaner.
The reason for this was that he hadn’t lost a single case since he had opened up his own firm, and he was known for being the one who cleaned up everyone’s messes, legally speaking.

Levi Black and Associates was one of the leading law firms in the country. The name partner, Levi Black, graduated Harvard Law School at twenty-three, the same damn age that I was just starting out on. After graduating, he received a job offer at Spencer and Hill, where he worked for five years, before leaving to start his own practice with a college friend. However, two years later, and after a nasty divorce, he left the company and started his own firm at the age of thirty.

Now here he was, six years later and on top of the world, and all I could do was wonder; who in the hell was this person?
Time
magazine quoted him as saying he wanted to “shape the next generation of young minds”. He was a natural born genius with a hunger for winning at all costs. He could have studied anything but chose law. They all made him seem like he was the goliath of lawyers.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make this version of him match up with the Levi I knew. He wasn’t a savage workaholic lawyer; he played the guitar at a club, he sang with me in the shower, he ate cold pizza in his underwear, and laughed at all of my bad jokes. I knew that people sometimes put up façade when they first meet people, but even at two o’clock in the morning, he was still just as kind as the first moment I met him.

“Ms. Cunning, shouldn’t you be more focused on your quiz than on the light fixture?”

I jumped as he startled me out of my daydream.

Be one of the twelve.

“Yes, of course, but I’ve already finished, and wasn’t sure if I was allowed to leave early,” I said as I handed him my write up.

He looked at the clock. “It took you twenty-one minutes?”

“Sorry it took
so long
,” I replied dramatically.

He read it over it, and placed it back down in front of me. I couldn’t stop myself from shivering when his hand accidentally grazed against mine. And to make matters worse, he noticed.

“Everyone,” he called out to the class, “thanks to Ms. Cunning, you now have five minutes left to complete the assignment.”

A few people turned to glare at me, but I was too focused on trying to stop my hand from shaking to pay them any heed.

Was that too cocky? Fuck no, this is Levi Black. And I was going to be one of the disciples.

For some odd reason, I had a sneaking suspicion that he was the one who had started calling his selected students the
twelve disciples
, just so that he could praise himself, the asshole.

“Time’s up,” he snapped.

As we passed our papers down to him, a few people opted to save themselves the embarrassment and simply stood up and left. I counted.

Sixteen. At the rate he was going would there even be twelve of us left?

“The four students who just left, never speak to them again,” he stated as he took the quizzes and dropped them into the trash. “This quiz wasn’t meant to test your analytical abilities, it was meant to test your mental strength. Can you work under pressure? If you can’t, then you don’t deserve to be a lawyer. However,” he boomed, “that is just my opinion. There is a loophole for ninety-nine percent of everything, and after a week here, the four students who left—I no longer care to remember their names—did not grasp the lesson that Ms. Cunning understood on the first day; you have the right and the ability to present your case and therefore defend your right to remain in the class.”

Was he praising me? No. He couldn’t be.

“Even if you don’t have the strength now, you fake it. You fake it as if your life depended on it. You research the hell out of it, and even if you’re dumb enough to get the date wrong, or finish a quiz early without properly quoting the text, or me, then you still fake it. Because if you can believe your lie, you can sell doubt to others. To win a case, all you have to do is instill doubt in the thing opposing you.”

Asshole! Praising me, my ass. The son of the bitch was still making a fool out of me. Damn I hated him. I hated him so much, I wanted to claw at his face.

Or his back.
The thought slyly slipped into my mind and I flushed.

Damn it. Why can’t I think straight? Why?

“Who here has heard of the Richard Archibald Case?” he asked, and we all raised our hands.

He pointed to a guy who sat behind me. I turned to look at him, and I noted that he wore a plaid shirt and cowboy boots, and that his eyes were blue, and his hair was a dirty, sandy blonde.

“Atticus Logan, rise and use this moment to impress me.”

“Alrighty then—”

“Sit back down, Mr. Logan,” he said, causing a few snickers. “Your southern charm might be nice for some people, but here you’re wasting words, which means you’re wasting my time. Next, you, girl in the glasses, Ms. Vega is it?”

She stood up quickly, knocking over her all of her things, but she wasn’t even bothered. “Richard Archibald, age sixteen, son of the multimillionaire, Andrew Archibald. On Friday September 12
^th
, he was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of two high school students, who attended one of his parties, where he gave them the new heroin pills that are now on the streets. It’s basically heroin in a capsule.”

“Thoughts?” he asked.

“Second-degree murder is ridiculous,” someone up front said.

“Wasn’t one of the kids his ex-girlfriend? And they said that he knew the batch was bad. The prosecution could call it a crime of passion,” Vega added.

“Hearsay.” Levi replied.

“He deserves manslaughter, but I doubt he will get it,” I stated out loud, and they all turned to focus on me.

“Go on,” Levi prompted, leaning against his desk.

“Come on, whether or not he knew the batch was bad doesn't matter. The substance is still illegal, and therefore, any death attributed to it is a crime. If this kid wasn’t rich and white, this wouldn’t be news. He would be made to serve his time, and we would move on.”

“Why is it always race with you people?” Atticus snapped behind me.

“Excuse me?” I exclaimed. “With ‘you people’? Did I just become the poster child for black people everywhere?”

“There you go, twisting my words. I’m just saying that whenever anything happens, ‘African-Americans’ are always the first ones to pull out the race card. I bet if the kid was rich and black, it would still be news.”

“Oh, that’s such bullshit. If he were black, the media’s reaction wouldn’t be one of surprise at all. After all, a black kid with drugs is a thug. A white kid with drugs has made a few bad life choices. There is a systematic issue in our legal system—”

“Oh please, go preach to someone else. This kid didn’t force anyone to take the drugs. They may be
underage,
but they’re all smart enough to know what could happen to them. Blaming this kid is wrong, and saying he deserves manslaughter, is lazy.”

“I moved to the north to get away from ‘you people.’ ” I muttered.

“And I came here to piss people like you off, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart?

Sweetheart!

“You—”

“Both of you will be working with me on this case,” a familiar voice up front said, with the finest trace of amusement in his voice.

“What?” We both turned around to gape at Professor Black.

“I’ve been asked to represent Richard Archibald, and I have decided to choose the two of you to work alongside me and my associates. Ms. Cunning, since you adamantly believe he should already be in jail, I’m sure you and the prosecution will be on the same page, which should keep me one step ahead. Atticus, you’ve given an angle for this case. Free will, the two that died should have known better. So for that reason, you are both now working with me. The rest of you better step your game up. That’s it for the day,” he concluded, leaving us all stupefied.

Once again, I waited for everyone to leave, and I glared at Atticus as he winked at me before walking out the door. I wanted to throw something at him, or at the very least stick my tongue out like a petulant child.

Yeah, that's mature.

“Do you need something, Ms. Cunning?” Levi asked, drawing my attention back to him.

“What, you aren’t just going to walk out?”

Shit, it just came out of my mouth.

He said nothing as he gathered his things, and prepared to leave.

“You should take me off this case.”

He paused, “Why? Because of our prejudices towards it? I told you it can be useful in formulating a—”

“No,” I interrupted him and I wanted to say
because we shouldn’t spend anymore time together.
But I just couldn't.

He looked at me, but it felt as though he was looking through me. His eyes narrowed and his stare grew cold, “Do you want to be here, Ms. Cunning, or are you just wasting my time?”

“I do!” I interjected.

“But you’re willing to walk away from the chance of a lifetime because of
that
?”

“I never said that.”

“But you were thinking it, I can tell by your hesitation. So either you’re not strong enough to keep your personal and your professional life separate, or you don’t have the confidence to be here. Either way you still look weak.”

“But I’m not. What happened—”

“Thea, nothing is bigger than what you want to do with your life. If you want to be a lawyer, you can be a damn good lawyer, and you don't let anything get your way. In fact, you use whatever you can to your advantage.”

He couldn't be serious.

“You’re saying I should use
that…
use
you
to my advantage?”

He shrugged. “What’s done is done, and can never be undone. Maybe you don’t get it, but if you want to be a lawyer, you have to be the best there is, otherwise you’re not worth anything to anyone. So do whatever you have to do to get to the top. Considering who your mother was, I thought you would be the last person I would have to explain that to. You fought for your seat, so don’t just give it away. Not now, not ever.”

Clenching my jaw and my fists, I stepped right in front of him. He was so close that one wrong move would inevitably lead to us kissing, and yet in this moment, I didn’t have that urge.

“First of all,
never,
under any circumstances, bring my mother up
ever
again. Secondly, I
want
to be here, I
want
be a great lawyer, and I will not let anything you do rattle me, because like you said, that was in the past. But don’t make it seem like I tricked you or lied to you. You never told me you were a professor. Lastly, I will never use
that
as a steppingstone for my career. I will never give anyone the ability to say that I got to where I am because I fucked my professor. I will be great, and that’s because I earned it, just like you did.”

I dug into my purse and left his watch and boxers on the table. Then without another word, I turned and started for the door.

“Wait,” he called out to me.

Damn it, why can’t I just leave?

“What?” I snapped.

He threw my underwear back at me. “Since we’re returning things now.”

Glaring at him, I stuffed them into my purse and stormed out.

Damn him.

Damn her.

I had spent all week researching everything I could about her through the Harvard database, only to be hit with surprise after surprise. Thea Cunning, age twenty-three, was the daughter to Margaret “The Shark” Cunning.

I had written my very first thesis on
The Shark
, how she, in her whole career, had only lost three cases in twenty-five years. She was the original gangster of criminal law. Having her working on your case, was basically like having a get-out-of-jail-free-card, in court. We still studied and referenced her cases today. After learning that, it suddenly made sense why her daughter wasn’t the slightest bit rattled by me. Having
The Shark
as a mother, must have been like having the ultimate crash course in law.

Thea graduated valedictorian at Towson High School Law and Public Policy, and went on to graduate from Princeton University, summa cum laude, in three years with a degree in English studies. Apparently, she had been on track to follow in her mother’s footsteps, but instead opted to take a two years hiatus when she moved back to Maryland. And now, she was currently attending Harvard Law on a full scholarship. Her hobbies were listed as; volleyball, tennis, photography and creative writing. Her biggest achievement, according to her file, “has yet to be realized, and thus, nothing else matters”. She came back to Boston upon her mother’s diagnosis of stage four-lung cancer, and was currently living in her old childhood house.

“Why?” I questioned, sighing to myself when I got home.

Kicking off my shoes, I fell back onto the couch.

“Why, what?”

“Damn it, Bethan!” I jumped up.

My sister, and her giant pregnant self, came out of my kitchen, with the carton of rocky-road ice cream she had pillaged from my freezer. She was dressed in sweats, a Guns N' Roses shirt, and on her head, she wore a beanie.