A Verdict for Love (2 page)

She quietly opened the room with her
key card. Helen was lying on the bed with her honey colored hair
down. Her soft brown eyes filled with familiar desire when she saw
Chiara.

Helen arose from the bed and took
Chiara’s hands, bringing them to her lips and kissing the inner
palms softly and erotically. Chiara uttered a moan.

No words were exchanged between the
two women. There was no need for words. They fell into each other’s
arms and began kissing as though it had been an eternity since
either of them had shared kisses with another living being. Such
was the case for Chiara, if not for Helen. Still, she had missed
Chiara’s soft full lips and the way her warm, knowing tongue always
moved inside her mouth, caressing her tongue and driving her toward
ecstasy.

Chiara pulled at Helen’s raw silk
shirt and accidentally tore it. Helen didn’t care at all and helped
her finish ripping it off. The shirt dropped to the floor and
Chiara fell upon Helen’s ripe, full breasts. Her nipples, reddened
and hardened with desire, were ripe for Chiara’s mouth.

She caressed Helen’s breasts and
sighed loudly as she moved her hands down to seek her lost lover’s
sex.

She yanked the skirt off her and
found, as in the past, that she wore no panties. Chiara’s fingers
probed the crease of her sex, smelling it in the room, feeling
Helen’s body tense with desire as she parted Helen’s lips. She
continued kissing her with deep penetrating tongue
strokes.

She entered her sex then, with two
fingers inside that gorgeous mound. Helen’s nether lips were wetter
than she ever remembered them in the past and she pushed in and out
of her cunt harder and faster, the sound of her palm hitting the
hot pussy loud in the room.

She pushed her down on the bed and
told her: “Spread your legs, Helen.”

Helen obeyed her, and Chiara rose
above her, moving her ex-lover’s thighs open roughly and wider. She
pushed two fingers in her pussy and one inside her beautiful ass
and slapped at her clit with her palm as she fingered her
harder.

Chiara mounted her then, riding her
with her own mound behind her palm as she fingered Helen’s sweet,
hot cunt. The back of her hand was pressing against her own clit,
and she was on the verge of orgasm herself when Helen raised her
hips up off the bed, rotated them in a semicircle and came so hard
that she nearly collapsed. Chiara held tight to her hips and rode
the orgasm to its completion. She too came with a deep feeling of
bliss radiating out from her clit and filling her entirely with
pleasure.

They both felt such intense relief to
finally touch again after so long apart. It didn’t matter that they
had moved on with their lives. It didn’t matter to Chiara that
Helen found another lover. Somehow they still had a
bond.

They ordered room service that night
and stayed up late watching old movies until they fell asleep in
one another’s arms.

Chiara awoke in the morning to find
herself alone. Helen’s things were gone. She found a note left on
the desk written in a familiar and elegant scrawl,

I’m sorry C, I just
couldn’t stay. Last night was beautiful. I’ll never forget it but I
have to go back to Sharon. She’ll be devastated
otherwise.

I’ll love you always ~
Helen.

This would have been a perfect time to
fall apart if Chiara were a lesser woman, but she took it in the
same composed way she took most things. She was simply happy they’d
been able to find pleasure once more together, even if this truly
signified that it was finally over between them.

She went back to Atlanta on a red-eye
Delta flight. Her mind had already returned to the case ahead.
Though she was forlorn and deeply sad, she was resigned. The scent
of Helen’s perfume was still on the jacket she was wearing but once
it faded...there would be only the memory of one last night in a
hotel room.

T
he
trial was fast approaching, and Chiara was researching and
investigating the club and Mr. Shay. As a part of her effort, she
made a point of visiting Club Vanity Fair just to get a sense of
the place and what was really happening there.

Of course, Shay and his racketeering
partners had done some necessary clean up and rule-changing since
the indictment. The private VIP rooms had been shut down. But
Chiara still felt she needed to have a feel for the club and for
Shay’s role there.

She went to Vanity Fair on a Friday
night around 11 p.m. and found it was full to capacity. Despite all
the bad publicity, or perhaps due to it, the club was still doing
well.

Chiara sat quietly in a corner of the
nightclub, sipping a glass of chilled white wine watching the
action unfold before her. She had never been to an exotic dance
club before, so it was novel to see beautiful women dancing and
moving around the floor with such naked abandon. She was aware that
often women were coerced into working these establishments. Jack
Shay might be a user but from what she could see these women were
his willing accomplices. There were dollar signs in the eyes behind
the smiles. She was the only female customer in the
club.

She sensed that there was
more than met the eye to this operation. According to her sources,
upstairs there were hidden alcoves where women had been taking
clients for ‘champagne and strawberries’ at an obscene price of
around $1,000 per hour. It was hard to believe but some men paid
it. Her problem was that no juror was
going to be stupid enough to believe that men were paying
that kind of money just for dances, champagne and
strawberries.

Chiara was enjoying the music despite
her reservations about the place. The music was slow, rhythmic and
bass inflected. The wine warmed her and she became more relaxed as
she sat back in the chair wearing her casual clothes—faded jeans, a
black turtleneck and black boots. Even with semi-nude women
wandering about she garnered plenty of attention from the male
clients and had to snub several come-ons. The appearance of a woman
patron in the club also drew speculation from the dancers and
waitresses.

A lovely young dancer approached her
and softly asked if she would like some company.

Chiara gazed at her deliberately, her
dark eyes honing in on the dancer’s breasts. Her look went back up
to the dancer’s face. The girl licked her lips slowly and smiled at
Chiara.

“Well,” she asked seductively, “Would
you like my company?”

Chiara asked her, “How much does your
company cost?”

The dancer replied, “That all depends
on what you want of me.”

Chiara touched the woman’s arm and
felt the softness of her skin. The young woman smiled at
her.

Chiara said quietly, “I think I have
to pass this evening, though I am flattered that you asked
me.”

The dancer smiled and walked
away.

She passed up several more offers for
lap dances, though she experienced some arousal as she watched the
dancers moving so erotically and with such complete abandon. She
felt a kind of strange dark desire rising up but she was there to
observe…on professional business. Any such involvement was
unthinkable... still, the temptation was real.

Jack Shay appeared and approached her
around midnight.

“Kinda surprised to see you here.” he
said, “I take it you aren’t looking for entertainment.”

“No. Just research.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

He sent to the kitchen for some crab
legs and a platter of shrimp for them to nibble on. The loudness of
the music prevented any real conversation but to be polite she
joined his meal.

She finished the shrimp and neatly
dabbed the corners of her lips with a cloth napkin, then she stood,
and after a bare second’s hesitation, offered her slim olive
skinned hand to him. He was gentlemanly about it and thanked her
for coming. Seeing that she had decided to visit his world in
person seemed to impress him.

“I’ve thought about things since our
first talk. I was wrong doubting you. I can’t tell you how grateful
I am that you’re defending me, Ms. Bianchi,” he said, “Thanks for
coming down here on a Friday night at this hour.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Shay, we’re going to
move forward with this case and we are going to win.” she told
him.

She left the club hoping she’d sounded
far more confident than she felt.

T
he
day of the trial finally arrived. What with all the press build-up
Atlanta was expecting a long drawn out affair packed with a series
of tawdry revelations. But the event turned out to be shockingly
anti-climatic and brief. The poor prosecutor never got a chance to
parade his damning witnesses. During the discovery process Chiara
had at first been overwhelmed by the mountain of negative evidence.
She had been so discouraged at first that a simple technicality
almost escaped her notice. It was the tiny flaw she’d hoped for.
Through a clerical error, the original search warrant that had
provided the incriminating paper trail had not been dated.
It was a miniscule detail, but enough to upset
the steamroller that had been bearing down on her.

Jack Shay was acquitted on the grounds
of illegal search and seizure. Further, the judge in the case found
that several key witnesses for the prosecution might have been
coerced into testifying. Club Vanity Fair would remain open and
Jack Shay walked away free.

When the news hit the media, there was
outrage in Atlanta at first. But then the news began to center
around the hot new attorney who had won the case against impossible
odds. Chiara Bianchi was that attorney. She wasn’t at all new, but
this was the first time she’d received such major media attention,
so they had dubbed her ‘new.’

Chiara didn’t mind. She had finally
made her name as an attorney. And though many in the firm were
profoundly jealous that she’d won the case, they were forced to
humble themselves when old man Smith announced he was promoting
her, making her a full partner. He had been especially pleased by
the unexpected victory and happy to have Shay out of the lime
light. He had never confided to Chiara that the case had posed a
remote risk to his own reputation. That she had managed an abrupt
end to the business had been a relief worth rewarding.

A champagne dinner was held in her
honor at the Ritz-Carlton. Chiara Bianchi was a woman to watch. At
last, she had what she had been seeking for some fifteen years…
full partnership and prestige.

Her new office was large and
well-appointed. She had a huge picture window that provided her
with a stunning view of the Atlanta skyline. On her impressive new
desk she had found a vase of roses. She smiled assuming it was from
Peter Smith until she read the card -

Many, many thanks to
you,

Sent gratefully from your
eternal friend

- Jack Shay

“Friend? I hardly think so, Mr
Shay.”

Chiara said it aloud as she dumped the
roses into the virgin trash bucket. The fact that she had helped a
flesh peddler like Shay escape was distasteful in the extreme. But
that was the system a lawyer had to work within. Angels and devils
were both equal under the law. She was certain that karma would
catch up with Mr Shay. Going forward as a full partner, she would
be able to choose more deserving clients.

That evening she stood in complete
stillness staring out across the sky as it turned from pink to
orange to gray and then to darkness. She poured herself a glass of
brandy and willed herself to feel at peace.

G
race Butrell had grown up in the small town of LaGrange,
Georgia. Her family was not poor but they were certainly not
members of what passed as the country club set. Grace, however, had
been a bright star among her high- school peers. Her blonde,
blue-eyed beauty had brought her an acceptance and popularity that
her family circumstances might have easily denied her. Some of her
friends thought her a bit too serious.

She had received a full scholarship to
Old Miss and her four years there had been outstanding enough to
win her a grant for law school. Her family was deeply proud of
her.

But beneath all the drive and hard
work lay a streak of rebelliousness. She was deeply curious about
sexual things, and she’d satisfied this curiosity with a handsome
med student. After her impatience to experience the supposed
pleasure of the big sex secret the actual act had fallen far short
of the magic she’d imagined.

For a time Grace went sort of steady
with him. Mainly she’d gone out with him because he hadn’t been
demanding or overly possessive. But when he had suddenly asked her
to marry him, she’d balked. She was not prepared to get married and
settle down as a doctor’s wife. She wanted something more than a
sweet little suburban house. She was not going to settle for that
kind of life, at least not too soon.

Her newly independent attitude and
this rejection of their expectations for her as a young southern
woman were not smiled upon by her family. Her mother actually got
angry with her. She’d felt that a doctor would have been a fine
catch. But her Momma felt there was yet hope. It was still a custom
in LaGrange for promising young girls to be presented at a
debutante ball. It was expected that Grace would attend from the
time she was a little girl.