Free Bittersweet Revenge by Monroe Scott Page B

her southern accent.
     
    Rich was upset about Anna, said he wanted to send her mother some sort of a food basket, could Charla please figure it out. He wanted to spend a few hundred, gave her authorization. He asked Charla if she would stay and work with him. She said she would but the money would have to be better. They went back and forth and he agreed to $750 per week. He agreed that she was well worth it, had even more experience than Anna as to escrow information, etc. She wrote up a simple agreement and had him sign it.
     
    Talk about being strung up by the you know what. 
     
    If he only knew that the woman across from him had once spent enough time in bed with him to earn more than $750 a week.
     
    They settled into the routine of life in a law practice. Charla didn’t know much about what was going on in Rick’s life. His wife never phoned on the office line, nor did his children. They obviously only used his cell phone. Only once did his mother phone the office on the main line and Charla was taken aback at first, but kept her distance in a rather short conversation. 
     
    The mail was such that it told Charla Rick was behind in a lot of his payments. She confronted him, asked if he wanted her to write the checks so that the payments could be made. He appreciated it. For a moment, he seemed more human, even invited her to lunch. She declined, stroked her stomach and said she didn’t eat lunch. He laughed, said it might be a good idea if he stopped eating lunch. She couldn’t see any flab on him but maybe if he were undressed, she’d feel differently.
     
    She got his accounts in order and he thanked her, buying her a bouquet of flowers to show his appreciation. She thought it was a nice touch. When he left the office for the weekend, she threw the flowers in the trash. Appreciation. I’ll show you appreciation. 
     
    Charla spoke with Anna’s mother again to see how she was doing. It had been a few months already. Charla had packed up all of Anna’s things from the office and her brother had picked them all up. Norma had not yet opened the boxes. That job was on next week’s list of things to do. 
     
    Charla could not sleep that night. Something was bothering her but she could not quite put her finger on it. Her circle of friends seemed to be expanding but she didn’t want it to go in that direction. No attachments. No one to say goodbye to. She went home from work each night and kept to herself nights and weekends. She went to shop for groceries and nothing more – no clothes, nothing frivolous.
     
    It took her awhile and she finally realized what was bothering her. She absolutely despised Rick and did not want to be around him. His habits made her nuts. He was sloppy about so many things and not at all the kind of person she’d given herself to several years earlier. He wasn’t slovenly, but just seemed to not care about so many things.
     
    Charla knew that she had to accelerate her plans; that it was time to get out of that office and Rick’s life. She spent the rest of the weekend reviewing in her mind the plan for bringing things to a close. She set a date in her mind for three months later to be gone. That would mean one year for Charla to have been working in Rick’s office.
     
    Rick’s client account had been gradually transferred to his general account, which was against the rules for lawyers. A client account was never to be mixed with moneys in a general account. Within a few days, clients would be aware of the change and would be confronting Rick about those funds. They were sacrosanct. The funds were always to remain in the accounts until the clients settled their matters and signed authorization for the funds to be returned or gave the attorney authorization to move the funds. And it was against the law to co-mingle funds.
     
    The bank was calling to determine what the problem was, why the client trust account was being depleted. Some of the funds were transferred to Rick’s