Side Bet Bluff Ch. 07

I certainly didn't look forward to four more hits, and my next hit was nowhere near as hard, probably out of self-preservation. Jaycee still let out a little cry from the spank, however. It was about this time that she started saying a mantra of "I'm sorry, Master" which she said over and over. By the time I was done with my seventh spank, my hand throbbed in pain. Jaycee's ass was now a deep red. I doubt she'd sit well for the rest of the day.

I untied the necktie from around Jaycee's arms and helped her off of my lap. Her discomfort was obvious, both in trying to work blood back into her arms, and her delicately avoiding anything from touching her bottom. I finally got a glance at her face and there were well-marked tear tracks down her cheeks. I rubbed them away with my thumbs and drew Jaycee to me in a hug.

"Thank you, Master," Jaycee said quietly.

"Alright, let's go back to rule number one. I'd really like it if you called me 'Will' right about now," I instructed.

Jaycee gave me a little smile, then reached up and grabbed both sides of my collar to lift her face close to my face.

"Anything you say, Will," she whispered into my ear, and gave me a soft, lingering kiss on my earlobe. I held her tenderly and continued to rub her back. But I could hear my cell ringing in the dining room, calling my attention back to my own tasks for the day.

The moment broken, and Jaycee sensing my attention being drawn elsewhere, she pulled back slightly from my embrace.

"Why don't you go take a nice, hot bath, and then we can have some lunch," I advised. Jaycee nodded her assent and made her way out of the room, pausing momentarily at the door to inspect the broken lock. She gave me one little smirk and a shake of her head before turning down the hall towards my bedroom.

Shortly after lunch the landline phone rang, though the call was from an unexpected source.

"Yes, Mr. Jennings? This is Scott, again, at the guard station downstairs. There's a Mister Blake Thomas here looking for Miss Wade."

"Who's down there?" I asked.

"Blake Thomas, sir. He says he's an attorney. I think he's trying to serve Miss Wade with some papers."

"Blake Thomas? I don't know any ... wait. Is he a big guy? Short, blonde hair, looks like his jaw takes up half his head?"

"Yes, sir. I think that's an accurate description," said the guard.

"I'll be right down," I told him.

"You sure, sir? I don't think you're going to like what he says."

"Probably not," I agreed, "but avoiding your problems never solves anything."

"Of course, sir."

I hung up the phone and turned to Jaycee. "It looks like Hannah's lawyer has talked her into suing you for back rent."

"Really? Why? What does that mean?" Jaycee panicked.

"It really doesn't change the situation. You still don't have any money to pay Hannah back. This seems way too soon for such an action."

I tried to think of their possible reasons to initiate the lawsuit. Maybe Blake would tip his hand in conversation.

I started putting on my shoes to go downstairs. "You want to come along?" I asked Jaycee.

After Jaycee quickly threw on some clothes, we went down to meet the overly muscled attorney. Jaycee looked nervous, so I gave her a little pep talk in the elevator. I also instructed her how to act and to let me do all the talking unless I asked her a direct question, and then to only answer the question and not provide any additional facts.

I had originally intended to let Jaycee deal with Hannah on her own, mostly because I didn't want to spend any time this week thinking about my Ex. I had no doubt that Jaycee would pay Hannah back eventually. But Hannah was escalating things by bringing in a lawyer, probably at this guy's insistence, and the only way you combat a lawyer is with another lawyer. I could only assume that they intended to involve me, especially by confronting Jaycee here.

Blake was on his cell phone by the security desk. He was wearing a brown suit that didn't appear to fit him very well.

"Yeah, I'll be over there in about ten minutes," he said into the phone, "right after I finish dropping something off for a friend. Yes, one of those kinds of friends. Ok, see you in a few, man."

"Counselor," I greeted him, "what brings you downtown on a nasty day such as this?"

"Will, good to see you," he returned with a confident smile. "And I see you brought Miss Wade down with you. Good. Miss Wade, this is a copy of a complaint and summons I filed with the local magistrate's court on behalf of Miss Hannah Gerry. It seeks monetary compensation from you for money owed for back rent plus interest and to recover possession of personal property."

Jaycee took the envelope and immediately handed it to me as I had instructed her to do.

"Will, would you take a look at this for me?" Jaycee asked.

"This was filed with the clerk of the court?" I asked, taking the papers from her. Blake hesitated before answering my question, giving me a moment to look over the papers.

"Yes, though I thought I'd deliver them myself as I was going to be down here anyway. Miss Wade, I think you should take this opportunity to compensate Miss Gerry now and keep the legal fees to a minimum," he responded.

"Legal fees? So you are charging Hannah for your services?" I asked.

"That isn't your concern, Mr. Jennings," he answered.

"I'm sorry, but I see that you filed these papers with the court, and they list you as the attorney of record for this complaint," I insisted.

"Oh, right. So?" Blake returned.

"Well, looking over this complaint, it states that Hannah is insisting Jaycee return a number of items that I can only assume you assisted in helping Hannah place in Jaycee's truck two days ago."

"What?" he said, his eyes going wide.

"And two other items that I particularly remember being included when you and I successfully mediated their division of personal property, which was agreed to by all parties, including yourself. I can only interpret their inclusion as a spurious attack meant to inflict Jaycee with emotional distress."

Blake grabbed the complaint out of my hand and started scanning the document before I had finished speaking.

"Also," I continued, "from what I know of their situation, the back rent seems abnormally high. Jaycee, just to inform Mr. Thomas here, what was the personal arrangement you had with Hannah concerning rent?" I asked her.

"I still owed her a hundred dollars from November, and then the full amount of rent since then, but I did pay up all utilities for those months," she answered.

"And how much was your portion of the rent?"

"Five hundred and fifty dollars," she replied.

"And am I correct in assuming that rent was paid at the beginning of the month, and for the month to come?"

"Yes," Jaycee answered while nodding her head.

"Then that means," I concluded, "that you owed one hundred for November, five fifty for December, plus a prorated amount for January through the 17th, which I'll estimate at about three hundred dollars. So that puts you at, let's say, nine hundred and fifty dollars for back rent."

"Ok," said Jaycee, a little confused. She had probably included the full amount of January's rent in the figure she thought she owed Hannah before being thrown out.

"Yet the complaint states that Jaycee owed one thousand three hundred and sixty six dollars, and change. Why the discrepancy Mister Thomas?" I asked.

"Umm, hmmm, well it does say that it includes interest," he responded.

"Over four hundred dollars in interest on debt that's only a couple months old? I don't know what that would make the exact calculated interest rate off the top of my head, but it must be well above the statutorily mandated eight percent, and probably beyond usurious rates."

"Umm, er," Blake mumbled, desperately looking through the two pages of the complaint for some spelled out explanation.

Let me explain something quickly. Magistrate court was another name for small claims court, and almost no one sought out an attorney to handle small claims. The court tried to make things easy for people by providing downloadable forms off of its website. Blake had probably told Hannah how to find those forms, but nothing more. It was obvious to me that Hannah had filled them out without Blake's supervision, and he hadn't verified any of the claims therein. By filing it with the court and naming himself as the attorney of record, Blake had to declare personally that everything contained within was accurate to the best of his knowledge. He now knew that was incorrect, and I could have him sanctioned for it. It's amazing how often people don't read what they sign their name to, even attorneys.

Now, the disciplinary sanctions against Blake wouldn't be much, but still would go on his permanent record with the state bar and could make things difficult for him down the line. But another possible ramification is that the court could also decide that sanctions warranted the payment of the opposing side's attorney fees. Blake knew I charged a heckuva lot compared to the attorneys he normally squared off against. Whether a court would deem my normal rate as an appropriate fee for this was questionable, but I could still use it as leverage.

"Jaycee, was there any clause in the rental agreement you had with the apartment complex about interest accruing on past due rent?" I asked her.

"No, I don't think so," she said. "But I think there was something about an immediate penalty if we went beyond five days past the first of the month without paying," she volunteered.

I flashed her an annoyed glare and Jaycee looked immediately chagrined.

"That must be it," Blake said, clinging desperately to the rope Jaycee had just thrown him.

"Oh," I declared, "then it is your contention that Hannah and Jaycee agreed to continue the terms from the apartment complex lease into their personal arrangement? I believe all such contracts require a written notice of eviction, making Hannah's eviction of Jaycee without providing that notice illegal?" Ok, I had no idea if there was such a term in that contract. I was just riffing.

"Yes, or no, umm," Blake said, twisting in the wind.

"Which is it Mister Thomas?" I badgered.

"I don't know, but I can go back and amend the complaint," he replied.

"Only with the court's permission and I will insist on letting them know that it was because you had allowed your client to fill out the complaint, which you then filed affixing your own signature without validating any of its contents," I warned.

"Oh c'mon," Blake complained. "This is just a pissant little small claim!"

"I don't care," I answered. "You signed your name to it, so you own it. And you goddamn well know that." See? That's how you use an expletive for emphasis.

If I played by Blake's scumbag rules, here is where I would start making counterclaims, knowing there wasn't anything factual to back them up. And, to be honest, I had already hinted at it with the emotional distress comment. Instead, I went for explaining how aware I was of the unsympathetic facts of life, and that I wasn't going to be the guarantor of Jaycee's debts for Hannah.

"And besides," I continued, "even if the court grants you the amendment and you even get a judgment, good luck collecting on it."

"I'll get a judicial lien immediately after judgment." Blake started, but lost steam as he realized where I was going.

"And assign it to what? Jaycee doesn't own any real property," I returned. Jaycee could only be forced to give Hannah money under a judicial lien once she sold a house that she currently couldn't even conceive of purchasing. Garnishing wages was theoretically possible, but very unlikely for this type of debt.

"From what I've seen of Jaycee's finances, she could declare bankruptcy at any time, and since her lone assets of any value are a four-year-old laptop and that decrepit pick-up truck, I'm pretty sure the bankruptcy attorney would gobble up all the money for his own services, leaving nothing for Hannah or you for that matter."

Blake was not a happy camper. Come to think of it, he looked pretty miserable. This favor he was doing for Hannah was potentially going to cost him money, a potential sanction, and way more time than he had anticipated.

Well, I guess now was a good time to throw him a bone.

"But that would be after a lot of hassle and headaches. Tell you what - Jaycee, how much can you honestly afford to give Hannah right now?" I asked her.

"Right now?" she asked. "Well, keeping enough money to make the minimum payment on my credit card, plus my upcoming student loan payment ..."

Her mentioning those debts just reinforced to Blake that Hannah wouldn't be seeing a dime on her claim in bankruptcy since Hannah would be given a much lower priority on her claim than either student loans or credit cards.

"Umm, maybe I could scrounge together a hundred and fifty bucks?" Jaycee calculated.

"So how about this," I offered to Blake. "Jaycee writes Hannah a check for one hundred dollars right now, and they both sign a release of all claims, and that will resolve their entire relationship with each other? I can type up the release in five minutes."

"A hundred bucks?" Blake asked. "Why not a hundred and fifty?"

"Because we're offering one hundred," I answered stonily.

Blake sighed heavily. "There's no way Hannah will agree to that."

"Then it looks like I've got some counterclaims to file," I declared.

I grabbed Jaycee by the elbow and directed her back towards the elevators.

"Wait," Blake called. We turned around but didn't move back towards him.

"I'll get her to accept the hundred," he acquiesced.

"Very well," I agreed. "I'll be back down in five minutes with Jaycee's check and the release." And we kept marching towards the elevators.

Once in the elevator, Jaycee barely let the elevator doors close before she attacked me with what had to be the strongest hug she was capable of.

"I don't believe it," she said. "How did you do that? Well, I mean, I watched you do it, but I still don't understand how."

"A big part was just capitalizing on his mistakes. As soon as I saw that fill-in-the-blank complaint I knew that Hannah had written it. That reclaiming personal property thing was bogus. There's no way he would have ever allowed that to be filed with the court if he had asked her a single question about it. After that it was just me expressing to him your willingness to utilize all of your legal options available to reduce the money you owed and waste his time."

"I didn't hear that," Jaycee said.

"Oh, it was definitely there. For example, the emotional distress claim was a crock and he knew it. By his filing a spurious claim there was the chance that Hannah would be on the hook for paying your attorney's fees, i.e. my rate, and I think she'd sooner go to jail herself than be forced to pay me anything. The bankruptcy possibility is certainly there, but you don't want to do that if you don't have to. But by bringing that up I was telling him that I was going to make this as hard as possible for him. After that, it was just about throwing him some small amount as an easy alternative."

"Really? Wow. I thought I was going to faint over the possibility of declaring bankruptcy. Hearing you talk about it made me think I'd have to do that."

"You don't. It actually won't help you much at all since you'll still owe the full amount of your student loans, which I'm assuming is your largest debt?"

"By far," Jaycee affirmed. "But why did you offer just one hundred instead of one fifty?"

"Oh that?" I chuckled. "That was just telling him that I may be letting him have something right now, but I was still punishing him, and her. You know, I'm pretty sure their intention wasn't even to get any money out of you. They knew you couldn't pay it. I was Hannah's real target here."

"Why do you say that?" Jaycee asked.

"Blake had to know that you couldn't pay. Instead it was done just to harass you, and thus make you miserable and ruin your week with me. And then I would probably pay Hannah off just to try to get you to stop worrying about it."

I laughed a bit. "That was not at all how he expected that to go! I bet Blake end's up eating the difference to pay off Hannah."

"He'd do that?" Jaycee asked.

"If I know Hannah, she won't let Blake go until she extracts her pound of flesh. Especially if he admits that he just cost her money. No, he'll definitely be paying out of his own pocket."

Thinking more about it, I think Hannah might have had another reason for starting legal action. I think she may have been trying to show me just how much a mess Jaycee's irresponsibility made for the people around her. So this was an attempt to break me and Jaycee up before we even got started. I might be reading too much into it, but I wouldn't put it past Hannah.

"You know," I added. "The best thing Blake could have done would be to bring Hannah along. I screwed up on Sunday because I let my hatred for her interfere with my actions."

"Then I'm glad we can both put her behind us and get on with our lives," Jaycee concluded, and gave me a quick smooch.

It took all of ten minutes to adapt a generic release form and return downstairs with Jaycee's check. And just like that, Hannah was out of our lives forever. It felt empowering, and fitting that it coincided with my change in employment from when I was still with Hannah.

Now I really was turning a page in the story of my life. And just like with my last day at the law firm, having Jaycee as part of it made it fun? Cathartic? Maybe invigorating was the best word.

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I'd like to thank DisMan for his time and efforts in editing this chapter. Any remaining errors are solely my own fault.