Don't Ask My Neighbor by Kristofer Clarke

No one warned me about the second coming; Samantha’s second coming, as if I had forgotten how she nearly destroyed me before. Samantha was painstakingly beautiful, even from a distance, but her ways made her ugly. She looked just as I remembered her. Three years had passed since I last saw Samantha, and just like she had disappeared without warning, she reappeared just the same, only this time she came with a hidden agenda. Unfortunately, at the top of the agenda was my demise. Why had I let Samantha in my life again?
    Everything I did was to help Samantha. Everything she did was to hurt me, even the second time around. Just like the time before, I’d done nothing to deserve her conspiracy, but when had she ever cared about that. Even though she came wearing the same face, she somehow managed to convince me her worst days had been left behind her. My biggest ally, Jelani Brennon Graybourne, sat composed and watched me fall. Samantha stood poised to steal my success, and that is exactly what she did. Without his knowledge, J.B. became Samantha’s accomplice. What have you done to make your lies so believable? I thought . My question was rhetorical. I had a pretty good idea how she outwitted J.B. She probably presented him the same damsel-in-distress persona and he fell for it. I became disappointed all over again. J.B. treated me as if nothing but lies spewed from my mouth in my attempt to exonerate myself.
    Throughout my fifty-minute ordeal, my presentation to the Board, I knew I was doomed. My reputation, my hard work, my loyalty to J.B. and the firm all destroyed by a woman’s scorn and desire to have it all, by any means necessary. In that moment, J.B.’s impending failure, which had kept me awake most nights, and held me from making good on all the promises I made to myself to destroy Samantha, disappeared from my mind. Of all persons, he should have known better. He knew I hung my hat on the dream of one day occupying the office of United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, and I wasn’t going to let what Samantha or anyone else had between their legs be my deterrent. He knew only those with honor and dignity would be granted the chance to hold such lofty position. I couldn’t be decorated with scandal and libel.
    I sat behind my desk with my eyes tilted toward the ceiling, tapping my pencil on my laptop, ruminating on my plan to destroy Ms. Wells. I no longer had the keys to the expansive corner office. I didn’t have the large window or the immaculate view that captured my attention as I deliberated my tactics in navigating a challenging case or a cutthroat attorney. Fortunately, I didn’t have to start from too far down, but the top was now farther than it was five years ago.
    I’ve enjoyed the warm October days and cool nights, and Friday’s predicted seventy-six degrees provided no reprieve from what had become predictable D.C. weather. I was looking forward to what had become my usual Friday in the office: reviewing depositions, finalizing my list of potential witnesses, and smelling my first of many cups of coffee that would carry me through the last day of what had been a very long week. Since Tuesday, I had been preparing to meet my client for the very first time since his name came across my desk. This wasn’t going to be an open-and-shut case, but I was certain the prosecutor had hung his hopes on exactly that.
    DeVin ce Paxton was a twenty-year-old standout athlete from the University of South Carolina who got caught up in a deadly home invasion. I’d checked his records and already gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was too smart to get caught up in something so stupid, but somehow he did. They always did. DeVince was my second case as lead attorney and my fourth since joining Ledger-Houston, Smythe and Troxler four years earlier. After defeating Nixon Lorenzo, a charismatic, shrewd attorney with a Santa Clause-like figure, a low pitch voice like Morgan Freeman, an impeccable