Fiasco (Dirty Aces MC Book 6) by Lane Hart (black male authors .TXT) 📕

“We have a friend who has two children,” Nash starts. “He’s been paying child support without any sort of agreement with the two mothers. They only let him see the children for one supervised hour a week, and he gives them each about five-hundred dollars a week.”

“Okay. So, this meeting is to talk about your friend?” she asks in confusion.

“Yes,” Nash answers.

“And why isn’t he here?” Attorney Carmichael asks.

“We don’t want to get his hopes up,” I speak up and tell her. “I’m his…was his girlfriend,” I say since Phillip made it pretty clear that we’re over. “And these are his two good friends. Devlin works with Phillip, so he can tell you that a thousand dollars a week is nearly everything the men make at their construction job.”

“That’s right,” Devlin says with a shake of his head. “Honestly, I’m not sure how Fiasco, I mean, Phillip, is getting by if he’s giving the two mothers all of his weekly income.”

“He’s barely getting by,” I inform them. “He lives in a rundown apartment and barely has anything to eat. But neither of those things matter to him. He would rather spend the money to take care of his son and daughter. That’s how much he cares about them, so much that he makes sacrifices for himself,” I explain while blinking away tears. I will not cry while sitting here in the attorney’s office. I’ve done enough of that the last few days, pretty much every time I think about Phillip.

“We’re here to see if you can help him,” Nash tells the attorney. “If you can, then I want to pay your fees for him.”

“I want to help too,” Devlin says.

“Me too.”

“I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a case quite like this before,” Carmichael tells us. “If you can get me paystubs for the past two or three months, then we can figure out what a reasonable child support payment should look like. It’s not supposed to be ninety percent of a father’s earnings.”

“Phillip gives more like ninety-nine percent,” I tell her.

“You’re serious?” she asks me.

“I am.”

The attorney frowns and then asks, “What’s brought you to my office today, though? Why are you suddenly concerned enough for your friend and boyfriend to intervene?”

“Well, that’s my fault really,” I start to explain.

“No, it’s not,” Nash interrupts. “You have to stop blaming yourself.”

I explain the entire situation with Ace and Asher to the attorney, who looks less and less confident.

“The dog bite is probably going to be used against Phillip in court to try and keep him from having custody,” she informs us.

“That’s what I figured,” I say, swallowing down the burning in my throat from unshed tears.

“We need to get the two mothers on good terms with Phillip again if you want to go forward. Could you try and talk to them? Get them to sign an agreement I draw up?”

“What will the statement say?” Nash asks.

“That they will continue to receive child support if and only if it’s a court-approved custody agreement. Most mothers don’t have a problem signing it because they need the financial support. Do you think these women are desperate enough to sign an agreement?”

“Yes, most likely,” I say since I’ve seen where they live and know that they both work to make ends meet. “I’m guessing that they’ve come to depend on the income from Phillip. In fact, when he was recently injured and missed work, they started to refuse to let him see the children the hour on Sunday because he wasn’t able to give them enough money for those weeks.”

“Then let’s hope they’ll take our offer,” Carmichael replies as she jots down some notes on her yellow legal pad. “Before I can draw up an agreement, I’ll need the mothers’ full names, addresses, the children’s full names, dates of birth, and birth certificates would be preferable.”

My shoulders slump in defeat because I know getting all of that will take time and I remember that Phillip’s name won’t be on the birth certificates.

“My girlfriend can help get the documents together,” Nash says, reminding me about what he’s mentioned about Lucy, that she’s really good at finding anything you need online.

“Great,” Carmichael says with a smile.

“Will it be an issue that Phillip isn’t named as the father on the birth certificates?” I ask quietly.

“Are you kidding me?” she says as her face falls. “Has he even had a DNA test?”

“I asked the same question. The mothers said that he has, but I haven’t seen them myself or talked to Phillip about them.”

Nash clears his throat. “Lucy may be able to locate those too.”

“You think so?” I look at him in surprise.

“Possibly.”

“I seriously doubt that anyone can get access to those tests except for the parties directly involved,” the attorney says. “They’re not public record.”

We all nod as if that makes a difference when we know that, with Lucy’s ability, she’ll probably be able to locate them.

“This sounds like it may be an even more complicated case than I first thought,” Carmichael informs us. “I’ll need a five-thousand-dollar retainer paid up front to bill against at my hourly rate of three-hundred dollars an hour and for any expenses incurred. Once I have those documents, I’ll draw up the agreement and send it to anyone who needs to see it if you’ll provide my assistant with your email addresses.”

“Okay,” Nash says as we all start to stand up. “I’ll start getting all the documents together while Dev works on getting copies of Phillip’s paystubs from work.”

“And I’ll sit around and twiddle my thumbs waiting, I guess,” I mutter.

“We’ll try to get this all done as soon as possible,” Nash assures me with a smile.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Fiasco

“Everyone is here, so let’s call this meeting to order,” Malcolm says from the head of the Dirty Aces meeting table before slamming his gavel down. “So, what’s new?”

I don’t really hear much of what’s said after that. Nash starts talking about money coming