It’s always men. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, I’m a man myself after all. But my clients are unchangingly men. Most of a certain age, with a paunch and a receding hairline, accompanied by visions of grandeur and a staunch belief that the world owes them.

You might think I hate my clients.

You’d be wrong.

There is something incredible about taking a seemingly watertight case and ripping it apart to get the client off on some kind of tiny detail other lawyers would have missed. I always did love to solve puzzles. And I always loved being the most intelligent person in the room.

I will charge Chris a fortune for my representation. There is about fifty grand in his savings account and his family have offered up another quarter-million from their house equity. I will take it all and then he will thank me, because it is better than a lifetime in prison.

The police have charged him with first degree murder and aggravated kidnapping. Apparently, he killed his wife and hid her body in his freezer. Then kidnapped her identical twin sister and held her hostage, demanding she transfer her sizable fortune to him. She has told the police that he called her Megan and made her dress in her dead sister’s clothes.

The case is sick and twisted and I am so in love with it already. Add in a handsome client—and he really is gorgeous, so step aside Ted Bundy. Who will Hollywood cast to play him, one day, when this is all over? Plus Leah, the twin he held hostage, is something of a celebrity. This case will make my career. I won’t just be dining out on this story for years; I’ll be guaranteed to pick up all manner of girls just broken enough to find the case exciting. Think of all the fun we will have!

Chris says he’s innocent. Of course he does, they all say that at the beginning. I’m not sure he’s realized yet that I simply don’t care if he did do it. Although, if he did, I probably won’t be inviting him to dinner any time soon.

And I’ll keep him far away from my daughter, who just turned eighteen and seems to be developing a bit of a thing for bad boys. Her mum tells me it’s just a phase and she’ll settle down. But, to be honest, I think she’s just got that gene that makes you sniff out danger and excitement in a way her mother would never understand. You have never met a woman who turned out to be as vanilla and downright dull as my ex-wife Melissa. We met at a party when I was twenty-two and three months later she told me she was pregnant. I did the right thing and asked her to marry me. I thought it was what Benny would’ve done. My father thought differently.

“She’s hardly the kind of wife Benny would have found,” he had told me at the wedding reception, eyes ablaze with the cheap single malt he had been quaffing all evening.