Lawyer!Tom
Thomas William Hiddleston is the youngest partner in the firm Dean, Richards, Casey, and Hiddleston. At the request of one of the senior partners he takes on a case, divorce proceedings for yet another of the city's social elite.
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It wasn't always like this between us. When we met, for instance. It was so very different. We were different. Seemingly different people entirely. We must have been... and then individually changed, slipped away from one another. And the thing that existed between us changed, too.
That must have been what happened - we changed and each didn't bother to tell the other. But if I'm really being honest with myself, and that's something I try my best to do, the changes in me are directly in relation to him. Father warned me but I was sure I knew better. Mother pleaded for reason. I insisted she was wrong, and was both insulting me and my fiancee by insisting that I draw up a prenup. Instead I drew a line in the sand. They could choose to love me, thereby the new us, or they could hold their thoughts to themselves.
In predictable Henderson fashion, they let me learn from my mistakes with little input from the family. Little did I know that taking the name MacDaniel would cost me so much.
During our few month courtship Jacob was nearly perfect. He ticked off all the important boxes, and - at the start - suffered from such typical and forgivable character flaws that I found it easy to make excuses. They were all things I could easily overlook. I was madly in love with the man I thought he was before I knew it.
Ah, hindsight. So easy to see the truth of things when you can no longer do anything about it.
Except I had.
After losing count of the affairs, and snide words, and horrible behavior, I'd decided to do something. Finally, taking the advice that I should have taken as gospel upon first hearing, I woke up this morning with the desire to get as far away from Jacob MacDaniel as I could.
Jacob, true to the hidden man I had more recently come to know, did not take it well: "What?"
He'd heard me perfectly well.
"I'm leaving. I'm leaving you." All measures of the same four words I had clearly enunciated after reentering our room, finding him still lounging in bed mid-morning, watching something on his phone. "I want a divorce."
"You don't mean that."
He never set aside his phone in the next half hour of deliberation. Never quite got to pleading his case, or begging for a twelfth chance. He jumped ahead to things I had thought to anticipate, steeled myself against. Anger. And the same flare of temper that had snuck up on me after fourteen months and left me shocked, reeling that a soft observation of his state from me upon his late arrival home could result in hostility so sharp I was still wary of him the following day when the apologies started pouring from those same cruel lips.
"Oh, Cat." That snarled smile came out, still strong enough to give me chills even in memory, "You think my life would suck without you. I was doing just fine before reeling you in. And if you do it - if you try to leave me I'll get the best this city has to offer and I'll take you for all you're worth."
It was only after leaving the house I allowed myself the smallest of smiles. Morty is an asshole of the first degree, and thinks money will make him happy. It won't do much to even begin to make up for the things he'll pay for, one way or another.
Why smile then, Paige, one might wonder? Morty might try, but he can't get the best representation this city has to offer. The best this city has to offer is the firm Dean, Richards, Casey, and Hiddleston. And the man at the helm, Bernard Edward Dean himself, is my godfather.
