two outrageously expensive office chairs we had for clients.
Jackson and Hughes was a classy law firm worthy of L.A. or New York yet we worked in Lake Tahoe, which was considered upscale and neutral territory for all the criminal elements of Northern Nevada. The whole office was decked out in classic law chic with a beautiful reception area and our offices, side by side, were understated yet elegant. Designed by my mother who’d studied to be an architect, she settled for interior design after she married my father because it was far less taxing and she could do it with her eyes closed.
She’d designed our home before she worked closely with her sister, who actually studied interior design, to outfit the place. Although my parents spent a great deal of their time in Reno and Las Vegas, they also had homes in Pine Bluff, Southampton, Lake Tahoe when they were entertaining elite friends, Los Angeles and a gorgeous penthouse on the upper Eastside of Manhattan.
“It’s not a bad thing but…would it be wrong to say I wish I had gone to court? I mean I would like to prove my skills as an attorney and let my parents know they didn’t waste over two hundred grand on my education at Stanford and law school at Harvard.” I touched a few wisps of hair, which had managed to escape my perfect chignon.
“Of course they didn’t waste their money. You have kept some of the most influential people—and the wayward youth they call their children—out of jail.” Kyra searched through her black leather Birkin, her pride and joy she’d spent three years on the waiting list to purchase, and opened her cigarette case.
She knew how much I hated the smell of cigarette smoke—even if I did indulge in that and marijuana—from time to time. However, so many of our clients smoked, we allowed them to due to the industrial strength air conditioning unit we had installed. It was the same manufacturer most of the casinos used and actually sucked the cigarette smoke into the vents before supplying clean, filtered air.
The law firm always smelled fresh and clean but that still didn’t mean I wanted her smoking in my office. I always smoked outside, whether it was a cigarette or a joint.
Kyra lit up and I supplied her with a clean ashtray I kept in one of my many desk drawers.
“Don’t you think it’s time to have fun and live a little? Our fathers, being who they are, they don’t define us. Isn’t that what we’ve always said?”
“Yes, you’re right of course.” I smiled and pretended for the sake of conversation that was true.
If my father, Raymond Jackson, was the original gangster with his expensive Italian and French suits, not a hair out of place and youth personified then her father was the opposite. Tom “Jonesy” Hughes was the head of an MC with a beautiful, cultured daughter who’d attended and graduated the same schools I did. The fact that we’d grown up in Northern Nevada and went to the same elite private school cemented our friendship. We’d known each other since we were five. Our fathers’ were business partners after all and we were well aware they skirted the rules of the law, but in most cases, outright broke them.
I knew my father had murdered associates, friends and even some of our own family members. His beginnings were humble, the son of a sharecropper and his half-Choctaw wife, who were both from some shithole, redneck town in Mississippi.
They’d come to Nevada hoping for a better life. All the move really earned my grandparents was an early death for my grandfather due to cardiomyopathy. My grandmother lost her eyesight and half her right leg due to diabetes before succumbing to death several years after my grandfather.
My father learned early that he wouldn’t be able to play by the rules and get ahead. He was from the original school of hard knocks but he’d still polished himself and became an elite, though not so legitimate,
Jackson and Hughes was a classy law firm worthy of L.A. or New York yet we worked in Lake Tahoe, which was considered upscale and neutral territory for all the criminal elements of Northern Nevada. The whole office was decked out in classic law chic with a beautiful reception area and our offices, side by side, were understated yet elegant. Designed by my mother who’d studied to be an architect, she settled for interior design after she married my father because it was far less taxing and she could do it with her eyes closed.
She’d designed our home before she worked closely with her sister, who actually studied interior design, to outfit the place. Although my parents spent a great deal of their time in Reno and Las Vegas, they also had homes in Pine Bluff, Southampton, Lake Tahoe when they were entertaining elite friends, Los Angeles and a gorgeous penthouse on the upper Eastside of Manhattan.
“It’s not a bad thing but…would it be wrong to say I wish I had gone to court? I mean I would like to prove my skills as an attorney and let my parents know they didn’t waste over two hundred grand on my education at Stanford and law school at Harvard.” I touched a few wisps of hair, which had managed to escape my perfect chignon.
“Of course they didn’t waste their money. You have kept some of the most influential people—and the wayward youth they call their children—out of jail.” Kyra searched through her black leather Birkin, her pride and joy she’d spent three years on the waiting list to purchase, and opened her cigarette case.
She knew how much I hated the smell of cigarette smoke—even if I did indulge in that and marijuana—from time to time. However, so many of our clients smoked, we allowed them to due to the industrial strength air conditioning unit we had installed. It was the same manufacturer most of the casinos used and actually sucked the cigarette smoke into the vents before supplying clean, filtered air.
The law firm always smelled fresh and clean but that still didn’t mean I wanted her smoking in my office. I always smoked outside, whether it was a cigarette or a joint.
Kyra lit up and I supplied her with a clean ashtray I kept in one of my many desk drawers.
“Don’t you think it’s time to have fun and live a little? Our fathers, being who they are, they don’t define us. Isn’t that what we’ve always said?”
“Yes, you’re right of course.” I smiled and pretended for the sake of conversation that was true.
If my father, Raymond Jackson, was the original gangster with his expensive Italian and French suits, not a hair out of place and youth personified then her father was the opposite. Tom “Jonesy” Hughes was the head of an MC with a beautiful, cultured daughter who’d attended and graduated the same schools I did. The fact that we’d grown up in Northern Nevada and went to the same elite private school cemented our friendship. We’d known each other since we were five. Our fathers’ were business partners after all and we were well aware they skirted the rules of the law, but in most cases, outright broke them.
I knew my father had murdered associates, friends and even some of our own family members. His beginnings were humble, the son of a sharecropper and his half-Choctaw wife, who were both from some shithole, redneck town in Mississippi.
They’d come to Nevada hoping for a better life. All the move really earned my grandparents was an early death for my grandfather due to cardiomyopathy. My grandmother lost her eyesight and half her right leg due to diabetes before succumbing to death several years after my grandfather.
My father learned early that he wouldn’t be able to play by the rules and get ahead. He was from the original school of hard knocks but he’d still polished himself and became an elite, though not so legitimate,
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