Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 289(@200wpm)___ 231(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
“Friday afternoon around five. Why?”
She looks like she wants to slice Roy’s balls off, and I’m right there with her when she says, “Close of business for all banks, insurance agencies, and superannuation funds.”
This time, I veer into oncoming traffic on purpose.
12
NERO
Smoke filters into the basement. It isn’t from Eight. That fucker knows my thoughts on the toxins passive smokers face. Also, his drug of choice is more lethal than nicotine, and ten times more fun.
“What the fuck did you do now?” I ask when the cell phone on the table next to me vibrates.
I recognize the number flashing across the screen of Roy’s phone. The face that arrives with the number is unrecognizable, though.
The sad, beaten-down woman snapped by a man who rates beauty by clothing sizes isn’t close to the image that pops up in my head when Miranda enters my thoughts.
She’s beautiful and beaming with life in my flashbacks. She looks like she has nothing to live for in the picture Roy selected to store her number under.
With the blade of my knife, I signal for Roy to remain quiet before I slide my thumb across his phone’s screen, answering Miranda’s call.
“You fucking piece of shit,” she snaps out a second after our call is connected. “Everything I worked for, my house, my business, my baby, you put in your mistress’s name. Why would you do that, Roy? Why would you take everything I have worked for and give it to her?”
Her sniffle as she fights to hold back a sob pisses me off. It also makes me conscious as to why I brought my knife to the basement when I arrived home and has me itching like fuck to use it.
Roy’s balls aren’t big enough to hang off the back of my truck and be noticeable, but they’ll make a nice rearview mirror ornament for Miranda. She can whack them every time she’s pissed off, which is more often than her lungs have sucked in air in the past four days.
“I would have given you half. You didn’t deserve any of it, but I still would have given you half because that’s the right thing to do when you’ve been married for fourteen years.” She stops to breathe through her anger and then comes back stronger than ever. “But now… now you won’t get a single fucking cent. You cheated, Roy. You broke the vows of our marriage. So now you will suffer the consequences of your betrayal.”
Miranda’s scream echoes when it sounds down the line and through the thin walls of my basement. It prompts Roy to the location of his torture chamber and makes him as panicked as fuck.
His nostrils flare when he recalls how I comforted his wife the last time he fucked her over, and the salt it inspires rubs in deep when a second after Miranda ends her call with him, her name pops up on my phone’s screen.
I admire the photo I snapped of her unawares before answering her call. “Hey…”
Even if I hadn’t overheard her one-sided confrontation with Roy, I’d still be able to tell she is upset. Her voice is croaky, and her breaths are coming out fast.
“What’s wrong, butterfly?”
Roy sneers at me, assuming I’m acting worried for a direct route into his wife’s panties.
I backhand him across the face, hard, just for the insinuation.
I’ve watched Miranda from afar for almost a year, so you can be assured this isn’t the first time I’ve asked her those exact words.
It is merely the first time I’ve said them loud enough for her to hear.
“I… ah… I just…” I’ve been used for years, so her struggle to ask for help isn’t unexpected. Her next words, though, sure are. “I think your wife wanted you to find out about the affair.”
I keep my voice calm and collected even though I am anything but. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s just… um…”
She doesn’t want to hurt my feelings, and it makes me like her a little bit more.
“Nothing you can say will shock me, butterfly.”
You shouldn’t be able to hear a smile, but I can.
It radiates down the line and makes my cock throb.
“I just have a weird feeling she wanted you to find out about the affair, so I thought I should share it with you. You said you were wary of her intentions, so perhaps it centers around this?”
“Perhaps,” I echo. “It would make sense as to why they chose that location. You’d have to be pretty airy to check in at your spouse’s hotel and expect him not to find out.”
Miranda breathes a sigh of relief, and I smile like a smug prick.
I’ve only officially been in her life for days, yet she still cares about me more than she cares for the fool seated in front of me with piss-stained pants and a battered face. Her sigh announces this, not to mention her next words. “I should let you go. You’re probably busy. I just wanted to warn you about any possible backlash that may be heading your way.”