She started to feel a sense of relief but then he continued.
“I know it. Here’s the thing. I’ve been married a year. I consummated our marriage, mostly because I was really fucking. drunk and did what my grandfather wanted me to do. I married his army buddies granddaughter. I mean it was either I do it or lose my seat as CEO. I did it but we signed a prenup. I can’t divorce her without cause and the fact my dick finds her repulsive isn’t a good one apparently.”
“What?” she was abundantly confused, and it hurt her brain.
“My wife has a voice which makes me want to shove my dick in a woodchipper instead of her. She did this wailing grunting thing on our wedding night which still haunts me. She also called herself a pillow princess, which is codeword for dead fish. She laid there and screamed like I was the antichrist. She then curled up next to me afterwards and told me it was the best she ever had. I scrubbed myself raw for three days after.” He shook his head as if trying to dispel the memory. “I can only divorce her for one of three reasons. She steals from the company or the family. She doesn’t produce an heir in five years. Which is feasible because I’m never touching her again but fuck five years seems a long time. It’s only been one and I’m already contemplating a suicide murder situation. Five years with her and I’d rather spend the time in a maximum-security penitentiary for her murder but it’s a last resort.” He was holding up two fingers and then he added the third, “she fucks someone else. It actually defines intercourse in the prenup. She needs to be having an extra marital affair including intercourse. She can participate in all the emotional affairs she wants apparently because I’m not likely to be warm and fuzzy enough for her but unless dick meets vagina, she gets to continue receiving her monthly stipend. If I divorce her for any reason but those three, then she gets ten percent of the company shares, fifty million dollars and my villa in Spain. I really don’t want the bitch to get anything.”
She shook her head in confusion.
“Here’s the thing,” he sucked his lips over his teeth. “I need the proof. I mean we all know what’s going on in their little love shack, but I need proof. This is where you come in.”
“Where I come in?”
“Yes. See, I want you, when your husband is out of your apartment tonight for ten minutes, to let my buddy Adil here in, so he can put a camera in your living room, bedroom and at your front entrance. All he needs is ten minutes.”
“My surveillance tells me your husband cleans the apartment Tuesday night, doesn’t he? He takes out the trash around nine pm every Tuesday night.” Adil spoke up. “It’s new right? He’s only been doing this over the last several weeks, but he’s been deep cleaning on Tuesday night. He takes the trash out and he takes his phone with him. He sends her messages confirming they are on for the next day. He goes back up to you and plays devoted husband until nine-twenty-five Wednesday morning.”
“And doing laundry on Wednesday before you come home so he can get my wife’s cloying perfume off your bedsheets.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked suddenly, looking at Phineas.
“I’m not doing fuck all. Don’t you want to know whether or not your husband is double-dipping?”
“You’re not a nice person.”
The words sounded lame and weak as far as insults go but it was all she had as she sat here reeling.
“Tell you what,” he leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his chest. “Here’s what we’ll do. Adil will sit outside your building tonight. You observe your husband’s behavior. If you even feel the slightest bit he’s messing with your devotion, send Adil a text and he’ll wait for Kyst to walk out with the bag of garbage. He’ll install the three cameras. Tomorrow, we’ll throw a viewing party right here. If I’m wrong and the reason she is there is to simply rearrange your furniture or he’s planning a surprise interior design for you, then no harm no foul.”
“There is harm and foul if I don’t trust my husband and I put cameras in my house!”
“Wouldn’t you rather be safe than sorry.”
“I’d rather not have this conversation at all!” she was starting to feel her patience waning.
“Here,” Adil held his phone out.
“What?” she looked at it like it had three heads.
“Photos of your husband and her at a coffee shop last Friday. This is her entering the building you live in on the Wednesday before. Maybe it is innocent. As you said, he’s a nice man and maybe he’s simply cheering up a sad woman, but wouldn’t you like to be certain?”
There was no mistaking it. The man in the photo sitting across from the blonde bombshell in the café was her husband Kyst. They weren’t touching. They were each holding their own cups of coffee. The photo seemed relaxed, and the lawyer that he was, if she’d stumbled across them in person, she would presume he was simply meeting a client.
Yet, it was also no denying it was the same woman in the other photo entering her apartment block.
“Well, what’s it going to be Juniper? You in? Are we catching dirty cheating liars together or will I need to find another way to catch them?”
She glared at him, but he continued anyway.
“Before you run out of here screaming and crying,” Phineas continued, “I don’t intend to destroy your marriage callously. I know you love this guy. If you want to stay with him after we bust them, I’m sure my parents could recommend a great marital counsellor. After all, my mother has stayed with him after three, four affairs over the last forty years. I’ll pay for it. Discretely of course. However, if you find you want to be as rid of the marriage as I do, for several reasons of course, yours being betrayal, lies and the risk of an STD since she’s allegedly allergic to latex,” he made a face, “another reason I wouldn’t touch her because I’m not impregnating her, then we’re you’re there for you.”
“Get on with it,” she waved at him angrily. She was starting to think this guy got off being shocking. It was almost as if he enjoyed making her squirm with his nastiness.
“If you want to divorce him, Benicio here will oversee your divorce free of charge, and he’ll make sure you get what you deserve. You’ll also be given a one-million-dollar payment for the emotional distress for the use of your apartment for our sting operation. You will also be provided a condo of similar value to the one you currently reside in, so you are not displaced and homeless.”
“The condo was my idea.” Adil leaned his head sideways towards her conspiratorially. “I would hate to sleep in a bed I knew my partner screwed someone else in. Do you know I actually own one of those black lights forensic teams use to find seminal fluid? I have it on a keychain. When I go to a girl’s place, if the sheets aren’t clean, I’m not getting in it. No way in hell would I want to live in a house where my partner was messing around, and I would know. You’ll definitely need a new place, but Beni will make sure you get your half due to you.”
She wasn’t even sure how much of Adil’s statement she wanted to unpack. “So, if we put the cameras in and nothing comes of it, then what? What if she’s a client and since he works from home, he’s giving her legal advice from our apartment?” she was grasping at straws and she knew it.
“Then nothing. We’ll collect the cameras, and you forget this happened.”
“But I’ll know I didn’t trust him. If he finds out I didn’t trust him,” her voice cracked with the fear. Was she really doubting her husband’s love for her? He loved her. She knew it in her bones. They’d been together since high school. They were each the only lover the other ever had. They weren’t perfect but what married couple were? A feeling of unease was filling her. Was she a blind fool?
“If he finds out, I’ll tell him I threatened your mother’s job. He’ll believe you.” Phineas shrugged, “but my gut, which made me a billion dollars last year in investments alone and never fails me, is telling me this is right.”
She sat there quietly contemplating the conversation of the last ten minutes.
“Why do you hate her so much?”
“What?”
“Why do you hate your wife?”
Benicio snickered and Adil leaned back in his own seat kicking his feet straight out.
Adil shot her a look, “I love this story!” he gritted through clenched teeth his eyes bright with excitement.
“Her grandfather and mine were army buddies. Her grandfather saved my grandfather’s life and almost died as a result. He lost half of his leg. My grandfather’s family were wealthy. Hers was not. My grandfather wanted to take care of his buddy, but her grandfather was a proud man, a good man and instead of cash asked for a job when they left the army. Her grandfather worked hard. Eventually he made enough money so he could start his own business. They remained the best of friends until he died. My father and her father are good friends, with their fathers taking them on camping trips and all the manly man things. When we were kids, I was introduced to Denise. My grandfather made jokes about us finally being able to join the family, but I wasn’t interested. She does nothing for me. Regardless, he’s my grandfather. Her grandfather took sick last year. Prostate cancer and he died almost right away. My grandfather said on his deathbed the old man asked him to take care of Denise. My grandfather and father’s version of agreement was to say I’d marry her.”
“Still don’t see why any of this is her fault,” Juniper wrinkled her nose, grateful she’d grown up dirt poor in a single-family household, so she’d never been married off like this.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.