The day I told him that people often got pregnant when they stopped trying, it created another argument.
The final one.
“Stop trying?Have you even tried?All this talk of business and education.I see bottles of fucking vitamins and you sneaking off with Kylie.You think I don’t know?Your fucking security reports to me!”he yelled.
“I’m allowed friends, Adam.”
“You should be focused on healing whatever is wrong with your body, not going out socializing.That is what a good wife would do.”He scowled.“A good mother.”
Something about those words struck me where it hurt.
“It might not be me!”I yelled and said what I had held back for months.“You refuse to get tested.”
“You bitch!”Adam’s fist took me by surprise, punching me in the jaw, and I fell to the floor.
I’d grabbed my face, shocked as he kept going.The pain, the ungodly pain.The feel of his large shoe kicking me in my empty womb, the piercing sense of my hair being torn out as he ripped me off the ground.The smell of anger on his breath as he spat in my face.
I didn’t know this man.
When the blackness came, I welcomed it.
I didn’t go to the police, but I took pictures on my phone and hid them with a password.
Now I’m back after Zander called me to his office, and the three men are seated around the same table.
Adam has started playing hardball.He knows I will never reveal what happened between us.The shame of it all is too crushing.
I guess he still holds the power.
“You will’ve seen the news,” Zander adjusts his monitor so that the headline is clearly visible.
I nod, feeling sick to my stomach.
It reads:Tech giant’s wife takes lover and demands five-billion-dollar settlement.
“Clearly that’s not the sequence of events,” I say, my eyes darting between the men.“I told you I met John after I left.”
It’s true.
I met John when I visited a college campus, and he was everything Adam wasn’t.Not rich, super chilled out about almost everything, and covered in paint.
He asked me out, and I said yes.
It didn’t occur to me until halfway through our first date that he knew who I was.My photo was in the news at times standing beside Adam, but he kept me so sheltered that I wasn’t aware that everyone knew me.
I had fired our private security, and it’s something I need to reconsider.But for the past few months, since leaving my husband, Iwasdating John.
Very casually.
And not before.
“It’s a smear campaign,” Zander continues, almost disregarding my response.“We could sue him, but we need proof.Who was with you when you met the painter?”
“John,” I correct him.“His name is John.”He nods without meeting me in the eye.“I met him a few weeks after I moved out of the house.It was just a friendship to start, and...well, it’s not serious.”
“Just sexual?”Zander asks.
I flinch at the question.Even Jason and Sean seem a little taken aback by his direct and somewhat inappropriate question.
