AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then I came home early from overseas to find her in our bed with another man.
She tore our family apart. She destroyed our marriage. And worst of all, she brokeme.
And if she thought she could weaponize what I once felt for her into doing her bidding, she was more of a brazen idiot than I gave her credit for.
“No,” I said flatly. “Out of the question.”
“Jesse—”
“I saidno.”
The line went so quiet I thought Melissa hung up on me.
“You’re a prick, you know that?” she seethed. “I never ask you for any favors. I just need your help this one time, James. I should have known you’d be this cold, you selfish asshole.”
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t any point. Melissa would only scream over me, and I’d rather not waste my energy or breath attempting to get a word in. It was much more entertaining to listen to my ex-wife make a fool of herself. Her venomous words didn’t affect me like they used to. I was numb to her criticisms at this point. Like listening to white noise. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of breaking me again.
“You’re so fucking self-centered, you know that? Alexei’s more of a man than you’ll ever be.”
I forced a smile and spoke through gritted teeth. “Then why don’t you ask to borrowhismoney?”
“Listen here, you son of a—”
I hung up and tossed my phone onto the counter. God. What a way to end the day.
The elevatorpingedsoftly, alerting me of someone’s arrival. Only two other people in the world had programmed fobs that gave them access to the penthouse: the building manager and my son.
Wally strode in, a heavy backpack slung over his shoulder. He dropped it by the couch and toed off his shoes. He looked disheveled with his baggy jeans and oversized band t-shirt. I would never understand my son’s insistence on wearing gold chains and his hair up in a bun. He looked like he lived at a skatepark, not in a luxury condo on the upper-class side of Chicago.
“Hey, Dad,” he said groggily.
“Hey. How’d that biology test go?”
He handed me a handful of papers, all of them stapled neatly in the upper left-hand corner. Red check marks littered the pages, a massive100%scrawled on the front. A perfect score.
I flipped to the back and frowned. “You didn’t get the bonus?”
Wally rolled his eyes. “Nobody did.”
“You’re smarter than them,” I insisted. “You should have been able to get it.”
My son groaned. “Would it kill you to tell me I did a good job? Or would you require a blue moon?”
I nodded slowly. “No, you’re right. Good job, kid.”
He looked at me expectantly. “But?” he supplied.
“But I heard back from Mrs. Packer today. She called the office and let me know you skipped MCAT tutoring again.” Wally tried to walk right past me and head to his room, but I put a hand on his shoulder and reeled him in. “Come on, man. We talked about this. You need the extra practice.”
Wally chewed on the inside of his cheek. I didn’t understand why he looked so nervous. “About that… Dad, I wanted to talk to you about—”
I snapped my fingers, a thought suddenly occurring to me. “Actually, I just remembered… I reached out to Vincent Hargrove this morning.”
Wally frowned. “Vincent Hargrove? As in the head of the Department of Health?”
I nodded. “He hired Pegasus Star at the last minute to run point for his daughter’s security team while she’s visiting Seattle. He owes me a number of favors, so I asked if he could give you a summer internship working for him.”
“Dad, I don’t—”
