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“I want this to be over.” Get right to the point. “I want us to be over.”
He gulped at his coffee. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You don’t need me anymore. You’ve made inroads in California and now in Vegas.”
His brows knitted together. “Yeah?”
“I wanna end this sham of a marriage.” She drew in a breath. “I want a divorce.”
“A divorce?” He barked out a harsh laugh. “No fuckin’ way.” He refilled his coffee cup and turned to leave the kitchen.
“I mean it, I’m done with it all,” she called after him.
He turned back to her with an ugly sneer. “Well, you can forget it, cause that’s not gonna happen.”
“It will if I leave you. I’ve done the research. You only have to be a resident in Vegas for six weeks to apply for an uncontested divorce. I don’t want this house or anything in it, so there’s no dividing of property. All you have to do is sign the decree.”
Johnny slammed his cup down on the granite countertop, stormed across the kitchen, and slapped his palms on the table. “You think you’re pretty smart with all this bullshit, don’t you, but it’s not gonna work, and it won’t mean shit if I don’t sign it.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She wouldn’t let him back her down. “It’ll just take longer, but since I don’t want any of the property or your business holdings, in the end I’ll get my divorce.”
“How long have you been cooking this up?”
Cheryl looked away from him. “We never married for love, only convenience, so I don’t know why this is such a surprise.”
“And did you forget the deal we made and the reason why we did this in the first place?”
“My father wanted you to have a respectable appearance when you opened his jazz clubs. I never thought it was anything more, and neither did you.”
“Did you forget the fact you fuckin’ murdered someone?”
“I didn’t forget.”
She still had bad dreams about that horrific night. The fear, the guilt.
Screams filtering into her apartment off Sunset wasn’t unusual for midnight on a Saturday night. Only these screams sounded familiar. Cracking the door she peered out into the hallway and saw Izzy struggling with a man twice her size.
He backhanded her, she faltered and when he raised his hand again, Cheryl bolted from her apartment and attacked him from behind.
Cheryl pummeled him with her fists while Izzy righted herself yelling at him to leave. He lunged and Cheryl pushed him away. He lost his footing, stumbled dangerously close to the stairs, groped for the banister, then careened backwards down the flight of concrete steps.
Cheryl and Izzy raced to the landing below, but his twisted body lay still—blood seeping from the back of his head. They shared a panicked look and when Cheryl glanced up the staircase five-year-old Portia peered down at them.
Cheryl’s eyes connected with her innocent little girl and she knew what she had to do. She grabbed her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and made the call she swore she’d never make.
When her father answered she said, “I need your help.”
Even though the guy was a piece of shit who was hitting Izzy, he’d still lost his life because of Cheryl.
“And another thing, your father sure as shit isn’t gonna agree to it.”
“My father has nothing to do with my decision.”
Johnny’s eyes shone with hate. “Evidence has a way of popping up at odd times.”
“I went along with my father’s plan years ago, but I don’t think even he would let his own daughter go to jail.”
Johnny gave her a long look. “I know what this is about.”
