Chapter 9
The taxi dropped Roman off in front of his house and he went in feeling tired from his day, from his emotional battles, and because he was coming home to what he was certain would be a fight. When he walked in, he didn't see anyone and he took himself upstairs to his room. It had been convenient to stay downstairs in the guest room, but it had been much better for him to be back up in his own room again, and it made him feel like he was really home to be able to be there.
He pulled his jacket off and unbuttoned his shirt partway, rolling the sleeves up to the elbows. Then Roman poured himself a drink and sat down to enjoy it. He knew better than to let himself get that close to Cami. He was still working out how to be friends with her; he should hug her and that should be it; he had no business kissing her cheek, no business being that close to her.
But, then again, it didn't take much for that spark between them to ignite. It was all he could do not to carry her into her room and make love to her again. He stilled his mind from the thoughts of it, even as his body began to react to them. He could not allow himself to think of her that way; to want her, and to need her like he did.
She was the mother of his child and she was his friend, a fact which she had proven over and again when he had been in the hospital and his own wife hadn't even come to spend time with him. Cami had been there for him, and he needed to be as reliable and trustworthy to her as she had been to him. He needed to make himself be her friend and only her friend for all of their sakes.
Roman sighed deeply and took another long pull of his drink. He'd have to go and talk to Denise. He had to make things right at home so that his daughter could have some kind of a chance at a happy home both with him and with Cami. It would never be happy if he didn't work things out with Denise. She was a step-mother and he needed to allow her to build her own relationship with Emma.
He drank the last of the amber liquid in his glass and pushed himself up out of the chair. With another sigh, he walked out of his room and down the hall toward Denise's room. He almost knocked but thought better of it, and walked through the door.
What he found should not have surprised him, but it did. Denise was naked and laid out on her bed as Armando hovered over her, his body buried deep in hers, banging away at her as she cried out and moaned in pleasure. His hands were clenched around her breasts tightly and he was calling out her name and speaking Spanish to her as he plowed himself into her body over and over again.
At first Roman only stared. The sight before him was the last thing he thought he would find in his wife's bedroom, in his own house. Especially after all of her begging and pleading to be with him and to make their marriage work, and then there she was, screwing her masseur again. Roman wondered if she had ever stopped or if she had just told him she was sorry and wouldn't do it again to appease him, and all the while Armando had been having an affair with her.
Roman's shock and disgust turned to rage as he realized that he had put his own happiness and future in the hands of a woman who cared absolutely nothing about him, who never had, and who never would. He had made her a priority in his life and in his future, and this was all that he meant to her. Nothing. He meant less than nothing to her.
He strode over to the bed and reaching behind Armando's head, grasped the man's long black hair, twisting it in his hand, and he yanked back hard, pulling the man off his wife and off her bed, landing him on his back on the floor.
Armando yelped in pain and surprise as he found himself splayed out naked at the feet of the husband of his lover. He stared up at Roman and Roman gave him a look of horrible disgust.
Then Roman looked over at his wife who was just opening her eyes and looking up to see what had happened. She gasped in horror at the sight of her husband standing there with rage covering his face. She scrambled quickly to cover her naked body that was lying spread eagled and open for Armando.
"What are you doing in here?" she yelled out, shock rocking through her.
Roman took two quick steps toward the bed and she scooted back away from him, yelping and grasping at sheets to cover herself. "It's my house and you are my wife, if I want to come into your room I will. What in the hell is he doing in here?" he shouted, pointing his finger at Armando who was still laying on the floor, not sure what to do.
Denise began to cry and wail and Roman lost what was left of his composure. He turned to Armando and shouted at him.
"How dare you come into my own home and screw my wife! How dare you continue to be with my wife! She's married! Get your clothes on and get the hell out of here, and don't ever come back! If I see you here again, I'll have you arrested for trespassing!"
Armando scrambled to his feet and got his clothes on as quickly as he could while keeping one eye on Roman. He was dressed in a few minutes and then silently stole out the door, closing it tightly behind him. Roman wheeled on Denise and reached for her, dragging her out of the bed by her arms and standing her in front of him.
She stood there naked and sobbing and Roman didn't want to see her in that state at all. He snatched her robe up off the floor and threw it at her. "Here! Put something on, for crying out loud!"
She yanked it on and got it tied and then stopped crying long enough to start in on a laundry list of excuses and tears.
Roman glared at her. "I can't believe you were screwing that guy again! Is he the only guy? Is he?" He took another step toward her and she backed away from him.
"Yes!" she sobbed.
"You're lying to me." Roman growled at her.
She shook her head. "Okay! Okay... there was one other... " she started to say but Roman looked at her and shook his head slowly.
"Two. There were two others," she said miserably as she sank into the chair in front of her vanity. "I never meant for it to happen, it just did!" she sobbed.
He walked halfway across the room toward her. "How come? What reason could you possibly have for screwing so many other guys? Was I not enough for you?" he asked angrily.
She shook her head. "I just... I don't know!" she blubbered through her tears.
"The plain fact, Denise, is that you are the whore," Roman said in a low angry tone.
"I'm sorry, Roman!" she cried out to him.
He shook his head at her again. "Do you realize that we promised the rest of our lives to each other? Do you understand that?" he shouted at her. "Can you even comprehend what that means?"
She nodded her head, as tears poured down her cheeks.
He shook his head at her again. "I don't think you do. I don't think that you can conceive of it at all, otherwise you would never have been with anyone else!" he shouted.
She leaned halfway up off her seat. "You can't judge me! You had a child outside of our marriage!"
He rounded on her and came toward her quickly, and she sat back down and covered her mouth with a gasp.
"I had one night with another woman, and it just happened to produce a child. One night! I agree that neither one of us should have ever been in anyone else's arms, but you had full blown affairs with three other men! Three! You spent a couple of years ignoring our marriage bed, but you weren't sacrificing yourself, oh no... I was in there alone every night while you were out screwing who knows how many men! You have no right to try to act like we're even on this! None!"
She only whimpered at him.
"You even tried to beg me to stay with you and fix our marriage! Isn't that what you said just a week ago? You wanted to fix our marriage? Well here we are trying to fix it; you're being a royal bitch to my daughter and her mother while you're off having sex with another man in my own damn house! That's not fixing it!" He began to pace and shout, flinging his fist in the air as he walked.
"What the hell are we even still married for? What is it that you wanted to save?" He looked at her and waited.
"We're married because we have a good reputation! We can't lose the good name we have because of a nasty divorce!" she snapped back at him through her tears.
His eyes opened wider and he looked at her in amazement.
"Our reputation? Are you talking about your stupid society circles again? Who cares what all those other people think? Do you think they are adjusting their lives around what we might think of them? No way! We don't live to impress others, Denise, we live our own lives our own way and we make them the best that they can be, and ours are nowhere near the best they can be!
“We don't answer to anyone else, and I don't care what anyone else thinks of me! I'm not worried about some social circle who may or may not approve of me and what I do or how I live my life!"
She began to sob in earnest then.
"We're finished, Denise. I'm not trying to save a marriage that you are only involved in for show. That's not going to happen. You need to pack up your things tomorrow and you and that bitch of a mother of yours need to get the hell out of my house tomorrow."
Roman felt no sorrow for the way that he was speaking to her. She had earned every bit of it and more, over the years he had been married to her.
She glared at him and jumped up off of her chair. "How dare you throw me out into the street!" she shouted. "I'll take you to court and I will get everything you have! All of it! I'll tell them how beastly you've been to me and then I'll get every red cent you have and this house, and the cars and boats and everything else with it! All of it! It's all going to be mine if you try to kick me out, and then you know what, jackass? I'll kick you out onto the street!" she laughed wickedly at him.
Roman just shook his head at her. "You're really not the sharpest nail in the box, are you, Denise?" he asked calmly.
She shot daggers at him with her eyes. "What are you talking about?" she demanded.
He took a deep breath and sighed. "Do you remember that really big stack of papers that you signed before we got married?"
She looked at him blankly and he knew then that she didn't remember it. "It was a prenuptial agreement. You signed a legal document stating that you would not get anything if we ever divorced for any reason. Nothing. You get nothing at all, and you signed your name to the legal document that states that."
Denise shook her head and screamed at him at the top of her lungs.
He didn't flinch at all. "So tomorrow, you and your bitch mother get the hell out of this house and then I don't want to see you again until we go to court for the divorce. I'm done here, Denise, and my only regret is that I didn't do it sooner."
She shrieked and threw a pillow at him. He only turned and walked out of the door, closing it behind him.
The next morning he left the house early and called his attorney on the way to his office. He told him he needed to get a divorce started and his attorney said that he would get the paperwork underway and call him back when it was finished.
When he walked into his office, he called both Allen and Janine in to have coffee with him.
They sat down and looked at him expectantly. It was unlike him to call them both in for a meeting unless something really big was happening.
"I want to thank you both, first for everything you've done for me; the two of you really kept this place going while I was in the hospital and out for recovery, and that loyalty means a lot to me." He handed each of them an envelope with a sizeable bonus in it.
"Second, you've both done everything you could to help me with the situations that have arisen both in my personal life and here with the business, and I want you to know how much I appreciate it. There are going to be more changes coming up in the immediate future."
They looked at him watchfully, waiting to hear what was going to happen.
"I'm getting a divorce. I contacted my attorney this morning and it will be official as soon as he can get the paperwork done. She signed a prenuptial agreement before we were married, so no matter what she says, she gets nothing." He took a deep breath and sighed.
Both Janine and Allen stared at him in shock. Neither one of them ever thought that Roman would be getting a divorce, no matter what his bitch of a wife put him through.
Roman looked at Janine. "If she calls, there's nothing I have to say to her, and nothing she needs to say to me that's important enough for her to get through this office line to me."
Janine grinned at him. "Got it!" she said happily.
He continued. "If she comes into the office, I want her arrested. She has no business in here."
Janine looked like it was Christmas morning and she had gotten everything on her list.
Roman looked at Allen who wasn't doing anything to hide his smile either.
"As far as the Senator goes, please call him immediately and tell him what's happening. Assure him that Denise will not be contacting him ever again, and if she does, she has absolutely no affiliation with us. Make that clear to him." Roman sat back in his chair and looked at them both.
"I'm really glad we are such a good team,” he said in a tired voice. He excused them and Allen left right away to go call the Senator. It wasn't thirty minutes before Allen was back in Roman's office with an ear to ear grin on his face.
Roman asked him to sit down.
Allen could not have been more pleased. "I called the Senator and told him what's going on. He was surprised at first, and he said he felt like it wasn't really his business what was going on, but when I told him that Denise would no longer be affiliated with us whatsoever, he got so excited. He wants to meet us down at the boat today with a check for the whole purchase. In fact, he asked if we could join him there for lunch."
Roman's eyebrows raised up in surprise. "Wow, you weren't waiting around for that at all! Well, let's book a lunch date with him. We have a lot of business on the books right now, but nothing at all as important or as significant as the Senator. If he wants us there for lunch, we'll be there."
Allen saluted him and ran off to make the arrangements. Roman's morning looked like it was turning around already, and he felt better, too; like he had been tethered to an old decaying dock and had finally broken free and was headed for a new horizon.
Lunchtime came quickly and Allen and Roman rode together to go meet the Senator. Edward and Carmen were waiting for them on the dock with Captain Heatherwick, and were delighted to see them.
Edward extended his hand to Roman. "I'm so sorry about your current personal situation,” he said kindly.
Roman shook his head. "I appreciate that. I should have done it a long time ago."
Edward nodded. "Well then, I hope it all works out for the best for you." Roman could see that he meant it.
"Well, you didn't come here to talk about me; let's all head over to the real reason that we are here!" Roman said with a smile, and every one of his associates smiled back at him and they all headed onto the yacht.
Janine had worked out a catered lunch, and they all sat in the dining room eating Thai food and talking about the boat and other various things. Jonathon and Edward found themselves sharing stories about old sea-faring days and entertaining the group, and their lunch stretched late into the afternoon. Janine and Allen cleared it away and Edward and Carmen presented Roman with a check for the full sum of the cost of the yacht.
The couple invited all who were aboard to come back and visit them, mentioning that they would all be asked back regularly, and everyone was pleased to hear it.
Allen and Janine went back to the office to close up for the day while Roman went to the bank to deposit the Senator's check.
He got a call when he left the bank and saw that it was from Janine.
"Are you busy?" she asked happily.
Roman thought he heard something different and strange in her voice. "No, I'm free; what's going on? Is everything alright?"
"It is now." Janine said. "'The Wife'... wait, I'm going to start calling her 'The Ex'. Anyway, while us cats were away on the yacht this afternoon, the little 'Ex Mouse' came to play. She broke into the office, and I can prove she broke in because the first thing I did this morning after our meeting was have the locks changed at the office. When we got back from our meeting this afternoon, Allen and I discovered her rifling through every single paper in your office. All of your file drawers were dumped all over the floor, from the cabinets, from your desk, and even from my desk."
Roman stopped his car and pulled over. "You're kidding! What in the world was she doing? Has she lost her mind?"
Janine began to chuckle. "No, Roman, she hasn't lost her mind. She said she was looking for her prenuptial agreement. She was going to destroy it, I think. I have no idea why she thought you'd keep something like that here. Isn't one copy in the safe at home and the other copy with your attorney?"
Roman shook his head and covered his face with his hands. "Yes, that's where they are. She doesn't know about the safe at home."
Janine laughed right out loud then. "She doesn't? This might be one of the best days of my life! Anyway, we came in and found her rifling through everything and I called the police and had her arrested."
Roman sat straight up and stared out of his windshield without seeing anything in front of him. "You what?!" he asked in surprise.
"I had her arrested for breaking and entering and destruction of private property." Janine was sounding extremely smug.
He sat there in his car in utter amazement. "You're kidding. Wow. I can't even imagine that."
Janine was thrilled. "You should have seen them cuff her and read her rights to her, and then put her in the back of the police car. I got photos on my cell phone and put it up on my Facebook page and Twitter account already."
Roman gasped and coughed simultaneously. "You're kidding! You didn't do that!" he almost sounded as if he was scolding her, but then she knew he wasn't.
"I most certainly did. There goes her ride to the top of the social climbing ladder." Janine chuckled again.
Roman shook his head in disbelief and then finally let loose a laugh and a sigh of humor. "Well, are you two going to be at the office much longer?"
"No, Allen already went home. I just started picking things up. It looks like a hurricane came through here; but don't worry, I got photos of it before I started cleaning it up. Evidence, you know. Hey Roman," Janine said, sounding slightly concerned,
"you might want to go to the house and make sure everything is alright there. I have arranged to have the locks changed tonight at five. That gave her the day to move out. If she needs anything after five tonight, she can call me for it and I'll take care of it."
Roman felt a heaviness in the pit of his stomach, wondering what she might have done to the house. He took a deep breath and told himself it couldn't be too bad, whatever it was.
"I'll call you when I get to the house and let you know what kind of condition it's in. Don't worry about the mess in the office, we can clean it up tomorrow." She said goodbye and he drove toward his house, wondering what he would find when he got there. The house was quiet and dark, and he wasn't sure what to expect, but he didn't see anyone in it, and at first everything at the front of the house looked fine.
He walked back to his office and discovered that she had ransacked it, looking for the prenuptial agreement as well. He sighed, looking at the mess scattered all over the floor. Then he headed to the library and saw that she'd gone through the desk and files in there as well, but of course, he knew she hadn't come up with anything. He checked the rest of the house and found that it was all in order, just as it should have been.
He hesitated outside of the room Agnes was staying in, knocked on the door and hearing no answer, he went in. It was empty of everything that had been hers and a few things that had been in the room before she had moved in. It was encouraging to see the room empty. Next, he strolled down the hall to Denise's room and opened the door.
Her things were gone, but the room was a demolished mess. Windows were broken, walls had holes in them, and one of the closet doors had a hole in it. She had left the water running in the tub and sink; probably to try to flood the place, he thought, but she hadn't bothered to plug the drains, so the water was just running and wasting away.
He shut it off and looked around the room. He decided he would have an insurance agent come to check on it in the morning. He went to his room last. He had locked it when he left that morning, sure that it was in his best interest to do so, and he found that his room was untouched, which was a huge relief to him because he was exhausted from the long couple of days he’d had.
Roman headed to bed, hoping to sleep deep enough to forget everything that had happened, at least for the night, and that's just what he did.
The next day dawned bright and early, and Roman headed in to the office. He called the insurance adjustor to go to the house and to come by the office, and that was handled.
The insurance company mentioned that they may try to subrogate and go after her to recoup their losses, if it was at all possible.
His attorney called him and told him that his divorce could be final in as little as 45 days if she signed the agreements right away. He crossed his fingers for that, and his attorney suggested that perhaps if Roman offered her a single monetary settlement, she may be more inclined to sign them, as her prenuptial had prevented her from receiving any alimony.
Roman considered it an investment in his future to get her out of his life as quickly and cleanly as possible. He told his attorney to offer her one million for the divorce, and the attorney said he would let him know right away what her response was.
Janine had never looked so happy at work and Allen was still floating on cloud nine from his sale. Captain Heatherwick was off looking at new yachts, and Roman had finally begun to feel like his life was headed in the right direction.
He wanted to spend some time with Cami and Emma more than anything else, and so he called Janine into his office and asked her for a favor. She was more than happy to help him, and was instrumental in making it all work.
Roman called Cami and asked her if he could take her out for dinner and a conversation. She agreed and he asked if Janine could babysit for them, and Cami agreed to that as well.
"Please make sure Emma has a lot of breast milk ready for Janine. I don't want her to run out,” he mentioned in concern.
Cami assured him that there would be more than enough for Janine to take care of Emma. Roman told her he would pick her up around five that afternoon, and he left to take care of his arrangements for the night.