Chapter 11
Tony’s secretary buzzed him, declaring that “Mike” was here to see him. He settled back in his seat and straightened his cuffs. “Send him in.” This was a meeting he had been long waiting for.
Mike shuffled in and gingerly set a manila packet of photos on his desk. He was an unassuming guy, a bit tubby with a huge bald island with an archipelago of graying hair. He peered at Tony nervously over the tops of his round glasses. “Well. There you go.”
“So what’s she been up to?” Tony asked grimly as he put on his reading glasses. He was steeling himself for the worst. He knew that a woman as beautiful as his ex-wife was probably not single. Plus, he recalled her kissing Blake Franklin by the elevator. Was she with him? Would he view a bunch of sickening photos of those two all over each other? Maybe she was dating around, with a whole slew of men in and out of her life. The thought of any other man putting his hands on who he still considered rightfully his made his stomach burn.
Mike hesitated. Tony looked up at him, expectantly. “Well?”
Mike cleared his throat. “I’ll just let the photos speak for themselves. Now may I have the balance of my fee?” His voice shook as he asked for his money. He really was a good PI, so unassuming, but he had no balls. Tony could read a person from a mile away and he knew from the beginning that he could trust Mike because Mike was a bit afraid of him. As far as Mike knew, this powerful corporate attorney was connected, with hitmen on speed dial.
Tony handed over a wad of hundreds. He always paid generously and well. This was not his first time using Mike; Mike never left him disappointed. “Expect a bonus next week if you can get me more,” Tony said coolly.
Mike nodded and hastily dodged out of the office. The secretary stared after him, clearly curious about what on Earth he was seeing Tony for.
Tony opened the envelope slowly, not really relishing what he was about to see. Mike had made it seem worse than he had thought. It was not out of malice that he had Sophia followed. Sure, some of it had to do with jealousy. But some of it had to do with his unwillingness to let her go. This was his way of keeping tabs on her, of seeing if maybe she would come back to him. He had hoped that she was miserable without him so that she would rush back into his arms when he forgave her for leaving, and he had not expected for her to last this long on her own. He had thought that maybe she was being so stubborn because she thought he would never take her back and it was too late. Honestly, he would always take her back. He had known her his entire life and living without her felt like a hole occupied most of his heart. His life was so empty without her cheerful texts and knowing that she was safely at home, waiting for him, ready to give him anything he wanted. For months now he had waited for her to get over it and stop being silly and yet she kept surprising him, especially when she followed through with the divorce proceedings and went to live on her own in his penthouse.
But since seeing her with Blake Franklin the other week and having her throw him, his mother, and his mother-in-law out of his penthouse, it seemed that she was way too happy living without him. That filled him with rage that burned at the back of his throat like a swallowed coal. She wasn’t just playing games anymore. She was actually living her own life. And that meant that there was a very real possibility that she would not come back. How can you lose your own soulmate, he thought?
He laid the pictures out. His stomach was knotting up and hurting. Gingerly, he leaned over and peered at them.
Of course. There she was with that dumb Blake Franklin guy. They were actually holding hands! What was she thinking, dating a nerdy white guy like that? He was a tech billionaire, and a scrawny excuse of a man compared to his brother. At least Adam dated models and went to outrageous parties. Tony had been to one of their parties and knew that they had a weird lifestyle and orbited around many different crowds, some of them including wild billionaire cokeheads and some of them including celebrities and some of them including weird MIT nerdy guys. But that didn’t diminish his respect for Adam, who never failed to shake his hand firmly and stare him in the eye. Blake, on the other hand, had none of his respect. Blake was the wallflower who liked to smoke pot, as if he wasn’t some important CEO. Blake was the one who had kissed his own wife right in front of him without even speaking to him like a man! Little sniveling brat….Tony’s heart rate shot up as he broiled over the photos of Sophia with her new little boyfriend. So disgusting. She so clearly didn’t belong with that guy!
He squinted at the next photo in the series. This one seemed different from the others. Now she was kissing…wait, was that the other brother? They were making out as they tumbled out of the back of Adam’s black chauffeured car. It had to be Adam, because Blake didn’t have a car and rode his bike or jogged everywhere, trying to be green. Blake was one of those losers who rode the subway despite having millions just to keep a forest somewhere alive. Plus, Adam had brown hair, and wasn’t a fiery ginger like damn Blake.
Tony shook his head and shut his eyes before looking again. Yep, that was definitely Adam Franklin! So she was with Blake the day before, and now she was with Adam? What the hell?
His gut hurt. He could not believe that she was such a slut! Dating two brothers at once? What could possibly be happening here? That lying little slut was leading them both on and lying to them. They couldn’t possibly know about each other. After all, what man would be OK with sharing the same girl?
And then he saw the next photo. Mike had managed to find an angle that went directly into the living room of the Franklin Bachelor Pad. The blurry image showed Sophia’s brown legs up in the air and a paler man over her. And then the next…it was two men! There were far too many arms and legs waving around against the glass window to be just one! She was being fucked by…two men.
And the final image showed her getting off the elevator. It was night and she was wearing a long coat and a scarf. Both Franklin brothers were with her. One had his hand on the small of her back and she was cuddled against his shoulder. The other was leaning over to kiss her.
Tony flung the photos away from himself and they scattered all over the office. He pulled a wastebasket close and threw up into it. As he wiped his mouth, his secretary called saying that his next meeting was coming up.
“I’m sick. Tell them I have to cancel and go home.” He gathered up his things, collected the scattered photos, put the photos in his briefcase, and left without answering any of Valeria’s questions. Numerous times he had slept with Valeria and she had this idea she was his girlfriend and fussed over him like his mom. He pushed past his other colleagues, who all asked him what was wrong, and went home.
Rarely did Tony Garcia ever lose his nerve. But seeing those photos had managed to crack the careful and airtight casing that he kept his emotions inside. They erupted inside of him in a volcanic tornado and he felt like he was losing his mind. He wasn’t even sure how he got home. He just had to be home for a while to gather his thoughts and find a plan.
For every action, there is a consequence, he thought to himself as he made himself a Gin and Tonic in his kitchen. He gulped it down and made another, then went and sat gingerly on his couch. The anger was mostly gone and he was managing to package his emotions neatly again. He felt as he did before a trial, cold and ready to begin preparing every possible angle.
He hated this apartment compared to the penthouse; Sophia had known just what to take from him in the divorce to hit him hard and get revenge for his fling with Brittany. And now that she was free of him, she was doing everything that she could to rub it in his face. She had gone to the farthest extreme possible to hurt him. This was all just a big show from her, a big fuck-you-Tony. The Catholic schoolgirl he knew would never do something this depraved. She barely even liked to try new stuff in bed; she was no pervert. There was no way she was doing this just for herself; there was some underlying purpose to it. She was trying to show him that she didn’t need him and she was done with him. She had probably even wanted him to find out, the way she kissed Blake in front of him, the way she was letting them both fuck up in front of an open window like that. She could be a vindictive little bitch at times. Like when she went through his phone and found out about Brittany just because he told her she couldn’t.
There would be recourse for all of this. He would make sure of that. No one hurt him without being punished. Sophia would regret ever betraying him and leaving him to go be a freak with those two perverts.
She didn’t miss him at all.
And he was going to make her pay for that.
****
Sophia headed out of the office, another day of work wrapped up. She was excited to go home and prepare an authentic Mexican dish for the Franklins. They were nervous about how hot they could handle Mexican chile peppers, so of course she said she was using the hottest peppers, when really she planned to go easy on them. She was planning to take a taxi from the office to the grocery store to do some shopping on her way home.
She walked out of her office and just as she rounded the corner to the elevators, there he was. The stony mass that was Tony Garcia. She froze, recognizing the anger he had for her in the flare of his nostrils and the coldness in his eyes. He appraised her coolly, looking her up and down in a way that was scathing and hurtful without any words having to be exchanged. Tony never was shy to let her know when he disapproved of her, as if she were just here to fit his model of how a wife should be and had no personality of her own. The longer she lived without him, the more she realized how horrible he had been and how unhappy she had been living with him.
“Tony,” she said. She refused to let him intimidate her, which is exactly what he was trying to do. He wasn’t even as tall as he seemed; she knew that he wore lifted shoes to give him a height advantage for his various intimidation tactics.
“Sophia.”
“Why are you here?” she asked coldly. She hoisted her purse over her shoulder, pursing her lips and staring him down. She knew better than to break eye contact; doing so would make him think that he had won whatever twisted game he was playing.
“We need to have a conversation,” he replied. The chill in his voice actually started to scare her. She looked around, and found that she was alone in the hall before the elevator bank.
Tony grabbed her elbow. She jerked her arm away. She didn’t like how aggressive he was being, towering over her and touching her without her permission.
“Come with me,” he hissed.
She glanced around nervously before following to him a fairly private part of the hall, by the bathrooms. Some women walked by and glanced at them. She knew that if she screamed, she could probably get help if she needed it.
Tony removed a manila envelope from his briefcase. When he pulled out the photos, she instantly recognized them for what they were. The top photo was of the Franklins’ big front living room window with its stunning view from the twenty-seventh floor. There were her brown legs, as well as Adam’s head between them and Blake leaning over her with his penis in her mouth.
She cried out, filled with shock and outrage. “You have been spying on me!”
“And now I know everything about your perverted behavior since you left me. What are you thinking, doing this? Do you know how disgusting it is?”
She recoiled. “What I do is none of your business.”
“It is my business what you do in my penthouse.”
“That’s mine now,” she bit back.
“No. Everyone there knows that you are my ex-wife. It makes me look so bad that I was married to a whore.” He spat the word as he looked Sophia up and down scathingly. She could smell gin on his breath.
“You need to back off. I’m about to call security.”
He shook his head. “You will not do that. Instead, what you are going to do is this. You are going to pack your things. And you are going to leave my penthouse. I don’t care where you go or who you move in with. Move in with those brothers for all I care. I get my penthouse back because you no longer deserve it.”
“I'm not going to do that Tony, and you can’t make me.”
He snorted. “If you don’t vacate that place immediately, and your family will receive these in the mail. Do you know what they will do when they realize what a little whore you are?”
Sophia’s heart nearly stopped. She prayed that Tony didn’t know about her pregnancy. He appeared not to. “Don’t do that,” she whispered. She hated how weak he made her feel, like some subservient, driveling fool with no backbone.
“I need you to get out now.” He spoke without mercy, as if she was not even human, as if they had not been married for seven years and in love even longer than that. Had he ever cared about her? Or was she always nothing to him, just a pawn for him to control? How had she never seen how he used people and moved them about like chess pieces without any regard for their feelings? He was even this way with his mother. He was an awful person and she hated him with all of her being at that moment. “You can’t do this. That place is mine now. Legally. You signed it over.”
“And now you will sign it back over and you will get out.” Or.” He waved the envelope of pictures menacingly.
“Don’t you dare threaten me. We are not even together. Why do you care so much what I do?” she seethed. He had upset her to the point of tears and she was trembling. But she was starting to get angry and indignant as she realized just what he was trying to pull.
“When you made your vows to me, you promised to be mine forever. You broke those vows. And you will pay for that.” While his words denoted his sense of hurt and betrayal, he did not reveal any real emotion. Sophia hated that about him. If only he would budge and show one little bit of love, affection, or hurt, maybe she could forgive him. But he always expressed this inhuman coldness that chilled her to the bone. He could never humble himself for her.
He would never change.
“You broke your vows first,” she replied, matching his coldness. “I don’t know why you can’t get that through your head.”
“I never left your side,” he argued.
“You did. Many times. Every time you were with that bitch in the penthouse, you left my side and betrayed me.”
“You have a duty to me and you failed it,” he snarled. “Get out of that apartment or I will destroy your life. You’re lucky I don’t do it anyway, just to punish you for being the slut that you are. I am an instrument for God’s will. But I am also a good man, so I will leave it to Him to handle you and your sins. As a Christian I know that karma is real for I have seen it work many times. And God will definitely get His retribution. You will pay so hard for what you have been doing, and you will wish that you had never left me. Just you wait and see.” With that, he stormed away, leaving Sophia by herself to feel shell-shocked and horrified.
Feeling completely numb, she went home and lay down. Wine was out of the question, though she really wanted it. She had to fight the urge to sob. Not only was she mortified that someone had learned her secret, but she was also terrified that everything might fall apart now. So much for happily ever after and a peaceful, healthy pregnancy!
She didn’t want to imagine what might happen. But horrible thoughts kept biting at her mind, distressing her. Should she succumb to Tony and let him get his way, as usual? Should she defy him and suffer the terrifying consequences? Or should she find some other solution? No other solution seemed apparent to her but she desperately searched for one.
She realized that she needed her one…err, two sources of solace and comfort, her boyfriends. They would be able to help her. They were also billionaires, with great attorneys on their side. All of this might get better once she spoke with them. And maybe they could think of a solution that she couldn’t think of herself.
Sophia already knew how much she loved them and relied on them, and she realized they were undeniably important facets of her life. This ménage was better than she had imagined and she would be damned before Tony could ruin it for her.