Page 3 of Belle Amour

Ana started pushing for a baby, and since it was something Bastian had always wanted, he happily agreed. But when she announced she stopped taking her birth control, he suddenly found himself unable to perform. After a few months of trying with the same results, he went to the doctor, who found nothing wrong and suggested it was a mental block, so he had a conversation with Ana, went to couples therapy and eventually agreed that now wasn’t the right time to have a child. She went back on birth control, and his erectile dysfunction went away. He was so paranoid that he insisted on using a condom andbegan pulling out as well. He confessed to Mirabelle that he understood her stance on having children better now because the thought of his life changing so much terrified him.

Two months later, Ana happily informed him she was pregnant, and after Bastian got over his shock, he was pissed and demanded to know how it happened, considering she was on birth control, and he was using condoms and pulling out. After insisting everything must have failed, which caused Bastian to heatedly point out that the chances of all three methods just happening to fail while she was ovulating were extremely low, she admitted that she hadn’t gone back on birth control at all and lied about it so he would get over the mental block, he blew up and left, punching a hole in the wall as he did. Bastian wasn’t proud of that; he’d never raised his fists in anger at a woman and had promised himself at a young age that he wouldn’t stoop that low, but he knew at that moment that he did not want children.

Bastian immediately went to Mirabelle’s and told her what happened. She comforted him and then hesitantly asked if he was positive it was his baby. After some reflection, he realized that he had no idea what Ana did while he worked long hours at the office. He went home to find Ana gone. After some more thought, he pulled out her laptop and began to search for evidence. It didn’t take him long to find a folder of pictures and videos of Ana and, to his shock, their couple’s therapist. He sent everything to Mirabelle and was surprised when she asked if she could represent him.

He agreed, and she told him not to do anything until she got back to him. “Just pretend you're angry about the pregnancy and work late for a few days.” She advised and then got to work. Throughout the divorce process, Bastian was shocked by the level of ruthlessness Mirabelle displayed. He had noticed that she was no longer the wallflower she was in high school, and heknew she had gained a lot of confidence in university and since she started at Tulk, but the way she went after Ana was almost pathological. She filed for an at-fault divorce, listing adultery as the reason, and in the divorce papers she filed, she demanded an in-utero paternity test for both Bastian and the man Ana cheated on him with because if she had the baby before the marriage was dissolved, Bastian would be, by default, the legal father, so she wanted it established as soon as possible whether or not he or the affair partner was the biological father.

She did her research on the affair partner and found out he was married, with three children and went to church every Sunday. Not wanting to give Ana a chance to warn him, while Mirabelle was serving Ana in her and Bastian’s apartment, she had the affair partner served in the parking lot of the church with a subpoena to provide a DNA sample to establish the paternity of Ana Avery’s unborn child in front of his wife, outing his affair. The intern who served him gave his wife Mirabelle’s card before leaving as a final fuck you. The baby turned out to be the affair partners, and Ana went away quietly afterward, signing off on everything quickly. The affair partner's wife filed for divorce and hired Mirabelle, who represented her just as ruthlessly as she represented Bastian, getting her the house and a substantial spousal maintenance payment on top of child support.

Bastian got a vasectomy after the paternity was established, telling Mirabelle he realized when Ana told him she was pregnant that it wasn’t what he wanted and that he’d felt so much panic and fear at the idea of having a baby that it would take many years in therapy to work out his feelings surrounding being a father, and while he was working on it, he had decided his need to do it better then his parents was a pretty terrible reason to bring something innocent into the world. He became very cynical about love with some serious trust issues followinghis divorce. He wasn’t ready to verbally admit it, but the fact that he had practically worshiped the ground Ana walked on but would have left her in a heartbeat if Mirabelle came to him and said she changed her mind about having kids with him messed him up as well. He decided to work on himself in therapy for a while before he got back into dating.

It was during this time at Tulk that Mirabelle met and started dating Eddie, a public policy lawyer. It was very casual at first since Casey worked at Tulk as an administrative assistant, and she felt that Eddie was using her to make Casey jealous. When Casey moved back to Michigan a few months into their dating to be with her long-distance boyfriend, Mirabelle felt most secure about dating him, and they began to take their relationship seriously.

After a year, Eddie proposed, and Mirabelle accepted, which began another downturn in Mirabelle’s and Bastian’s relationship, this time from Bastian’s side, which resulted in him distancing himself from her as the wedding approached. She may have been a hypocrite, considering she distanced herself from Bastian when he was with Ana, but she also felt she handled it better than he did. She was always polite and kind to Ana, and while she was distant from Bastian, she didn’t turn down hanging out when he asked or stop responding to texts and ignore his phone calls.

The drama ramped up, resulting in an argument the day before her wedding. He showed up and walked her down the aisle, told her he loved her and left right after. She later found out he accepted a temporary transfer to the Dallas branch of the law firm for six months and submitted his resignation from Tulk when he got back. She flew to Dallas to confront him. Determined to fix things and not lose her best friend over something she saw as a temper tantrum, she found out he wasgoing to Henderson and applied to be his personal assistant. He didn’t stop her or get upset; he just seemed relieved not to be working in the same company as Eddie, whom he told her he couldn’t stand. Mirabelle promised to keep Eddie away from him, and after a few months, their friendship went back to normal and stayed that way. Bastian avoided Eddie as much as possible and Mirabelle made her peace with keeping the two parts of her life separate from each other.

Chapter Three: Harassed

March

Mirabelle

The next six months were a whirlwind. Mirabelle’s prediction came true. After a few days at Bastian’s condo, it hit her, and it hit her hard: Eddie cheated on her for a year. She felt like an idiot for not noticing until Bastian pointed out that she did notice, but Eddie had convinced her that she was seeing things that weren’t there. She knew Bastian was trying to make her feel better, but it just made her feel like an even bigger idiot for falling for Eddie’s lies. She had fallen in love with him because he was fun, always up for trying something new, and they had a lot of hobbies and interests in common. He had supported her completely about being childfree, helping her find a doctor who would tie her tubes without needing him to sign off on it. He would have, but he understood her stance on the fact that she shouldn’t need to have her husband give her permission to make a choice about her body. They had just clicked in a way that she hadn’t with anyone else besides Bastian.

She knew he had his faults; despite being confident to the point of arrogance when it came to his intelligence, he was easily swayed by his friends, particularly his group of friends from university, of which Casey was a member and the only regular girl. The others were girlfriends who drifted in and out as relationships happened with the rest. He liked to have his “boy’sweekends” which were usually spent at football games, drinking way too much. She hadn’t cared too much about that, though; he always kept her updated, texting her unprompted to let her know where he was, what he was doing and responding to her texts almost immediately. And he always, no matter how late or how drunk he was, texted her to let her know he was going to bed and that he loved her.

When Casey moved back to New York two years into their marriage, she noticed he didn’t text as often or keep her as informed but still sent his good night and good morning texts. He responded to her, just not as quickly. She also noticed that his stories from the weekends never directly mentioned Casey being there, but he would sometimes slip and say her name, then look panicked, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. When she asked why Casey was going on his “boy’s weekend,” but none of the wives or girlfriends were allowed, he waved her off, explaining that all of them saw her as one of the boys.

She spent a lot of time questioning what Eddie saw in Casey that made him step out of their marriage. Casey was pretty but nothing overly special. Bastian said she reminded him of every gold digger wife he’d ever faced off with in court. The type of person who married an older rich man for money, convincing him that she was in love with him so he wouldn’t get a prenup. Mirabelle thought she was childish and whiny and needed constant attention, which Eddie had agreed with her about, but he shrugged it off. “We’re just used to it and humour her.”

After letting her grieve the relationship for a week, Bastian began making sure she got out of bed every day again, making her go to work, dragging her to the gym in his condo building with him, and making sure she was eating. When she expressed her annoyance about the gym, which she hated with a passion, he got them a membership at a nearby YM/YWCA thathad a pool so she could swim in the mornings while he worked out. Mirabelle leaned on him heavily for the first two months, and he kept her on her feet, including helping her with the down payment on a new condo close to his place, telling her she could pay him back when she and Eddie sold their house.

In the meantime, Bastian was making good on his promise to destroy Eddie. The first thing he did after filing the divorce paperwork was to get subpoenas for Eddie’s financial records and get the law firm’s financial auditor to comb through Eddie’s and Mirabelle’s accounts and joint accounts. The findings were handed over to a private investigator, who followed up on the numerous credit card transactions and was able to obtain quite a bit of security footage of Eddie and Casey booking hotel rooms, going on mini-vacations together, going to expensive restaurants – places he never took Mirabelle to – and buying her expensive gifts of jewelry and perfume.

The private investigator’s report was what brought Mirabelle out of her funk. Eddie had spent upwards of twenty-five thousand dollars of their joint funds on Casey in a year. Bastian found out that Casey had gotten hired back on at Tulk as a PA for the Corporate Law division of Tulk and Associates, the same division that Eddie worked for, something that he failed to mention to Mirabelle. Incensed about the amount of their money he had spent on Casey – most of which came out of their joint emergency savings account, something she hadn’t noticed because she had set up an automatic transfer payment once a month to that account - she gave an anonymous tip to the accounting department at Tulk on a hunch that Eddie and Casey were using company resources inappropriately and later heard through the grapevine their spending accounts had been suspended while they were under investigation.

They went into mediation, where Eddie bulked on everything, even though their offers were more than fair. Mirabelle didn’t want alimony; there were no kids, so custody and child support weren’t issues. She just wanted the house sold and the proceeds from the sale divided so that Eddie could pay back the money he spent out of the joint account and take on the credit card debt he accrued while married that she had been unaware of.

Eddie, on the other hand, wanted spousal support, stating Mirabelle made more money, and he was used to the standard of living he had while living with her and wanted her to take on half the credit card debt since he accrued it trying to keep up with the bills. He then offered not to go after spousal support or debt if she signed the house over to him. Bastian practically laughed him out of the mediation room, pointing out that his income from his trust made him ineligible for spousal support, reminding him he owed Mirabelle her portion of the money he had taken out of the emergency funds account to spend on his affair and if he hadn’t spent so much money on Casey, he wouldn’t have needed to run up his credit cards to pay the bills.

Realizing he wouldn’t get anywhere with them in mediation and that going to court would destroy him, Eddie began to follow Mirabelle. He would wait outside her condo, follow her when she left the underground parking lot to wherever she was going, and beg her to stop what she was doing and show some mercy. He caused several scenes, yelling or crying in public places, flipping between anger and despair about her ruining his life. It got so bad that Bastian put front and back dash cameras in Mirabelle’s car and instructed her to have her phone recording at all times when she wasn’t in her condo or office. Bastian filed a report for harassment, and Eddie was given a warning by the NYPD. He eased off and left her alonefor a few weeks, and then the investigation into his spending was completed.

When Mirabelle passed on the anonymous tip, she hadn’t thought they would be stupid enough to use company funds; she just wanted to make their lives difficult by having their spending accounts suspended until the investigation was complete, but it quickly came out that Eddie would take Casey to lunch a few times a week and claim it as business meetings with clients. The law firm also allowed lawyers to book a room at a nearby hotel if they were working on a case that required long hours so they wouldn’t have to drive while exhausted or get public transportation late at night. Eddie had booked the hotel at least twice a month for the entire year, and shockingly, his overtime hours didn’t line up with the hotel stays, which led to an even more in-depth investigation where co-workers were questioned.

Mirabelle hadn’t hidden why she and Eddie were divorcing from her friends at her former place of work, and she had lots of friends in the law firm, having worked there for so long. Knowing what happened when the whispers of an affair between two otherwise married lawyers started in the past, she knew people would start to distance themselves from them. She had intended to make life a little more miserable for them, but it had an outcome she hadn’t considered in her anger.

Tulk and Associates was a giant law firm with offices all over the country, and they had stringent rules about office relationships, particularly relationships where there was a perceived power imbalance, such as lawyers dating support staff. Eddie and Casey had disregarded two of those rules. The first was that all relationships must be disclosed to the Human Resources Department, and the second was that support staff couldn’t work in the same department as the lawyer and had to be transferred to another division. So, when the rumoursreached HR that Eddie and Casey had been together for a year and didn’t disclose the relationship, plus the findings of the investigation into Eddie’s spending, they were both fired.

Both Eddie and Casey started harassing Mirabelle; Eddie went back to following her and approaching her in public, blasting her for being a bitch one day and begging her to stop destroying his life; he was sorry, he never meant to hurt her, and he wouldn’t do this to her the next. He even started following her into the lobby of her condo building, begging her to talk to him and go back to mediation. Mirabelle would ignore him and get on the elevator without saying a word. The only time she said something was when he tried to get on the elevator, and she shoved him out, telling him he was not welcome in her home.

Casey was much worse. Mirabelle and Bastian weren’t sure if Eddie knew what she was up to or not, but she somehow got Mirabelle’s phone number and began calling her. If Mirabelle answered, she was screech into the phone, calling Mirabelle a bitch who was going to get hers, telling her to sleep with one eye open and invest in a good security system. It didn’t matter how many times Mirabelle blocked her; she would get a new number and continue calling her. Bastian finally told her to buy a new phone and get a new number but keep the old one active. He took it from her and downloaded the unhinged voicemails Casey would leave.

Done with the harassment, Bastian took the evidence to the next court date for the divorce proceedings. Eddie, who was representing himself, never showed up, so Bastian played Casey’s voicemails, the recordings of Eddie approaching Mirabelle in public, and the dashcam footage. The judge was irritated, to say the least, and signed off on the no-contact order Bastian had requested immediately. He told Mirabelle to text him the next time Eddie showed up and keep him talking untilhe got there. Two days later, Eddie cornered her in the lobby of her condo building; she sent the SOS to Bastian and stopped to let him talk.

“Mirabelle, please, I made a mistake. I'm sorry, and I'm begging you to stop this nonsense, for God's sake.” Eddie was back to pleading with her for mercy, and Mirabelle was honestly over it. Since she was supposed to keep him talking, she figured she now had free range to answer him.

“No.”

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