Page 1 of Outplayed

Prologue

Travis

When I walked into my office at my new home, I didn’t expect to see my five-year-old daughter sitting at my desk holding a photo frame. I’d thought she’d been in her room drawing, yet there she was studying the photo like it was a puzzle.

“Princess, what are you doing?” I asked, making my way over to her.

“Daddy, who’s this lady?” She held up the frame as I got to her side. My heart jumped.

Violet.

Gently, I picked Izzy up, sat in her spot on my desk chair, and placed her on my lap. “Her name is Violet.”

“Why do you have her picture?”

I tucked her hair behind her ear and kissed her temple. “She was the one woman I loved with my whole heart. Unfortunately, work got in the way and I lost the chance of my happy ever after.”

She was quiet for a moment. “She’s real pretty, Daddy.”

“I know, princess.”

After moving to Ballarat, I had hoped to see Violet. Ever since I moved out of the country to New York, I had regretted it.

Leaving her after university was the worst decision of my life, yet I wouldn’t be the man I was now without those changes. I wouldn’t have what I did. We’d both chosen different paths back then; mine had been in construction in Sydney and she’d stayed in Victoria.

Then an opportunity to work under a big-named company in New York won me over. That was where I met a friend and we went into business together. Violet and I had had a plan: get our careers sorted and then eventually find one another again. Only it didn’t work out that way. The woman I had been dating fell pregnant, and everything changed from then on.

Shit, I was even dating someone now, but I couldn’t stand the woman any longer. I’d met Pam six months ago in Sydney when Izzy and I were living there for a year on business. Pam and I connected because she was in the state working, but she originally came from Melbourne. She interested me enough to want more than just casual sex. Only time told me I’d made a mistake when she became money hungry.

I would have got rid of her sooner, if she hadn’t followed me to Victoria to begin with. Though, instead of making me pick her or the change of location, she took the choice out of my hands and made the move herself… with the money I’d given her of course.

So I kept her around because I wasn’t as cruel as people believed—unless they fucked me or mine over. Then I was, as my friend Link put it, downright scary.

Soon though, very soon, I would happily see Pam out of our lives. I’d been meaning to get rid of her for some time, but the move, business, and Izzy had kept me busy. Fuck, I hadn’t even gotten off using her body in over four months. She’d tried, but I couldn’t handle her touch. Another reason she had to go.

She’d been the only girlfriend to meet Izzy, which I regretted, but it was by accident. Not that Izzy knew Pam and I were seeing each other. I made sure my daughter understood Pam was only a friend. She wouldn’t even be that for much longer.

Violet didn’t know the man I was now, but I knew the woman she was, and she wasn’t the only one who could find out about a person. I knew she owned her own PI business, had Ryan Warden, Chuck Stanley, and Butch Callington working for her. She was thirty-four, looked twenty-five, and lived alone in the city. She paid her taxes on time, went out on a couple of dates in the past three years but preferred to go to the gym or stay at home reading or watching TV. I even knew when her rubbish day was.

Why?

Because I had stayed away for a decade in the hope she would marry or get a boyfriend that stuck, but she didn’t. Her career meant the most to her, and it was time for me to teach her there was more to life than working.

It was time to reclaim the woman who had always been mine.

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