Page 11 of The Reluctant Hero

“Have you asked your preciouswifeabout it?” I can hear her sneer of disgust. Subservient women are her worst enemies. She’s hated Amanda from the beginning.

The question makes me sigh. Confession number two.

“Hard to do since she left.”

“What?” Her shriek makes me wince at the volume.

“Shut the fuck up, Gloria,” I break with anger. “She found a text from Annette and lost her shit. She’ll be back.”

“Not if she has those photos, she won’t. She called me days ago asking for advice on divorce, you idiot. For afriend.”

“I have her hemmed in already. She will be back,” I assure her grimly. Without a penny, she’s going to be living rough no matter what. She won’t be able to walk away from my money no matter what moral high ground she thinks she’s standing on.

“Those photos will be a leg up on proceedings at the very least,” she assures me grimly. “And I’m in some of them. Youfuckingidiot!”

It’s a bit late to figure that out.

“But I’m not in a single one, Gloria. Inadmissible. Even I know that.”

She lets out a sound of petulant rage. It must suck to realize how stupid you are despite the fancy plaque claiming the bitch to be educated.

“It isn’t a problem. She will be back.”

“Annette-”

“Is keeping her mouth shut about Amanda leaving. No one has any idea.”

“They’ll find out if you don’t get a handle on her.”

“I know where she is,” I scoff. “Some piece of shit apartments on the outskirts of the new business section Andrea Matthias built tohelp the community.”

“You have to admit it’s a good cover. They can pull their own dirty weight and claim to be pure.”

“Why haven’t we gotten them involved yet?” I ask curiously. Andrea is fucking hot, and she has three fucktoys. She’d fit in perfectly. I’d fit intoherperfectly.

“We can’t get enough concrete information to make that plausible,” she shuts down my fantasy quickly. “She’s too unpredictable.”

I scoff at that bullshit. “She’s buying up the entire town. We’re the only holdouts.”

“We aren’t,” she claims in exasperation. “Get your head out of your ass. Big moves have bigger consequences. Get Amanda home. You have better instincts with her around.”

“Give it time. She’ll be back and under my thumb soon enough,” I dismiss her just as quickly as she dismissed me. Let her stew in that for a while. She doesn’t pull my strings.

“You better spread the word with your little lawyer buddies,” she hisses in return.

“That would be outing the fact that she left.” I can’t help the anger that thought brings. She has always been under my strict control. I don’t want any of my friends to realize how tenuous that hold is. I’m disgusted at it myself.

“Yes, it would,” her smug, self-righteous tone grates on my last nerve. “Your fuckups are not my problem. The more you pin her down and leave her without options, the better. The pathetic bitch is going to go for a divorce.”

“She doesn’t have the money to start proceedings. Her parents are the only place she could go.”

“Then you can claim abandonment and nail her ass to the wall.”

“More public bullshit,” I point out angrily.

“Spread the word and have everyone shut her out. Find a way to keep an eye on her. Someone that can get into whatever shithole she’s living in to find those photos. Do it now. Maybe try luring her back in, you lazy shit.”

I grunt and run a hand through my hair. If I had known Amanda would go apeshit over an affair, I wouldn’t havebothered with her. How could she think I’d be happy with her pathetic ass in bed?

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