Page 133 of Taeja

“Teddy took away all the pictures I had when you made me live with her. I want one now,” Taeja replied, twisting the truth.

“You are not a good liar, Taeja,” Jerry accused, and she gulped.

“I miss my mother,” she confessed. “I always felt like you weren’t telling me the truth about why she left. I deserve to know.”

“I told you the truth.”

“You didn’t!”

A raging storm grew in his tired eyes as they narrowed at her. “Watch your mouth in my house.”

“Yu cya tell mi wa fi do, Jerry! Mi nuh under yu bondage anymore. Tell me the truth,” she insisted, but he didn’t budge. Taeja frowned and lowered her voice, “Please.”

Silence gripped the room. Taeja had to remind herself to breathe during their stare-down.

Finally, he sighed and looked away from her, focusing on his reflection on the television. “Cassedi left me for another man.”

“Yago sidung yaso and lie to mi, Jerry?” Taeja asked. “Mi ano fool. She loved you, and I know you loved her. Just like you used to love me.”

He tensed again, in and out so quickly like the flicker of a light. Then, he stood and started approaching her. Taeja stepped backward until her back hit the cabinet. She gulped, wondering if she should scream for Damon. She kept quiet while watching Jerry lower himself to the floor and flip through another album until he found the page he wanted.

“This was the best day of my life.”

Wanting a better view, she cautiously lowered herself to her knees beside him. Her lips parted when she saw what he was looking at. “That’s when I was born.”

“Yes.”

Taeja’s brows pulled together. “How can it be the best day of your life when you treat me this way?”

He looked down at her. “I am hard on you because I do not want you to be a whore like your mother,” he hissed, his eyes narrowing as her shoulders slumped.Shaking his head, he looked back to the picture, his eyes softening. “I failed you.”

“I’m not a whore…” Taeja murmured.

“You are selling yourself and you are dating two men. Is it the other guy that was here?”

Taeja swallowed the lump in her throat as she nodded. “Nothing you say will make me leave them, so don’t start.”

“Do you know what people will say about you when they realize the type of relationship you are in?”

“No one can hurt me more than you already did.”

Jerry’s eyes widened, his lips parting, but no words came out. He looked like he got the wind knocked out of him and… it shamed Taeja to admit that she was proud. She never knew it was possible to have a lawyer speechless this way.

Teddy had always made her sit and watch all of Jerry’s televised cases when she was younger. Jerry was ruthless in the courtroom, and his win rate was amongst the highest of all the criminal lawyers in this area.

And she had him stumped.

Taeja smugly smiled and looked at the picture. “I don’t believe what you said about her. No mother and wife would just get up and leave their family when they were this happy.”

Jerry cleared the shock with a shake of his head. “We were not as happy as we seemed,” he confessed, his voice holding an emotion Taeja couldn’t put a name to.

“There’s no evidence to support that claim. You’re a lawyer, you should know that,” Taeja said before opening the album in her hand to the first page. “Look at her. My mom was happy. Stop lying to make yourself look like a better person.”

Jerry seemed pleased by her words, and before Taeja could revel in the moment, he looked away. He picked up a different album. It was the marriage one. He flipped the album onto its back and took out a picture hidden in the cover. He showed it to her. “Do you believe me now?”

“Isn’t this our driver?” she asked, and he nodded. “You said he quit.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

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