Page 94 of The Bad Husband

“Stop saying but.”

“You sound upset.”

“I’m not.”

“Are things good with your new family?”

Her empathizing of the last few words makes me roll my eyes.

“Please. You know how I feel about her.”

“I surely do, but you like him,” she says, waiting for me to confirm her suspicion.

I stay quiet.

“He’s a dangerous man,” she says after a few moments.

“I’m fully aware of that.”

“How come you know that? Has someone talked to you about him?”

“I know about his past. Frankie shared a few stories about him. What about you?” I ask. “How do you know about him?”

“A woman at work told me that her family was in a feud with this man. He has quite a reputation.”

I finish my food, run a napkin over my lips, and drink my soda.

“What kind of reputation?”

“What did Frankie say about him?”

I ponder whether to tell her about Damon’s twisted relationship with Henrietta. How he’d been with her before she married my father. How the two of them have had a toxic relationship, and are in a fake marriage now.

It’s too long a story, and inevitably I’d need to offer her more information about my real relationship with Damon, which is not something I’m ready to talk about.

“He described him as a territorial, possessive man,” I say.

It’s good enough, I think.

“Someone you can’t cross,” I go on.

She nods along.

“That’s what my coworker said as well.”

I make no comments. What she’s saying concurs with what Frankie said to me. It’s what I’ve noticed so far.

He’s not the man you want to fuck with.

He ‘punished’ me because I talked to Frankie.

And then he licked my pussy until my eyes rolled back in my head, but maybe that’s the thing about him.

His anger and sexual arousal walk hand in hand.

“He seems the vengeful type,” I say and suck in a short breath. “So, are we going now?” I ask, eager to talk about something else.

“Yeah, yeah. Let me finish this.”