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“Wait, but…” My voice trembled.
“We wish you the best in your future endeavors,” she finished before I had a chance to ask her what she had heard.
Surely, she couldn’t be firing me based on what I did on my own time with my sex partners. That was of no concern to her, the firm, or the clients. Where did this come from? And how would she even know what occurred unless the same person who told Chris was going around telling everyone. My stomach burned, and my heart pounded. Not another fucking wrench in my crumbling life. It felt like there was a boiling pot inside my chest, and my mind immediately went to suing the person responsible for airing my private life to the public, costing me my job.
Even though sweat rippled on my forehead and nausea slammed into me like a dump truck, my mind began to draft a petition when my phone pinged three times in a row with messages.
‘Are you okay?’The first message was from Annie.
‘Girl, I saw the news! I wish I weren’t bogged down by work, or I’d for sure be there for you right now! Girl, hang in there.’Simone’s message read.
News? What news? Had my private life been aired out on the news? By whom? My cheeks flushed. Too much had already happened this morning, I didn’t think there was any way I could handle much more. Cramps twisted my stomach, urging me to use the bathroom. The cramps didn’t just stay in my stomach, they were in my head, my back, my fingers, my toes. Oh, no, was I having a stroke?!
Calm down, Tiffany; you’re not having a stroke. Relax,the voice in my head said.
‘Hey, just in case you haven’t seen it yet, I suggest you don’t watch the news today. But I guess there’s no way you can avoid it. Okay, brace yourself and text me back. Tell me how I can help. I can see if my boss will give me the day off since this is an emergency. Oh, dear. Just remember, you’re fucking strong, okay. You’re that bitch,’Laura rambled on in her text.
With shaking hands, I turned on the television, having no idea what news station they were talking about. It seemed that whatever they were referring to had already passed. My body felt like an unpracticed acupuncturist was sticking needles into it at random spots as I tossed the remote aside to type my name into the search engine on my phone.
My heart stopped beating, and tears stung my eyes when the first headline read‘Valerie and Benjamin Levine of Levine LLP disowns daughter Tiffany Levine… after rumors of her sex life surfaces.’
Beneath the headline was a video with my mother and father standing outside of their law firm, side by side with huge microphones. My mother’s voice boomed first. ‘She may have the Levine surname, but I assure you, she does not represent our family in any way, and we wouldn’t like to be associated with her.’
How could she say that with a straight face?
My father waved his hand at the cameras after my mother walked back inside. She paused at the door with wrinkled brows when she noticed that my father wasn’t right behind her. “My wife is very distressed, understandably so, but I share a slightly different opinion than my wife.” My mother’s mouth fell open, but she fixed her face quickly and hurried inside. No doubt to keep the cameras away from her reaction. Pretty sure Dad wouldn’t hear the end of it on the drive back home tonight.
“In all our years of raising Tiffany, she’s never been anything but the perfect daughter. This doesn’t sound like our Tiffany, and I think it’s because those three men; Mario Sharpe, Anthony Whitlocke, and Jared Crawford at Crawford & Beam did something to my daughter. I’m not sure what it is, but it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together here. Three grown men, nearly forty years old and a twenty-one-year-old. What could they have in common? Nothing. They are…” His face reddened just like Chris and mine did when we were filled to the brim of emotions.
He hesitated as if something lodged itself in his throat, and he struggled to get it out. “They are… Well, you know what they are. I don’t have to spell it out for you. And even though I haven’t spelled it out, I’m sure they’re going to try to sue me for defamation, anyway. Bring it on.” Dad balled his fist at the camera, shaking it.
“I’m going to rescue my daughter from your hands. You’ve done something to her to make sure she won’t leave willingly, but I’m going to…” He started to break down, his voice cracked and rattled. Just at that moment, my mother ran out of the building and wrapped her arm around his shoulders, whispering something to him before turning back to the reporters.
“That’s enough for today. We’ve said all we’ve had to say,” she said before walking away with my dad and carrying him inside the building.
The phone fell from my hands, and my mouth was drying out from hanging open. Time stood still. My body lost all feeling. My ears lost all hearing. My family had set out not only to ruin my life but the life of the men I cared about. All because of what?
Chapter 2
Chris
Aww,man.Oh,no.This was bad. The ache tugging at my chest had me reaching for the phone instinctively to call Mom and Dad to ask them what the hell was wrong with them. My wife turned to look at me as she nursed our son, her blond hair poofy from her shower. Our expressions were the same.
“Did your mother just disown Tiffany on national television, or did I just imagine that?” she asked. “And that wasn’t even the worst of it,” she said, getting up from our beige linen sofa and walking out of our living room into the passageway leading to my son’s nursery.
She was right. My dad just called out my former best friends for being predators, basically. He didn’t have to say the word; everyone knew what he was implying. Oh, this was hard. My fingers tightened around my phone as consideration for whether or not my parents had a leg to stand on crossed my mind. Of course, they didn’t. Right?
And Tiffany, she must have been mortified. My brotherly instinct begged for me to dial her number and check up on her. If anyone knew what it felt like to be discarded by our parents, it was me. Yet even for me, it was never this extreme.
My heart still couldn’t bring my fingers to make the call; it was still broken. By her and by Mario, Jared, and Anthony. Sure, there was no way of knowing whether or not the guys ‘persuaded’ Tiffany to be with them, so ruling out what my father said would be silly. Especially since there was a time I thought they could be trusted with anything. They proved me wrong by going behind my back and sleeping with my sister, didn’t they? So even if they had never struck me as predators before, there was no telling whether or not they were.
My stomach rumbled in disagreement. Not even Anthony had ever stuck out to me as a predator. He was a ladies man for sure, and the women were always super willing to sleep with him; even my ex as much as I hated to admit it.
But what if they were? Well, it would make me a terrible big brother for avoiding Tiffany.
That wasn’t the sense I got from her though, which was why it was hard to go by what my dad said. Tiffany cared for my best friends. As sick as it may feel for me to admit it, she wanted them. I saw it in the way she looked at them. And she lied to me, just as much as they did.
Tossing the phone on the kitchen counter, I made my way to the fridge and eyed the beer. If I started drinking now, stopping would be difficult. At home with my wife and baby wasn’t the best place to get drunk. This whole thing was such a fucking mess. The fridge shook with the force with which I closed the door. It wasn’t my intention to slam the door so hard. It was the displaced energy in my body that had nowhere to go.
