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The woman at the door looked at Victor and then inside at me and huffed before stomping in. I stood up immediately, wondering what the hell was going on. I was struck by how familiar she was acting in his home. She was young, roughly my age, and beautiful. Big brown eyes glared under dark eyebrows, and long black hair was pulled into a ponytail. She was exceptionally well dressed, wearing a pair of heels that had to be worth hundreds of dollars.
She swept in like she owned the place and stood in the center of the room, glaring at me then back to Victor. No one had said a word yet, but she was making frustrated sounds that were starting to give me a clue as to what was going on. My heart felt like it was clutched in a vise.
She stopped and eyed me up and down before turning fully to Victor, her back to me.
“Sarah,” Victor said in a stern tone of voice.
Sarah smiled a mirthless smile and stood back on her heels, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Don’t you ‘Sarah’ me,” she said. “You gave up that right, Victor. But you know what right I still have? I still have rights toourmoney. Money that you used to buy agrocery store? Seriously, Victor. Of all the things you could have invested in, you chose a failing grocery store in Murdock? This piss-ant town that you finally left to make some semblance of a man of yourself?”
“Sarah, you need to leave,” Victor said, clearly trying to keep his composure. “You don’t have any right to tell me what to do with my money. And that wasmymoney. Not ours.Mine. I invested it how I saw fit.”
“That’s not what my lawyer says,” she said. “You didn’t take my name off the account before you decided to start spending that money. As far as the banks were concerned, you just transferred money from one account to another. And my name was still on it. So that means whatever you spent money on, you spent money that wasn’t just yours to spend.”
“Sarah, we can talk about this later. Not here. Not now,” Victor grumbled. His eyes flickered over to me.
Slowly, Sarah turned on her immaculate heels and looked at me again. Her sarcastic smile turned into a sneer. She was tall, almost as tall as Victor, and intimidating in her designer suit and earrings that looked like they cost as much as my car. She had the air of someone who routinely looked down on other people. Currently, she was looking down on me.
“And who the hell is this?” she asked.
“His business partner,” I was able to force out. My heart was pounding in my chest. It felt like my throat was being clenched by an iron fist, but I had to ask the question that was burning in my mind. “And who are you?”
“I’m his wife.”
The words came out dripping in venom, and I felt it run through my veins as they sank in. His wife. Hiswife. Now I understood. I understood why he didn’t want to talk about why he’d left Maryland. He was married. Of course. It made so much sense.
I backed away, taking a few steps so that I was behind the arm of the couch. There was a clear path to the door now, but it went between them. I was working on the courage to take off through it.
“Ex-wife,” Victor said. “She’s my ex-wife, Melanie.”
“Oh, so is this some kind of fuck-buddy situation?” Sarah thundered. “Did I interrupt you getting your dick wet while you were screwing me over too? How’s that for a threesome, huh?”
“Just shut up, Sarah,” Victor said. “Your nasty mouth doesn’t hurt me anymore. I’m done with you. I have papers to prove it. Get out of my house.”
“Yourhouse?” she shot back. “Seems like you’ve been paying for it with an account that still has me listed on it. Sounds a lot like this is my house too. And my God, Victor, what have you sunk to? A two-bedroom hovel in Murdock? You didn’t even go back to your parents’ house?”
“I don’t need to explain anything to you,” Victor said. “Get out.”
“Not until you tell me what you think you’re doing blowing my money on this store. And this whore.”
That was all I could take. Blowing past both of them and out of the door, I made a beeline for my car. I could hear Sarah laughing as I escaped. They were yelling with the door open as I reached my car.
“Jesus, Victor. What the hell are you doing?” Sarah asked.
“Leave Melanie out of this,” Victor said.
“Melanie?” she shouted. “Is that your little bitch-whore’s name? I didn’t think you had it in you anymore.”
“I always had it,” Victor shot back. “Just not for you. Not for a long time.”
Her voice rose as she began to argue back, but the sound was muffled now as I slammed the door of my car. I could see Victor look out at me and take a few steps out of the door, but I jammed the engine button and slammed on the gas. I glanced back only once in the rearview mirror, watching as he sank back into the house and got in Sarah’s face again. They were full-throated shouting at each other, and I was mortified.
Embarrassed and angry, I just wanted to drive. I wanted to drive until I ran out of gas. I wanted the hell away from Victor and the hell away from Murdock.
Emotion took over, and I pulled off to the side of the road and let the tears fall. Slamming my palm on the steering wheel a few times, I let out a cry of rage at the entire situation. At Sarah. At Victor. At myself. I’d let myself fall into this. I could have held off. I could have said no. But I did this.
Victor had led me into this situation. He had screwed me over in multiple ways now. He took my company from me. He built me up with false hope about how I could get it back. He’d made me believe we had something special between us when he was clearly still entangled with someone. Now he might have also gotten me entangled with her if what she said was true about her ownership of anything he bought with that money.
