32. Justine

‘Why we in here?'

Why do you think?

‘Hiding from your man again?'

Yes, and it's all your fault.

‘How is any of this on me?'

You told me to wear this dress.

‘Yes, and you're welcome. That maternity shit you be wearing wasn't fixin' a keep our man no how. Round here looking like Hazel.'

Who the hell is Hazel?

‘Chick, if you don't know, how the hell am I supposed to?'

‘Besides, that dress is down to your toes.'

Yes, but my tits are about to fall out the neckline.

‘I repeat, you're welcome. Quiet as it's kept, you probably had more sex in the last coupla months than you've had your whole existence. You two just some nasty freaks.'

Look who's talking.

‘Whatever, I don't know why you're pretending that you don't like having your ass in the air day in and day out. Even I'm getting tired of seeing it. When are these kids coming anyway? They been in there for a minute. Fucking with my program.'

What program is that?

‘The one where you not rivaling orca for size. I need to get out and about. It's almost summer again, and I promise you… Oh shit, here he comes. In here, Daddy.'

I would stifle you.

* * *

MARCUS

* * *

"Baby, where are you?"Where'd she go? I looked all around our room and searched the kids' rooms and even the nursery, but she was nowhere to be found. Maybe she was out in the garden getting some fresh air, so I should probably leave her alone.

I headed for my home office to get some work done since my afternoon was shot anyway, and besides, my ass is tired. I didn't know pregnant women liked to fuck so much. I never imagined pregnancy to be a turn-on period; I certainly never found any pregnant women I came across sexy.

Hah, somebody played a joke on my ass because the bigger she gets, the hornier I seem to be. It got so bad I had to ask the doctor if this was normal. I've been assured that as long as she's comfortable, it's fine, but I think I might have been going overboard.

I've been easing off lately, but she seems to have picked up speed instead of slowing down. The only breaks I get are when I go to the office for a couple of hours in the morning. The kids miss their friends, so after I drop Gracie off at school, I take Emma and Susie to the office with me and bring them home in the afternoon when I leave; that way, Justine gets a break.

What she does on those breaks is anybody's guess because she's forbidden to leave the house without me, which she still bitches and moans about, but all her complaints fall on deaf ears.

I've read horror stories about how vulnerable pregnant women are in their condition, so she can keep her vulnerable ass in my house until I get back. I have to keep Monique away from her because, somehow, she's the one human being in the world who can get Monique to disobey my orders.

The payoff is that I let Monique carry out Justine's orders at work because she can't find anything else to occupy her time with, so she sits around all day thinking up ways to make the employees' lives easier.

I've been keeping her on an information diet; that's why she didn't know for months that her ex had been arrested. She still doesn't know anything about what he and his mother tried to do because the less stress she has, the better.

I've had to hold off on doing a lot of things because of her pregnancy and my fear that if she's out of my sight for too long, something might go wrong. I finally understand where my fear is coming from.

When I first saw her and fell on my ass hard, I didn't think beyond having her, keeping her for myself. She was the first person I ever felt that strongly about, and there was nothing I wasn't willing to do to make her mine.

But I dared not ask for more after not expecting anything good in this life, not once Mom was taken from me. I thought I would spend the rest of my life helping others, protecting the weak from the villains, so having her was like a ray of sunlight in my otherwise gloomy world.

But now that she's pregnant, it seems like the possibilities are endless, and I don't want anything to take that away from us. The fact that she's carrying three at once is something I try hard not to dwell on, except for when I had the nursery built and had to discuss having three of everything.

But if I sit down and dwell on it, I break out in a sweat. I looked through the papers on my desk for something to do and then turned to my emails. Paul's case was about to end and there were no surprises there. I had him dead to rights.

Every penny he ever stole, which added up to hundreds of thousands, has been documented and presented, and since he's broke because I had all of his assets frozen, things weren't looking so good.

A good lawyer might've gotten him some time knocked off, but the kid I made sure he got didn't know what the fuck he was doing, which was perfect. His Mom didn't know what hit her when the bank called in the note on her house, but I wasn't out to bring harm to an old woman who wasn't as bright or as smart as she thought she was; I just wanted her gone from here.

In the end, I gave her a deal that she was only too happy to take since, with her son gone, she really had no reason to hang around. Had she been a decent person, had she not given Justine shit the whole time she was married to her son, I would've gladly invited her into my family.

But I'd learned from Monique, who I gave the job of finding out everything she could on the subject, that she'd treated my girl like shit. For that, she got to sell her house instead of losing it, on the promise that she'd leave and never look back.

If the kids wanted to make contact later in life, that would be their choice, but while they're this young and their mother and I are responsible for them, not a fucking chance.

I'm not sure how kind she was to them anyway because they don't seem to miss her. Then again, my own grandmother has taken over the role, and no one can spoil a kid like she can, especially since they're girls. My grandparents never had a girl to spoil, so they have lost their minds.

More often than not, when I come back from the office in the afternoon, I will find Gramps playing some board game or the other with my wife while his wife is waiting at the door to grab the girls to go do something fun.

And all the while, I'm holding it together by sheer will because I don't think it's possible for me to find peace until after my kids graduate from college, and maybe even then, this worry won't go away.

Speaking of parents, my sperm donor has been looking for his wife for months with no sign of her anywhere. He doesn't even know she's been arrested because the last place she tried to use the card didn't show up in his search, and it just so happens that that wasn't where she was supposed to be.

I left enough breadcrumbs for him to be as close to finding out that she was screwing around on him without giving him the full story. So now all he can do is sit at home on his jobless ass, filled with worry, as his friends make a mockery of him because, of course, the rumor mill, started by me, has all the juicy details.

Since her daughter likes spreading rumors so much, it's only fair that I join in the fun. As for her, it's even more fun watching her sweat than it would have been had she been fired already. With Monique on her ass every other day, she looks nervous as hell every time I see her on the monitor.

She's been trying to reach me either by phone or at the office for months, but I've evaded all of her attempts thus far, and it's obvious each time I see her that the stress is getting to her.

It's no surprise that she cut all contact with Paul as soon as news of his arrest spread, but she's got to be wondering how much I know and when I'm going to drop the hammer. I have no doubt that she thinks I've left her alone because she's my father's stepdaughter, which makes no sense since he was the first one I'd fired, but who knows how her mind works. If she's anything like her mother, that type always thinks they're smarter than everyone else.

So, for now, Karen has been locked away in solitary confinement for the last five months, losing more and more of her senses every day. Catalina says she'll keep until I'm ready for her, whatever that means.

I receive weekly reports on her deterioration, which I must admit makes me happier than I should probably be at the demise of another human being, but as far as I'm concerned, it couldn't happen to a better person.

It"s hell holding onto what I know and not doing anything about it, but for the sake of a healthy wife and babies, I can hold my own until the time comes. And I know exactly how I'm going to finish them all off at once.