29. Garrett

"How do I go about finding a rabid raccoon?" She flipped through the magazine she'd been reading for the last half hour.

"What do you want with that?" I was almost afraid to ask. It's been almost an hour since she'd tossed out the last diabolical idea she had for dealing with her enemies.

"Did you know that rabies can make a human nuts as it breaks down their central nervous system? And if it's not caught in time, that's a whole other schadenfreude." My wife's brand of evil is on a whole other level.

As I mentioned earlier, my people still had eyes on Helen, so I knew every move she was making. I told this one about it, of course, and that seems to have given her ideas.

As a businessman, I've had to go to battle a time or two, especially in hostile takeovers; my team has nothing on her. I've noticed some things about her, and I must say that with each new thing, I fall deeper in love with her, which is great, because there were times a few weeks ago when I asked myself if I had lost my damn mind.

Anyone who knows me will know that I never do things like this. I've always taken my time, sometimes too long, when making monumental decisions. In fact, some of my closer acquaintances had questioned whether or not I was having some kind of mental break.

But when you know, you know. The girl I had dated longer than anyone else had wanted this with me, and I always knew it wasn't going to be her. I didn't lead her on to thinking differently, but like most humans, she thought she could change me.

She wasn't pleased; no one was when I decided to break it off. Though we parted amicably in the end, it was for the best after all; I'm sure they would've hated it even more had we gotten married only to divorce in a couple of years.

I say that because I received a call from my ex earlier our time while my wife was still asleep. She was hurt and offended that I had married someone I barely knew when I wouldn't commit to her after dating for so many years.

This was something I thought about as well; I'm not a complete rube after all. But I reminded her that I had been upfront and honest with her when I refused her proposal all those years ago.

I'd dated plenty since our breakup, and she had gone on to get married and have the kid she wanted, so she should've moved on by now. She didn't see it that way. She sees it as me telling the world and our friends and families that I never loved her, and I love this new girl who was probably just in it for my money. That's the point at which I cut the call and hung up while she was beginning to get irate.

That conversation only made me even more sure of my decision. She had a point; why would I marry someone I just met over marrying the girl I had known and been in a relationship with for years? You'd think it was obvious.

It's because I knew the real thing when I felt it, and I'm glad I followed my mind and the call from my soul that day. I'm even more pleased that I didn't have to go through her getting married to someone else before I could take her.

The very thought of him, Denny, was it, touching her the way I do, loving her the way only I am supposed to, makes me crazy. I didn't know I had it in me, that I was the kind of man who could be retroactively jealous.

I'm not obsessive about it or anything, but let's just say her blood on my cock has spared her a lot of grief from me. I know myself, and although I've never been jealous of anything or anyone a day in my life, when it comes to her, all of that has changed.

She's sitting across from me in one of her new swimsuits, white and gold, with a colorful half coverup, shades on her head, either hers or mine, because she's a thief who likes to take my shit if she likes it better than what I had chosen for her.

Her only jewelry was her new watch, her wedding and engagement rings, and her eyes. Those emerald-green gems that sparkle with mischief and mayhem. Every time she looks up at me I get that little hitch in my heart and wonder each time how long that was going to last.

It's the equivalent of the female butterflies, I guess. "Why are you staring at me?" She asked from around her magazine, still not looking at me. "I need a pad and paper; this is too much to work out in my head."

"What are we talking about?"

She moved the magazine and looked at me. "I have a lot of things to mull over, fifteen years' worth of shit, and I can't keep everything straight, so I need to write it down. Is that okay with you?" She fluttered her lashes at me, and I threw a piece of toast at her.

She caught it and shoved it in her mouth. "Ooh, what kind of bread is that? Gimme." I rolled my eyes and spread some paté on toast, and fed it to her. She ended up finishing my damn lunch with no remorse whatsoever.

I'm pretty sure she's more Machiavellian than me. I called one of the staff over and got her the pen and notepad she wanted and she got busy. She was at it for a while as I enjoyed the sunset and a snifter of Louis xiii.

"What are you writing?" I'd taken the time off for my honeymoon and had nothing better to do, so her drama was all I had going for me right now. As someone who's never been embroiled in family drama and avoided conflict of any kind that didn't directly involve me, this was a first. But she's my wife, so we ride this one out together.

She wrote a few more words and then showed me the graph she had drawn. "I don't understand." She used her pen to point out the PowerPoint she'd made. "These are the issues at hand. Dad had an affair with Helen. That's pretty black and white."

"The issue here is that Mom was not being a wife at that time. There's also the fact that it was through no fault of her own she was ill. Then we have the issue of Dad not knowing or understanding that she was ill."

"Dad confides in Helen as a friend about his marital woes. Helen uses that opportunity to slither her way in. But Dad could've and should've respected his vows. Dad then came to his senses and tried to break things off to stay with Mom."

"There's also an issue with that. At the time, he was willing to stay, but she was still the same person with the same issues that he cheated on in the first place. So, why couldn't he have known that he wanted to stay all along before cheating on my mother?"

"Helen decided that getting rich and making a better life for her and her spawn was where it was at and chose to threaten not only his job but mine and my mother's life by hiring or trying to hire someone to have us both killed if Dad didn't stay with her."

We'd learned more about this after the last phone call. Apparently, the hitman had gotten cold feet and alerted her Dad, but when they went to the cops, he disappeared, so nothing ever came of it. But by then, it was too late; her Dad was terrified, and I guess he knew Helen well enough to know that she wouldn't stop. The way she'd gone about finding someone was a dead giveaway, and her parents didn't want to take a chance.

She moved the pen across the paper again as she moved from point to point and I have to admit to being amazed at her thought process. "So, you see, there are many variables to take apart and look at closely. This will decide the punishment each individual will receive."

Genghis Khan ain't got shit on her. He destroyed most of the known world over some step-family shit, and this one looks like she's ready to set the world on fire, or at least her little part of it. "So, what have you decided?"

"Dad has to pay for cheating, no matter what excuse he has; this all started with his dick. Mom was ill; nothing much you could do there. Blaming her for that period in her life is like blaming a newborn for crying at every damn thing. They don't know no better." Fascinating.

"Still, checks and balances, her actions caused the reaction that led her husband, my ex-father, to cheat. It's murky yet, but I'll figure it out. Helen though, Helen knew what she was doing all along and didn't stop when he tried to."

"If that was all I could say, she'd suffered enough so far with what I've done, but what she did to me from the age of twelve to eighteen is unforgivable. The fact that she destroyed my teen years with my Dad will never be forgiven, and that brings us to Mitzie."

"We can argue that she, too, was a child when this whole thing started; we can even say that she learned from her mother. I don't give a fuck. She took my Dad and robbed me of every father-daughter experience so she could have one herself, even though she had a Dad who was very much alive. She's a bitch just like the one that birthed her, and I'm going to make them both suffer."

"She's in jail and will be for a while because I will let my Dad know once he finds out where she is that if he bails her out, I will never speak to him again. How do you think that will go?"

"She's already lost everything since all her shit was in that house, and her car is already gone. Oh, and I transferred some funds from her mother to her account before taking it out again to make it look like she stole from her. At the same time, I was making it look like Helen was stealing from Dad. It's a cluster fuck, but they deserve it."

"I'm going to destroy her reputation and cost her all of her friends just as soon as I am through destroying her mother's." She did that humming thing and slid another piece of fruit in her mouth while wagging her leg over the arm of her chair.

"As for my brothers, they were young as well, and I know they're always about protecting me. I know also that without Mom and Dad's permission, they would not have told me anything. I'll just freeze them out for a few months; they hate that. Which means they will not be invited to my kickass house for at least six months, and I will not be answering any phone calls until I'm damn good and ready."

"Gigi will be on an information diet. She likes knowing every damn thing that's going on in my life, so this will hurt her a little, but she hurt me, so…" I just shook my head in awe because there was nothing I could say to that. She hadn't lied once.

"Dad is going to lose his house, his car, and everything he had in his house. That takes care of the cheating. Now I have to figure out how to make him pay for the years after and especially for bringing those two into my life."

"What about your ex and the girl he cheated with?" She looked at me deadpanned and said, "Some things should not be written down, ever. No trace, no case." For fuck sake.