Page 64 of Beyond the Rules
I wasn’t the only one in shock. “You’ve got a girlfriend?” Laura’s hostile stare shifted back to me. “Since when? And why didn’t youtellme?”
Nina kept her smile on Ryan and her tone friendly, but she glanced up briefly at Laura. “Did Zar need a permit from you orsomething?”
Laura’s surprise was almost comical. Her face flushed and her lips contracted in an ugly scowl. I clamped down on my lips and swallowed the cackle that surged up my throat. Nina had proclaimed she was my girlfriend. To Laura. Ryan had smiled. And talked. This was turning out to be my kindofday.
But it was Ryan who laughed now, a sound I’d rarely heard from my son. “Honey?” He showed Nina his tablet. “Wannaplay?”
“Sure, what are we playing?” Nina squinted at the screen. “Ooh,Battle Swords. Love that game. We can play it in thelivingroom.”
Without hesitation, Ryan followed Nina across the house and plopped down next to her on the leather sectional, where the two of them put their heads together and startedtoplay.
Laura and I both stared at this miracle of nature. I had to clear my throat. “I suppose you can leave now,” I said. “EnjoyNewYork.”
“Sorry, but I have to ask.” Laura lowered her sarcasm-coated voice. “In what forsaken hellhole did you buy yourself that stuck-upbitch?”
“Back off, Laura,” I muttered. “She’s none of yourbusiness.”
“If she’s staying with my son, she’s very much mybusiness.”
“As you can see, Ryan likes her a lot.” I gestured toward the door. “Let me walk you to your car. You’ll be late if you don’t getgoing.”
Laura snatched her Hermes bag and followed me outside, where she whirled on her heel to confront me. “Get ridofher.”
I figured I’d heard wrong. “Excuseme?”
“You heard me.” She flashed her nastiest leer. “Get rid of the blonde bimbo. You’ve got no business having a girlfriend, not when you’ve got Ryan, who needs yoursupport.”
“You mean mymoney?”
“Yes, well, his condition isexpensive.”
I shouldn’t have said it, but the words burst out of my lips. “So isyours.”
The glare she gave me could’ve singed the hair off my body. “Had you not divorced me, we wouldn’t behere,now.”
“Had you not tricked me into marring you, I wouldn’t have had todivorceyou.”
“As ifIdragged you to my bed kicking and screaming.” She slammed her thumb on her key to unlock her Porsche. “Let me ask you a question, Balthazar. Does she give you what I gave you? Does she let you strap her down like you strapped me and fuck her in all of her holes like I did? Does the bitch let you fuck her for hours at a time likeIdid?”
The answer was a straight string of hell nos. “If I recall correctly, you likedit,too.”
“Yeah, I did. I do. And if you weren’t such an arrogant prick, you’d come down from this fucking mountain and get right back in my bed, where youbelong.”
“Pipe dream,” I said. “It ain’t gonnahappen.”
“Because you have a nice new shiny cunt at yourdisposal?”
“Don’t…” I took a deep breath and modulated my voice. “It’s not gonna happen because you and I were over on the day you tried to put Ryan away in that…institution.”
It was the exact date in which I’d decided it was over between Laura and me. The day when I first asked her for a divorce. Which was ironic, because she’d been clinging to Ryan like an octopus since that moment, when she realized he was her only connectiontome.
Laura got in her car, slammed the door and, after turning on the ignition, rolled down her window. “Go ahead,” she said. “Have at it. Give that cunt a trial run and see how long the slut can hang with you. You’re too intense, Balthazar. No one will ever be able to satisfy you the way I did. The sooner you realize that, the better. I’m your past, sure, but I’m also yourfuture.”
She gave me the cold smile that could freeze the pits of hell before she pressed on the accelerator and, spinning her wheels, hightailed out of thedriveway.
One thing I knew for sure: I was never going back to thatwoman.
I went down to the bunker and rushed through my work. I had several reports waiting. My computer bleeped and Noah Blake’s serious face came onscreen.