eyes out or knee him in the nuts as he so richly deserves.
“If you came all this way to make nasty comments to me, then you’ve wasted a trip.” I turn to go. “I have a lot better things to do than listen to this.”
“Wait!” he barks at me.
Even though a part of me has been conditioned to do exactly what he tells me to do, there is a bigger part that is entirely too pissed off to even consider it. So instead of waiting, I walk faster.
Karl hurries along behind me—something that I know really pisses him off. Well, too fucking bad, asshole.
Then he grabs my wrist and yanks me around to face him. “I told you to wait, Mallory.” He launches each word at me like a slap. “I have something I want to discuss with you.”
“Get your hands off me,” I snarl. “Or I’m going to call the police and have you arrested for trespassing and assault.”
His eyes widen like I surprised him—and maybe I did. God knows, the Mallory he used to know would never talk to him like that.
“Fine.” He makes a little snort of disgust as he drops my wrist. “Just sign the divorce papers and I’ll get out of here.”
“I already told you I’m not going to do that.”
“You don’t have a choice,” he growls, and suddenly his body language is a lot more threatening.
The thing is, I’m not about to let him threaten me. He’s done enough of that to last a lifetime, and I’ll scream the whole block down if he so much as touches me again.
“You can say that all you want,” I reply, my voice low and quiet even as adrenaline slams through me. “That doesn’t make it true.”
I take a deep breath and straighten my shoulders, refusing to be cowed by the growing anger on his face. Fear and fury and a decade of repressing every emotion that could even maybe make someone feel uncomfortable builds like a tidal wave inside me.
“I dropped out of law school at your suggestion to help cover our bills and your tuition. Then I worked right alongside you to build our law practice. From the very beginning, I scrimped and saved and shopped all the auctions to find decent furniture for the firm on a shoestring budget. I spent the first couple of years cleaning the offices—on top of being office manager for a pittance—because you said we couldn’t afford to have a janitor come in and clean for us.”
“You think because you cleaned a toilet or two, you should be entitled to half of what I built?” He sneers.
“What we built.”
Karl smooths his palm over his tie and shoots me a patronizing look. “Well, I’m sure that makes sense in your little fantasy world, but you’re wrong on so many fronts. Just to take one example, the condo.”
“Our home.” The one I found, the one I cleaned, the one I made livable.
He shakes his head and speaks in a kind of overly polite and completely insincere tone as he looks around at Aunt Maggie’s house, no doubt noting every crack in the sidewalk, chip in the paint, and barely-hanging-on roof shingle. “It’s owned by the law firm and isn’t a marital asset. The firm, as you’ll recall, is mine. My name’s on the door, not yours. You didn’t even finish law school. The office manager doesn’t get half. Maybe you should have finished getting your law degree.”
The gaslighting bastard! “Someone had to pay our bills.”
His lips curl upward in a know-it-all smirk. “So you admit you freely made your choice.”
I’m still reeling from the callous narcissism of his response when I hear the door slam on Karl’s beloved Aston Martin.
It’s nearly dark, but he parked right beneath the streetlamp, so I can see Sasha perfectly as she gets out of the car. It’s just un-freaking-believable. I can’t believe his audacity in bringing his mistress here when he’s trying to talk me into signing the divorce papers.
It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull, because every time I see her, all I can think about is the way our eyes met in his office that day. The triumphant look on her face as she put her hand on Karl’s head and told him how to please her while she looked straight into my eyes. The bitch.
“Get out of here,” I snarl at my ex, fed up with him and this entire conversation—not to mention the whole situation. “You can