reason to deal with him. My boss was the chief of surgery, not the chairman of the hospital board.”
“I’ll never understand why people do the things they do sometimes. After I lost Tony, a woman who was married to one of the other officers in his squad started a fundraising effort for me and then kept the money. I never asked her to do it, but people were so nice afterward. They wanted to help. I didn’t even know she’d started the fund. I got caught up in that mess at a time when I had zero defenses.”
“People suck.”
“Sometimes. Thankfully not all the time. There was so much more good than bad after Tony died, but the idea that someone would actually take advantage of his death for their own gain was so impossible to believe.”
“It’s disgusting. Did you ever get the money?”
“A year or so later, and she ended up charged with a crime. It was awful on top of everything else I was dealing with.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you. Losing your husband at twenty-four is more than enough trauma without it being compounded by greed.”
“For sure.”
Our entrées are served—chicken enchiladas for him and tacos al pastor for me. The food is blah compared to what I’m used to, but there’s no way I could take him home to the family restaurant, even if the food is way better. I don’t need them making this into something it isn’t.
“Tell me about the night he caught you with her.”
“Ugh, do I have to?”
“I want to make sure I know the whole story so I can help you figure out the best plan.”
He pushes his half-eaten dinner aside, takes another sip of his drink and speaks in a dull, flat tone. “She planned everything about that night to ensure maximum carnage.”
“How do you mean?”
“When he walked in on us, she was on her knees giving me a blow job.”
I wince. “Damn.”
“I heard the bedroom door open, and I looked down at her in time to see the calculating look she sent his way even as she continued to suck my dick with great enthusiasm.” He glances at me. “Sorry for being so blunt.”
I wave off his apology. “What happened then?”
“My first order of business was getting my dick out of her mouth, and then I was focused on defending myself because he came at me with fists flying. I had no idea what was happening, but she did. She knew exactly what was going on, because she’d planned the entire shit show.”
“Where were their children?”
“I don’t know. I only found out she had children the next day when I heard from my boss that my privileges at the hospital were suspended and I was to stay off the hospital campus until the board had a chance to meet and discuss the sordid mess. He’s the one who told me that all this time I’d been screwing the married mother of two teenagers and that her husband was the chairman of the board of my freaking hospital.”
“I can’t imagine how shocking that had to be for you.”
“It took days for me to realize our entire relationship was a setup on her part. I finally did what I should’ve done when I first met her and looked her up online. I found out that she’d been trying to get out of the marriage for years, but he refused to divorce her because all their money came from her family. If he divorced her, he’d lose everything, because they had a prenup. He was holding her hostage in the marriage, so she set out to humiliate him in the biggest way she could think of.”
“That’s so awful.”
“It really was. It’s one thing to go through a rough breakup when a relationship dies of natural causes, but this . . . This was on a whole other level. And then it got really fun when the New York media picked up the story and plastered it all over the city. The headlines were brutal. Brain surgeon seduces hospital board chairman’s wife. I think the source on that story was one of my colleagues who was always trying to prove he’s better than me when everyone knows he isn’t. He took great pleasure in my downfall, especially when I got suspended.”
“Have you considered a lawsuit against her?”
“I have, and I even went so far as to meet with an attorney who told me I’d have a very good case.”