The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,388

irritation. “I don’t know why you think I need reminding of that. I know myself. There’s a storm the likes of which I’ve never known brewing inside me. I used it to get myself here today. Just because my outward reactions are not what you expect, doesn’t mean it’s an act.”

We hold each other’s gazes. We may have shared a womb, but we’re as different as sea and sand. And just as vital to each other. Right now, the ever-present sparkle in his eyes is dulled by disappointment. I’m not the only one nursing a heartbreak.

If charisma and empathy were divided and distributed between us, then the lion’s share went to Remi. He’s got the most tender of hearts and is swift to injure and slow to forgive. Because he knows that about himself, he’s careful about letting people close.

His good opinion and friendship are hard to come by.

Marcel won both of those, in spades.

We even have a running joke that he liked Marcel more than he liked me. It was said in good humor, but, like every joke, it was peppered by the truth.

He and my husband have much more in common than we ever had. What started off as a distant relationship between in-laws, has blossomed into a real friendship. One that I have never interfered with, even when I wanted to. I wasn’t in any sort of danger, and there was nothing about the image we portrayed to the world about our family that I wanted to change. So, I’ve kept my own counsel about the things that were going on behind closed doors.

When I only had my suspicions about Marcel being the one to have stolen that picture, he dismissed it outright.

Marcel had sent that email to everyone in my family and in our close circle of friends. He’s played the cuckolded, devastated husband perfectly.

Remi was only humoring me when he sent his firm’s new private investigator, Dina, to follow my lead. He didn’t expect to find anything behind that mirror in my room that Marcel kept glancing at.

Who would want to believe their friends capable of the kind of subterfuge and deception I was accusing Marcel of? It even took me a while to put it together.

Last week, when Marcel offered me this meeting, things were very different. According to the terms of our prenup, he was awarded temporary, full custody of our children, pending our divorce and a formal custody agreement.

I didn’t fight him because I wanted to spare my children any more drama and publicity. I was desperate, heartsick, and humiliated.

He held all the cards, and he used this meeting, with his offer, to discuss custody as a big stick that he’s used to beat compliance out of me. He picked the date, the time, the place, everything.

The fallout from my public shaming wasn’t just my reputation. It endangered something that means even more to me.

My podcast, The Jezebel. I started it after my mother suggested it, but not for the reasons she did. I knew that when he got here, I’d have to tell him the truth. But first, I had to hear myself say it all out loud. And that’s what I did with the podcast, used it as an outlet. But then, people started writing to me, commenting and sharing their stories, too.

But it turned into something completely different, which makes the timing of this picture’s publication, with my tattoo visible for all the world to see, even worse.

Two days before the picture was published, the podcast was mentioned in a news report and was credited as the source of information that led to the re-opening of a case involving a prominent plastic surgeon here in Houston. He’d been acquitted of a sexual assault charge after the woman, who accused him, was discredited during cross examination. The woman, who chose to remain anonymous during the trial due to safety concerns, had been a prostitute and that was enough to convince a jury that whatever he did to her, she asked for. He was acquitted, and she was left to get on with her life.

Then, one day, she sent me an email. Lori, as she called herself, found the podcast, inadvertently. She asked me to tell her story because she’d been so maligned in the press. So, I did. That opened the floodgates. It turns out that since the trial, there’d been more complaints from women who no one cared about. I started getting emails from women, mostly sex workers, who’d