Page 100 of Games We Play
Leah reached into her cross-body bag and pulled out a letter, handwritten by Sloan. On it, she declared that she had more than enough evidence of his less than savory behaviors during their marriage to take him to the cleaners. Including how he had admitted to fucking with her birth control, transcending what most judges would consider harmony between man and wife.
“This is bullshit!” The letter landed on the floor. Erica feigned shock and appall. Her bodyguard moved in, but that wasn’t a feint. God only knew how Aaron really got when angered. “There is no evidence of that! It was…”
“Who the fuck were you, to dictate what happened to my body without any input from me? You know? The woman who owns this fucking body?”
The words echoed in the conference room. Aaron jumped a foot off the ground before almost knocking over his receptionist, who had run back into the room to announce the sudden arrival of someone else.
Sloan stood on the other side of the door, her phone playing the recording over her head.“Your husband. What more is there?”Aaron’s voice soon continued.
“Margaret!”
“What is it, snookums?” Sloan ducked beneath his arm and into the conference room. She shared a knowing smile of greeting with Erica before dealing with her husband once more. “It’s true. I’m wringing every cent I can out of your disgusting face. Oh, and I’m leaving Giles & Sloan to start my own company. That I’ve already founded with most of our investors.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Aaron gestured to Erica. “Rightnow?”
“What perfect timing,” Erica said. “You’re saving me so much time that I do not have, Ms. Sloan. If you could please tell your husband that I will be joining you in your newest venture, with no intention to follow through with his, then I…”
“You can’t do this!” Red faced, Aaron jammed his angry finger between Sloan and Erica. “You can’t up and walk away with investors when we’ve already used their funds!”
Sloan remained calm. “I can. I will. I have. I’m not going to worry about a thing, because you’ll be paying for most of it after Giles & Sloan is liquidated. You’ll be lucky to afford a cute one-bedroom apartment with your new squeeze Christie after this is all over.”
“You can’t… where is my lawyer?”
“Hopefully, he’s on his way, so he can tell you the fantastic news.” Sloan sank into the nearest chair. “Thank you so much for your time today, Ms. Mann,” she said to Erica. “I’ll see you in California next week for our first meeting about Sloan & Co. Industries.”
“What?” Aaron was halfway out of his suit jacket by the time Erica and her entourage sauntered out of the room. “You knew about this already? Then what was… this meeting…”
Sloan drummed her fingers against the arm of the chair. “Oh, this has been in the works for alongtime, Aaron. So long, that I have the best divorce lawyer in the business lined up to help me castrate you and feed your balls to the hounds of hell.”
That was Maxine’s cue to push aside the receptionist and enter with a slight skip to her excited step. This was, she later admitted, her favorite part of divorces. “Sorry we’re late!” she cried, referring to the older man in a brown suit behind her. “Aw, looks like we missed the party. Is it too late to get in on this hot, heteronormative action?”
“Who the hell are you?” Aaron first gestured to Maxine, then to the man behind her. “Who the hell is this?”
“Good morning, Mr. Giles.” The man in the brown suit extended his hand. “I’m Peter Barnes, Ms. Sloan’s divorce attorney. I hear that your representative is now on his way?”
Maxine patted Peter on the back. “He was my lawyer during myverymessy,verydrawn out divorce a few years ago. I’m a richer, stronger, and better woman because of him.”
“What the hell is this?” Aaron sank into the chair next to his wife. “Some kind of lesbian power party?”
“Maxine here hasallthe connections women like us need in America.” Sloan spun around in her chair. “You knew about me meeting Erica Mann. You had no idea why I was meeting Maxine, though. Better for you to think I was off to visit Leah.” She patted her lap. Leah picked up one of the cupcakes from the box and brought it over to her girlfriend. For the first time since they last crossed paths in Portland, they touched.
I’m sitting in her lap. In front of all these people. Oh my God.Leah couldn’t help but grin while she held up the cupcake with the letter F on it, as if she were displaying it for some zany morning game show.
“You’re an awful cunt, you know that?”
“Isn’t that what attracted you to me all those years ago?” Sloan leaned toward him, teeth bared and dripping with venom. “A cunt you could break in?”
“Can’t break in what’s already broken,Mags.”
Leah was prepared for flailing anger and caustic banter between the divorcing couple. She was not, however, in the mood to deal with an abusive man who had not only admitted to putting his wife through a hell she never asked for, but had no problem verbally abusing her in front of the new girlfriendandstrangers.
Before Sloan could react, however, Leah followed her instincts. The cupcake smashed against Aaron’s face, frosting dripping down his chin and vanilla cake flying up his nostrils.
His cursing reached new levels as he jumped up from his chair and danced around the office as if his trousers were on fire. Sloan laughed, holding Leah closer to her torso.
You laugh, but he had that coming.He had something else coming, too. Leah scrambled off her girlfriend’s lap and did not back down when Aaron rounded on her, cake still sliding down his cheeks and staining the front of his suit.
“You’re a…” She almost faltered, because not once in her life had Leah Vaughn stood up to a man on the verge of losing his shit. She’d never dealt with an abusive ex. She’d never looked the man who impregnated her in the eye and thought“I’d be okay with you dead.”She’d spent her whole life playing everything so safe that this moment was like dropping rocks on top of her head. She might as well use those same rocks to walk into the deep end of a swimming pool and stay there until she drowned. “You’re a monster. How could you take a woman and do that to her?”
