Page 62 of Broken Beyond Repair
“It’s nice to have you home, Alex.”
He gathered a smile together for her as he passed.
“Sydney! Not washing cars today?” Peter asked, looking her up and down as he approached her. “Shame, you put on quite the show last time. Can I persuade you to put on a repeat performance for me now?”
“Would you like that?” She prised out her best smile, hoping it would entice him towards her.
Peter edged uncomfortably close. His stinking breath made her hold her own.
She placed her hands on his upper arms, bringing a smile to his face. She clamped hold and lifted her knee firmly into his groin. He grunted in both pain and surprise. This hadn’t exactly been part of the plan, but if the plan didn’t work, Sydney at least wanted some satisfaction from their encounter.
“There is literally nothing you or any man has to offer that I could possibly want,” Sydney spat into his ear as he bent over double.
“Fucking bitch.” Peter coughed and spat on the ground. His strained voice was filled with venom. “You’re well matched then. Is that why she hired you?”
“What?”
The confusion on her face encouraged him to clarify after regaining his breath.
“Bea’s into the ladies. Didn’t you know?”
What the actual…?
“It’s hardly surprising when she’s married to you,” Sydney replied quickly before she got caught up in her thoughts. “You’re enough to turn any woman’s stomach, let alone her sexuality.”
“You know she did a lesbian film,” Peter said, lifting himself up, still nursing his balls with his hands. “We split shortly after; she enjoyed her role a little too much.” He laughed, then winced. “I saw the way she eyeballed her co-star. Bea was hungry — so I ate for her.”
Bastard.
She clenched her teeth and would have kneed him again if he wasn’t still cradling his package.
“I did wonder about leaking it to the press, but you know”—Peter shrugged—“the kid.”
“Alex. Your son,” Sydney reminded him, although she was astonished he gave a shit about Alex. “The one you insisted on abandoning to a boarding school, despite his mum’s objections, in exchange for casinos and prostitutes.”
He straightened gingerly, pulled a packet of cigarettes from his trouser pocket, and shrugged again. “Maybe one day I will leak it. In the meantime, it keeps her in check.”
Sydney nodded, trying to keep her cool whilst her insides burned with rage. “So this is why you aren’t signing the divorce papers — you think you have a hold over her? I don’t think you have any intention of leaking Beatrice’s sexuality to the press. What man would want the world to know your wife would rather be with a woman than you? You’d be the man that turned the most successful actress of her generation off men. Not a good look when you need to find the next woman to sponge off. You think you could ruin her reputation? She can ruin yours too. Beatrice is no longer part of your life, and it will be difficult to start a new one with the shit she’ll expose in her autobiography. Prolific sexual predators don’t do so well now, you may have noticed.”
“Predator?” Peter blew smoke in her face as he spoke.
Refusing to rise to his taunt, she added, “Yes, predator. I assume you gained some pleasure from your actions or were you just driving her PAs away to hurt her?”
A smile rippled across his mouth; the awkwardness behind it was enough to tell her that he was annoyed that he’d been found out.
“That was your intention, wasn’t it? To have her believe there was something wrong with her as she watched them walk out on her one by one.”
“Of course.Oneof the intentions at least.” He gave her a sleazy wink.
“She trusted you,” Sydney hissed through her teeth. “You knew her history, yet you still decided to betray her, over and over. Men like you make me sick. What is it? Can’t stand a woman being more successful than you so you knock her down? Sign those divorce papers, take the no doubt far too generous settlement, and stay the fuck away from her.”
“Why would I do that?” Peter smirked as he took a drag on his cigarette.
“Because it would take me five minutes to round up every assistant you assaulted. They are all very willing to discuss it now they realise how many there are of them,” she bluffed.
“Assaulted!” Peter dropped the cigarette and stamped on it. “I didn’t assault them. I admit I may have got hands-on, but those girls were asking for anything I gave them. It wasn’t my fault they all turned out to be frigid.”
“Asking for it? ‘Didn’t assault them’?” Sydney barked in disgust. “The moment you lay your hands on a woman who doesn’t want them on her, it’s assault. And for the record, no woman is asking for it. That’s something filthy bastards like you tell themselves to justify their behaviour. What will those women say when I tell them they were asking for it?” Sydney picked a number. “All fifteen of them.”
