Page 109 of Nash Falls
“Okay, fine, you asshole, I will.” She started to rise but he grabbed her arm.
“Rhett! Let me go.”
“He will destroy me.”
“Well, you should have thought about that before you did what you did.”
“He’s a tough guy. He’ll probably come around without going to the hospital.”
“No, he won’t!” she said so emphatically that he stared at her curiously.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“Because Barton is… ill.”
“How ill?”
“He… he has pancreatic cancer. He’d been in a lot of pain. Tons of tests and misdiagnoses. It was found a few months ago. Advanced stage four. They gave him eight months at most.”
“Shit. Why didn’t anyone tell me?” asked Rhett.
“He just told me two days ago and then ordered me to keep it secret.”
“So that’s why he was talking to me a while ago about how things would be after he died.”
“I didn’t know about that, but I guess it makes sense,” she said.
Rhett eyed the set of French doors that opened out to a balcony. “Mindy, you’re always complaining about your shitty prenup, right?”
She stared at him in confusion. “What in the hell does that—”
“Right?”
“Yes. Frankly, I was hoping that a child might change things. But you knew that. And we talked about if Ididn’thave a kid with him and set up a competing heir, that you might help me on the prenup.”
“FYI, you were never going to have a kid with him.”
“Well, not now, not with the cancer and everything. The medications he’s on mean that—”
He interjected, “No, I mean he got snipped, years ago.”
“What!”
“He had a vasectomy. He’s got no bullets in the gun.”
“That… that can’t be possible.”
“I can get you the medical records. We talked about it. He told me he was going to blame it on you that you couldn’t conceive. He didn’t want any more heirs, you see.”
She stared down at her unconscious husband. “You son of a bitch.”
“Oh, and when you were at Cannes he was screwing a hooker right here.”
Mindy blanched. “A hooker?”
“A nineteen-year-old named Laurel Burke. Set Dad back two grand for about ten minutes’ pleasure.”
“How do you know that?”
