Kennard is dead. He’s been dead for a long time at this point, and our relationship was over longer than that, and his mistress has nothing to do with me. I didn’t choose to be unfaithful in my marriage. Why should my company suffer the consequences? Why should I? My blood boils with rage, but once the emotion rises, it fizzles into this deep, unsettling sense of powerlessness.
Like the first time Ireallysuspected my ex-husband was cheating on me.
“Are you okay?” Rana asks after a few seconds of silence. “Should I stop?”
“What else is there?”
“Her lawyer is taking her for a ride,” Rana says. “Nobody wants this stuff to come out in court.”
“She’s also suing for IIED.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Intentional infliction of emotional distress?
“She’s blaming me for that one,” Rana says. “I didn’t even hit her that hard.”
“Hand over the documents,” I respond with a sigh. As badly as I wish I could be the type of person to throw up and to hide from all of this. I’m an attorney. It’s not in my nature to back down from a fight. “Which law firm around here is even bothering to take this case?”
Rana hands over the documents and answers my question. “David Feinberg.”
“Asshole!”
“I know.”
Strangely, as I take the documents from Rana, my mind wanders to Peter…
Chapter Twenty-Five
Peter
“The wife isn’t home. Want a beer?” Michael asks, yawning and wiping sleep out of his eyes. He doesn’t paint a perfect picture of married life when he behaves like this, but I can’t deny that my concerns have given my nerves an anxious rumbling that I want to quiet.
“A morning beer?” I ask him, trying to withhold my judgment. Michael raises an eyebrow.
“Maybe you’ll understand when you’re a father,” he says. Again, I don’t understand in the slightest. I would be more fearful of the entire thing if I didn’t see Lorenzo Taviani handling it just fine.
“That might be soon.”
Michael laughs in disbelief. “Shut up. Voodoo Ranger?”
“For breakfast?”
My brother’s stresses from becoming Leandro Taviani’s underboss must be weighing down on him more than I realized. Michael grunts and squints with his good eye until he finds the bottles in his fridge. Michael pulls out two beers, which immediately sweat when he sets them on the counter.
“It’s good beer.”
I shake my head and immediately search over his shoulder for something more palatable on Michael’s countertops. Everything else there is baby-related.
“I’ll have wine, if you have any.”
Michael chuckles. “You are so fucking Italian. Andyes,I have wine.”
My older brother doesn’t take the offense to heart for long before he pulls out a chilled bottle of wine out of the fridge. He slides the whole thing over to me as if an entire bottle of wine were appropriate at this hour.
“Just put it in a glass. I came to ask a favor.”
Michael laughs and takes a sip out of his disgusting beer. “I know. Why else would you be here at the crack of dawn?”
