Another knock sounded on the door as we all sat there contemplating how things went so wrong. I glanced that way but not before I noticed the nervous way my mother ringed her hands.
“I’ll get it,” my father stated as he stood up. I shook my head and put my hand out to stop him.
“No, I’ll go.” Part of me hoped that it was Violet, but I didn’t know why she would knock on the door. It was her house. When I opened the door, I was shocked to see a sheriff’s deputy there. He looked me up and down and smirked. “Ridge Westover?”
“Yes,” I assured him.
He handed me a manilla envelope and grinned as he stated, “You’ve been served.”
“I’ve been served?” I questioned as he turned his back to me and started to walk away without answering. What the absolute fuck? Normally, if there were legal issues with my business those papers were served up to my attorney directly, or on a rare instance, to me directly at my office. I glanced down at the envelope in my hands and turned to see the unsurprised faces of my parents. They expected this and that realization filled me dread.
“Do you know what this is?” I asked my parents as they stared at the envelope as if it was a bomb about to go off at any moment.
“Son, I think you should sit down before you open that,” Dad said as he turned and moved back to the living room. His tone was heavy and resigned. My father’s shoulders slumped as he moved through the entryway and back to the room that had become a tomb for me over the past week.
“So, you do know what’s in this.”
“Ridge,” Mom started to say and then stopped.
“It can’t be divorce papers, right? We have to wait at least thirty days in Georgia. I know that from when Mike Franks got served at the office.”
My mother’s sad eyes made me look away as the hand holding the envelope shook.
“Mom?” I questioned. A tear dripped down her cheek as her eyes tracked what was in my hand. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to be here for you.”
That settled the question of what was in the envelope. “She won’t even hear me out first?” My question was only a whisper.
“Son, your wife had a front row seat to you being intimate with another woman in front of all your family, friends, and coworkers. Not only that, but then she had to hear about how you could have prevented it and apparently hid the truth that your personal assistant, the woman who probably spends more waking time with you every week than your own wife, had offered you sex before. In all honesty, it’s the latter part that made her follow through with the call to her lawyer last week.”
“I didn’t say anything because it was nothing. I thought it was a fucking joke.”
“Well, speaking as a woman who has always had to worry about her husband’s high-profile position, and the women who wanted to take advantage of that, I’m sure to Violet it didn’t feel like a joke when she heard about it, especially since she also had to watch the fallout of your inaction. Worse, she wasn’t even prepared for it. She set it up so that Fiona was the one in charge of getting you to your surprise party. She trusted that woman, despite her own misgivings, because YOU trusted her to work for you all this time. Your wife wasn’t just blindsided by what that woman did to you. She was brought to her knees by the fact that you never said a word, despite your promises. It was a betrayal, Ridge, plain and simple. In your business, that was the most important promise you ever made to your wife, and you proved that you weren’t capable of holding to that simple rule you both agreed to.”
“He was drugged, honey,” my dad spoke in my defense and my mother gasped so loudly, it sounded as though it hurt.
“Was he drugged the first time that woman offered to have sex with our son in his office?”
My father’s response was a simple sigh. There was no arguing the fact that I had screwed up initially and in doing so invited trouble into my life.
“She didn’t know I had cameras in the office,” I admitted.
My father ran a hand over his jaw and swore under his breath. “You need to press charges against her. That’s the only way you might be able to salvage your marriage.”
I glanced at my mother and saw the doubt written there. She didn’t think that would help either because it wasn’t just about what happened on my birthday this year, it was about what happened the year before. Had I acted and spoken up about it then, none of this would have been possible.
I sat down beside my father as I pulled the contents of the envelope out with shaking hands. I glanced over the paperwork and wanted to scream, to throw punches until I killed something - any representation of myself that I could get my hands on. The physical release needed to vent off some of the frustration, anger, and overwhelming sadness wouldn’t find me, though. Instead, I fucking cried on a couch in my lonely ass living room with my parents as witnesses to a heartbreak of my own making.
"She doesn't even want anything. I'm a fucking billionaire and she doesn't want the first fucking cent from me.” That admission was a struggle. It meant that my wife was well and truly fucking done with me. She wanted out as fast as possible and was willing to start fresh from nothing to make it happen.
"You had a good woman. Why the hell you would fuck that up for some tired, desperate cunt’s supposed joke when we all knew she was trouble, I will never know, son. What I do know is that you will give your wife this. You will give her time, and if the good lord is willing, maybe down the road, you will get a second chance with her when she's had time to come to grips with the fact that you allowed yourself to be suckered into that position."
"You knew?" I said as I turned to look up at my parents. "You knew she was filing and came over to what? Soften the blow or make sure I didn’t bother my wife about it?”
My father nodded. "Violet's family asked us to make sure you didn't try to fight it or find her. She's in a bad place, and they just want to give her time to heal."
"She's in a bad place, so she shouldn't be making decisions like this while she's emotional,” I argued.
