The Baby Shower

by Tasha Blue et al.

  “Kevin wants an immediate divorce, and he is willing to overlook your marital indiscretions and offer you a single lump sum settlement in return for a quick and amicable divorce. You sign the page, you get the generous settlement money he has offered you, and you go your separate ways. You never talk about Kevin again, publicly or otherwise. Ever.” Jacob never took his steely eyes off hers.

  She scoffed. “And why would I do something stupid like that?” she asked haughtily.

  Jacob sneered at her like a shark circling its prey. “Because if you don’t sign this paper right now then you waive all monies that might be gotten by you in the future during this divorce. You see, my dear, it is going to happen. Your farce of a marriage is over. The question is whether or not you will walk away from it with anything at all.

  “You see, Ellen, I think you have an affinity for Kevin’s money, so as a kind gesture on his part, he is willing to let you have some of it when you leave, if you leave now and if you leave quietly. If you choose to argue and fight this out, you are going to walk away with exactly what you came into this farce of a marriage with; nothing at all. Not two thin dimes to rub together. Am I making myself clear enough for you?”

  Ellen laughed at him and leaned back against the sofa. “Well, honey, I know you were part of Kevin’s little escapade in having that bastard kid outside of our marriage. I do not have to bluff you or try to scare you, but the fact is, I know everything about what happened, and I know he has been seeing her on the side. No judge is going to have any sympathy for a guy who is having kids outside of his marriage.

  “I will wind up walking away with all of it, the house, the money, the cars and boats, his business… everything. All of it will be mine. I already warned Kevin about this, and I told him not to involve you, but here you two are, about to screw up royally. I will take you down so far, Kevin, that you never see the light of day again.”

  Jacob leaned forward and stared her down. “Oh, I don’t think so, you see, there’s so much more to this than you know. If you have a brain cell left in that little head of yours, you will sign this right now, take the money and run. Kevin hopes you will, but myself, well, I think you’re not smart enough to know when to quit, and to be honest, I really hope you don’t sign it, because I would love to see what happens to you next.”

  She wavered slightly; it rippled over her face for the briefest moment, and both men saw it, but she poked her chin out and shook her head. “No way. There’s no way you can win against me.”

  Jacob’s phone went off and he looked at the text message on it and then looked up at Ellen. “Your call. Sign it right now or walk out and you get nothing, and possibly more trouble than you could ever imagine.”

  She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Go to hell. Both of you.” With that, she walked out of the office and Jacob leaned back and grinned.

  “What’s that look for?” Kevin asked suspiciously.

  “Oh… we’re all set for a good long, recorded look at her bedroom. Now all we have to do is let her do what she wants to, and she will hang herself.” He stood up and clapped Kevin on the back. “Give it a week, brother, let her hang herself. I will be in touch. Stay out of her room, and leave her alone.”

  He turned and walked toward the office door. “Oh… and uh, you’ll be seeing some new employees around here. Gardeners, pool boys, handymen… leave them alone and stay in your office. You got that?” Jacob grinned.

  Kevin sighed and nodded. “Yes, boss.” Then Jacob disappeared and not two hours later, Kevin began to see new help around the yard and the house. Young, strong, beautiful men who could have been models or Chippendale dancers, and all of them were working hard in the hot sun wearing just barely essential clothing.

  A week passed and he did not text Marina, and she did not text him. She was waiting for him to make up his mind about whom and what he wanted, and he was aching for her with every fiber of his being. He didn’t want to jeopardize Jacob’s plan or give Ellen any kind of edge, so he worked from his office.

  He stayed in his office and in his room and now and again he would see the beautiful young men around the yard or the house, and he would see them coming and going from Ellen’s bedroom. She made a blatant point of making out with one of them in her doorway one morning when Kevin was leaving his room to go to the office.

  As he passed them, silently looking the other way, he heard the young man ask Ellen who he was, and she replied, “Oh, he’s no one. He is just a guy who’s living here for a short period of time. He’ll be gone soon.” Then she kissed him and pulled him back into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  Another week went by and Kevin thought he was going to go crazy trying to wait for Jacob’s plan to be at a point where he could contact Marina. Jacob and Mac had both sent her messages, promising her that everything was alright, that Kevin would be in touch with her as soon as he could. They were unable to tell her anything else because they didn’t want to give her any information that Ellen could use against him later.

  Kevin tried to avoid Ellen, but she became more blatant about her affairs as if she were rubbing them each in Kevin’s face for the fun of it. She had sex with one young man in the pool and was so loud about it that Kevin and the house staff had to close the windows and doors. She had sex with another man on the rug in front of the fireplace in the living room and with yet a different young gardener, not far from Kevin’s office.

  It made him nauseated but he no longer felt the pain of a broken heart. He was solely biding his time until she was gone, waiting impatiently for the day that he could talk to Marina again without concern of repercussions from his contact with her.

  The third week passed and Ellen went from being a cold-hearted tramp to a raging bitch. She had men in and out of her room constantly, and she was growing short tempered and irritable on the rare occasions that Kevin saw her. She had begun throwing things at him again and lashing out at him in emotional bursts, and her appetite for men somehow increased, though Kevin didn’t think it at all possible.

  Jacob finally came back to the house and was almost gleeful in his demeanor. Kevin sat with him and they talked in his office for a long time before Jacob finally asked him to call Ellen in to meet with them. She took her time about it, as they expected she probably would and she eventually sauntered in looking a bit pale and very angry and then took a seat when Jacob bid her to do so.

  She looked up at him and snapped, “So what the hell do you want?”

  He sat on the sofa opposite her and grinned at her.

  “What are you grinning about?” she yelled at him, losing her temper quickly.

  “Well, you remember the last time I sat you down in here and told you to sign that paper so you could walk away with some money or you were going to regret it?” he asked in a chipper tone.

  “Yeah?” she shot back disinterestedly.

  He picked up a remote control and pressed one of the buttons. The wooden cabinet over the bar opened and a flat screen monitor moved out slightly toward them.

  “Kevin here, under my direction, felt that the security in this home was severely under-managed, so we had some security cameras installed to make sure that things around the house were protected and alright, and that everyone was safe. Boy, were we surprised to find out that you’ve had all kinds of fun, all over this house, with all the staff your husband has hired on. Let’s have a look shall we?” he said, still somewhere between gleeful and giddy.

  He pressed play and as the video showed her in her bed with several different men over a long period of time, she went from shock to fury and screamed at Jacob.

  “How could you? You bastard! That’s my bedroom! My private space! How dare you put cameras in there! I want those videos right now, all of them!” she lunged for him, but he moved and she missed him.

  “Oh now… don’t get ahead of me here, honey. You see, I have you on tape with no less than… uh, how many was it, Kevin?” he asked with a grin, knowing full well ho
w many it was.

  Kevin rubbed his finger over his chin and looked through a stack of papers on his desk. “Sixteen.”

  Jacob’s mouth fell open in mock surprise. “Sixteen? My word! Are you sure? Sixteen? Really?”

  Kevin raised his eyebrows and nodded and Ellen glared at them in sheer horror. “It’s true. Sixteen.”

  Jacob continued. “Right, so we have you on tape with about sixteen different men, having illicit affairs with each and every one of them, right here under your poor devoted husband’s nose, in the home that you both share, and so we’d like to ask you again to sign the divorce papers, except this time, you don’t get a dime. Not one single red cent.”

  She shrieked. “You can’t do that! I will too get every single bit of it!”

  Jacob shook his head and smiled broadly at her. “Oh no, honey. You can’t. You see, back when you first tricked Kevin into getting engaged to you, I had you sign a different little piece of paper. Do you remember that one? Before you married him? It was called a prenuptial agreement. What it says, and what you agreed to, is that if you are ever unfaithful to him and he divorces you, you will lose everything and have to walk away from the marriage without any profit whatsoever.

  “You get to take away what you came into the marriage with in the beginning, which was, if I recall, nothing. We have you on film cheating on your husband several times with more than sixteen different men. That means you get nothing in the divorce.”

  She stood up, screamed at them both, and began to cry. “I’m not signing it! There’s not going to be a divorce!”

  Jacob stood up, walked over to her, and held out a pen for her. “You will sign it, or I will publish all those videos for purchase worldwide in stores and on the Internet, which will earn you a whole new reputation, and me a pretty good chunk of money.”

  She grabbed the pen from Jacob’s hand and threw it. “You’re a bastard! Both of you! You are horrible bastards! I cannot believe this! How could you do this to me?” She turned and faced Kevin, crying and screaming at him. “How could you do this to your own wife? I thought you were honorable and respectful! I thought you lived by some great moral code! What happened to that?” she sobbed at him.

  He shook his head at her. “I could ask you the same thing. I have broken no code. I have not cheated on you, I have not gone against a single vow I made to you at our wedding, and you have broken all of them. You have no right, no place to be angry with me. None whatsoever.”

  She stomped around his desk and clenched her fists, raging at him. “I have every right to be angry with you! You went out and had a child with another woman! What the hell does that say about our marriage? What kind of way is that to treat your wife? You sneaked behind my back and had a child! You never said one word to me about what you were doing!” she screamed at him and then collapsed on the sofa in a fountain of tears.

  Both men looked at her and shook their heads waiting for her to calm down. She finally sat up, red faced and puffy eyed, and laughed. Kevin raised one eyebrow.

  “What’s funny?” he asked suspiciously.

  She giggled and then stood up and walked out of the room and Jacob and Kevin stared at each other in silence for a moment.

  “What’s she doing?” Jacob asked.

  “I have no idea, but whatever it is, it can’t be good. She has really been on edge lately, so there is no telling what she is has been doing She’s been completely unpredictable,” Kevin told him.

  Minutes later, she stomped back into the room and slammed the door behind her.

  “You two think you are so smart. Well, you are not. You aren’t smart enough to get one past this lady. You think you are going to smear me all over with sex tapes, but if you do, you are just going to be hurting Kevin. Mister 'I am Going To Have a Baby With Someone Else'.

  “Well, I've got a surprise for the two of you. I am not signing any divorce papers. I am not leaving this house. I’m going to have everything handed to me on a silver platter, because I’m pregnant with Kevin’s kid.”

  She laughed through her angry tears at them and slammed a piece of paper down on the desk in front of Kevin, then walked over to the sofa she had been sitting and crying on and plopped down on it, her Cheshire Cat grin spread over her tear stained face.

  Jacob and Kevin were both in complete shock. “What do you mean you’re pregnant?” Kevin asked in amazement. “That’s not possible! You had a hysterectomy!”

  She laughed wildly again and shook her head. “No I didn’t. I just lied to you and said that because I did not want to have a kid with you and now look at me. I’m knocked up and it couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

  Kevin felt his heart crash from his chest to the floor. “You lied to me? You never had a hysterectomy?”

  “Look who’s finally coming around,” she sneered at him. “Yeah, I lied to you. I lie to you all the time about everything so I can get what I want. I told you I loved you, and I never did. I told you I wanted to fix this damn marriage and go on a second honeymoon so I could keep you and stay all cozy in your deep pockets, and I actually slept with you for what, the first time in more than a year and look what happens to me.

  “I am knocked up with your damn kid. Luckily, this kid is going to ensure that I get everything I have coming to me, and neither one of you jackasses is going to keep me from getting it. This kid is my guarantee to all the money, no matter how many sex tapes you have. I am not signing the divorce papers, and I am not leaving this house. Me and this kid are going to stay here forever.”

  Jacob shook his head. “It’s not possible. Even if you did lie to him about the hysterectomy, you two haven’t had sex in well over a year and you have screwed dozens of men over the last few months!”

  Kevin sank down into his chair as he held the paper in his hand and read it. Jacob looked at him with laser beam intensity.

  “What does it say?” he asked.

  “It says she is pregnant and that she got pregnant when we went to Hawaii on our second honeymoon,” Kevin said, feeling almost robotic when he said it. He felt like his soul had been blown completely out of his body. He could not think or move and could only barely breathe. He had no idea what he was going to do about this situation.

  Ellen just sat on the sofa and laughed at him wickedly.

  Jacob’s gaze shot back to her. “Don’t you laugh, you crazy bitch. You are going to lose that baby the minute it is born. You are an unfit mother. I’m not letting this go. You are still going to be out of here as soon as I can get you out. You will see! You are gone!” he hollered at her.

  She stood up and walked past him with a smirk on her face. “The only place I’m leaving is this office. Now get rid of all those sex tapes. You don’t want your poor wife and the mother of your next child to look like a tramp in front of the press, do you? No? I didn’t think so. I’ll be upstairs. I have a date.”

  She turned once more and looked down her nose at them both. “Get those damn cameras the hell out of this house, too, I’m not a peep show.” Then she slammed the door and they both sat back in silence and looked at each other.

  “What on earth am I going to do now?” Kevin asked.

  “I know you think the timing makes that kid yours, and who knows, maybe it is your baby, but I still want a paternity test done on the baby, and no matter what, she is out of here. We can sue for custody of the baby and kick her out. No judge is going to give a baby to a mother with her trashy tramp record. She just left to go lay down with another guy! Minutes after telling you she was having your child.

  “She won’t be here long. Don’t worry about it. You are still getting a divorce, you are still going to be able to be with Marina and Maddie, and she is still going to be gone. We just have to figure this out. Give me a little time to work on it, and let’s have a drink.” He stood up and poured them both a shot of whiskey.

  Kevin shook his head and looked into the bottom of his glass. She was pregnant. She had lied to him about the hysterectomy.
The whole reason, in fact the only reason that he had gone looking for a mother for his child outside of his marriage, was because Ellen said she couldn’t have children, and it was a lie, and now she was pregnant. He was blown away by the idea of it.

  He did consider that the one single good thing that came of it, or rather, the two best things were that he would not have met Marina if Ellen had not lied to him, and he would not have Maddie, and those two girls were the most important people in his life.

  “I’m grateful to have you here to help me, Jacob,” Kevin said, lifting his tumbler in a toast to his friend. “Thank you for helping me through this.”

  Jacob grumbled and lifted his glass, tipping it slightly toward Kevin. “That bitch is going down. I will find every way I can to make sure it happens. You do not deserve this, Kevin, you really don’t. You deserve to be happy with Marina and Maddie, and I’m going to do my best to make sure that happens.”