by Q. B. Tyler
She giggles before her smile turns to a frown. “Where are you going?” she asks, seeing my jacket pulled tight around me.
“J.R. and I are going into my office for a little while.”
She furrows her brow and I know she has a million questions running through her brain. “Why?”
I kiss her forehead. “We’ll talk when I get back, okay? Bro, stay here?” I give him a look that says look out for my girl.
“But—” she says, pulling my attention back to her. She gets up on her knees so that she’s closer to eye level. “What happened to doing things together? Facing this together?” she whispers.
“We are…I just have to do one thing first, okay? Do you trust me?” I ask her.
“Yes.” She nods. “Of course, I do.” I lower my face to hers and she takes my lips immediately. Despite my father and brother in the room, I slide my tongue through her lips quickly. She responds to the kiss just as quick and it’s amazing that a kiss that brief can arouse me instantly. “I love you,” she says as my lips leave hers, our bodies still breathing the same air.
“I love you too. I won’t be long,” She nods and as I walk away from her, I notice something in her eyes.
Understanding.
* * *
MATT WALKS INTO MY OFFICE as if he owns it, arrogance radiating from him with every step. He stops in his tracks as he crosses the threshold, and I think he’s stunned that there will be another person present in the room. “What is this? I wasn’t aware that I needed legal representation for this meeting.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Wells,” my father says, going into lawyer mode immediately.
Matt straightens his tie before he takes a seat across from me, only my desk separating myself and the husband of the woman I love. He crosses one leg over the other, his eyes narrowing and a smirk playing at his lips.
He thinks he’s won.
“And here I thought you had come to your senses.”
“Oh, we have, Mr. Wells. The question is, have you?” My father leans forward slightly, resting his hands on my desk, looking down at Matt.
“I want my lawyer.”
“Go ahead…call him. My guess is you don’t want to divulge though, that you tried to blackmail my client…and you put it in writing?” He rolls his eyes. “Your lawyer will be about ready to strangle you.”
“What the fuck is this about? Get to the point,” Matt snarls. His eyes narrow angrily, but I detect an uneasiness behind them.
“First, I just want to make sure I’m understanding your motives. You believe that your wife is a lying, manipulative, deceitful cheater and you don’t want her to get away with that, correct?”
“I don’t believe it…I know it.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I have proof!”
“Proof of what exactly?” J.R. clasps his hands, steepling his index fingers, and points at Matt. “So, you have a couple pics from a PI? Doctored probably.” He shrugs. “That’s all you’ve got?” He narrows his eyes at him and I have to admit I’m stunned. Pictures were worth a thousand words.
“They say more than enough. And they admitted it.”
“No, they didn’t.” My father shrugs.
“Yes, they did!”
“It’s your word against theirs, Mr. Wells.” He moves around the desk and stands to the right of him, looking down at him, the same way he used to do to me when he was preparing to scold me. “Think about it, an ex-husband grasping at the straws of a failed marriage, but it’s obvious it’s over. Your wife doesn’t want you.” He shrugs again, his body language showing his indifference. He bends slightly, putting his hands on his knees so that he’s at eye level with Matt. “So, in true lover’s scorned fashion, you make up this whole story about an affair, and these so called illicit pictures which are merely my client helping his patient pick up the pieces of her life by finding a new home. A new home since you so selfishly sold the only one she’s ever known.”
“That’s bullshit!” Matt slams his fist on my desk and I try my best to appear unphased as my father continues to belittle him.
“Let me guess, these pictures may show that they are close. But what else do they show?” I run through my brain wondering if Charley and I have ever been in any type of intimate embrace in public. The timeline is so hazy, and I don’t know when exactly someone had started following her. My father’s gambling here. Typical lawyer trick.
“They were having an affair.”
“Maybe.” My father shrugs. He walks to my window, staring out of it for a second before turning back to Matt with a sinister grin playing on his lips. “But can you prove it?” He doesn’t wait for him to reply before he continues. “See, no. You can’t. But we can prove that you tried to blackmail my client. You tried to blackmail a very well-respected and renowned Doctor. My client has received accolades for his service to the community, you, on the other hand, Mr. Wells, rip apart companies of hard working people and sell the parts off to the highest bidders. A profitable, smart business. But a selfish one.”
“I am not the bad guy here. Charlotte cheated on me. With him!” His eyes shoot daggers at me. I can sense Matt is getting anxious as his hands begin to fidget with his tie and he sends a hand through his hair every few seconds. “My job has nothing to do with that.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Matthew. Because if you go after my son, I will go after everything you’ve worked your life to build.” J.R. moves closer, almost in Matt’s face at this point. “The career you chose over your marriage? I’ll take that from you too.” My eyes widen as I hear my father’s fierce defense of me. I suppose if it came down to it, I expected this level of loyalty, but seeing it in action has rendered me speechless.
“I have them on tape!” Matt blurts out, and my father and I both freeze. “That’s right. A tape. Of your son and my wife, fucking.”
My father’s eyes land on him and shoot back to me for a brief second. “Excuse me?”
What? How? And WHAT? My blood runs cold, knowing that I won’t be able to deny anything if there are visuals of Charlotte and me.
Not to mention, that would destroy her.
“I wanted to know.” He shrugs as if the answer to my questions and my father’s need for clarification is that simple. He pulls out a small recorder, before rising from the chair. He kneels next to my couch pulling another small device from under it. “I needed to know, once and for all. And sure enough, a day after that bullshit post-marital session I had to sit through, just so I could plant this shit, you’re in here on top of my wife.” He points to the couch where just earlier today I’d made Charlotte come with my tongue.
Matt had all but begged me to set up a session and I’d obliged knowing that meant I’d also be able to have one with Charlotte.
Fuck.
“I knew you’d be meeting with my wife soon after you met with me.” I hear the beep of the recorder, and I assume he’s just shut it off.
“It’s been going that entire time?” I ask. “Since you left here yesterday?” Wait… so that means he has access to the very private information of every session I had between his and Charlotte’s? Fuck. I run through the last twenty-four hours.
Four couples.
Eight people.
“Indeed, Doc.”
“So, let me see if I understand this correctly, you illegally planted a tape in my client’s office, which by the way is inadmissible in any court of law or your divorce proceedings.” He doesn’t answer. “A tape, mind you, that is purely audio. Surely you can see the gaping holes in your story. Again, you’re a man getting divorced and all of a sudden, shortly before you finalize your settlement, there’s a mysterious tape that surfaces of your wife having sex with another man. I’m sure someone—me, for instance—will call bullshit.”
I see him shift nervously in his seat and my father continues, knowing that he’s got him where he wants him. “Let me ask you something: when you intentionally planted this listening device in my cli
ent’s office, were you aware that you would be in violation of federal HIPAA laws as well as the privacy of any patients that you have inadvertently recorded in your quest for evidence? Each of whom could press charges against you, once they were informed?”
Again, he’s silent, and I’ll bet regretting not pushing harder to have his lawyer present, because this is a bloodshed. “All in all, Mr. Wells, it seems that the person who has the most to lose in all of this is you. Mrs. Pierce, is still entitled to half, and while my client may lose his practice due to the scandal this may cause, you’ll be in prison. Can you imagine what the DA will do to you when he finds out that not only did you bring on potential malpractice suits but you blackmailed my client as well? You want to see how this all plays out in court? On top of ALL of that, do you think that we won’t hesitate to bring up the fact that you manipulated Ms. Pierce into believing that her step-father who physically and mentally abused and tortured her for years was still out there looking for her, a year after he was dead? And you want to call Ms. Pierce a liar and claim that she’s manipulative? I can assure you that the only person who will come out looking manipulative and deceitful is you, Mr. Wells. So, I guess my question for you is, what’s your endgame here? You want my client to leave Ms. Pierce or else, what? You’ll go to his board? Your lawyers?”
Matt’s eyes narrow and his breathing has begun to accelerate, his chest moving up and down rapidly as if he’s just run a marathon. “So, nothing happens? You just get to keep everything, after you ruined my marriage?” He raises his voice.
“I didn’t ruin shit, Matt,” I say.
You want to talk about who ruined your marriage? Are you kidding me? Your wife was drowning in misery before I even met with you.
Is he fucking delusional?
I’m snapped from my thoughts when I hear my father continue nailing Matt to the wall. “The law doesn’t give a shit about your hurt feelings or pride, Matt. Georgia law couldn’t give a damn if Charlotte fucked everyone in Atlanta. Now, my client’s ethics board, on the other hand, would have cared to know that he had an inappropriate relationship with his patient, and if you wanted a prayer at bringing charges over that, you should have gone about this completely differently. And to be perfectly honest, given Charley being of a consenting age, and the fact that she has asked for a divorce prior to the affair are both mitigating circumstances. So essentially, if my team played our cards right, we may be able to get him out of this with his medical license still intact. You, however, will be brought up on some pretty significant charges. At this point, the list is endless of what we can nail you with. Do you want to risk it?” my dad asks, the look on his face is one of a smug, arrogant lawyer who knows he’s won his case.
J.R. Montgomery is fucking ruthless.
“Let me be clear, Mr. Wells, you do not want to go up against me in court. And neither does your spineless lawyer. I will bury you.” His eyes are fixated on Matt, cold and angry; ones I’ve been on the receiving end of on more than one occasion while growing up. “You try and take my son down, Mr. Wells. I can promise you, as his lawyer and his father, I am taking you down too.”
Matt leaves my office with his tail between his legs. I’m not sure if my Matthew Wells problem has completely disappeared but I can say for sure he won’t be going to my ethics board…at least not today. My father drops me back off at my house, tells me he will be in touch, and to let him know the second I hear from Matt going forward. I enter my house, my mind still racing from the revelations of the past hour. I hear a noise in my living room and I make my way towards it to find Andrew on my couch watching television. My eyes sweep the length of the room in search of Charley. “She’s in your room. She wanted to lay down,” he says as he bites into pizza that I assume he’d had delivered.
I nod and make my way to my room to find her lying in my bed, curled into fetal position. I climb into bed behind her and wrap my arms around her. She turns in my arms and I feel my heart breaking when I see the look in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” I brush my knuckles down her face and I relish in the softness of her skin. “I’m sorry I took so long.”
She shakes her head before she looks down, drawing circles in my chest. “What were you doing at your office?” she asks quietly. I sigh, wondering how I’m going to tell her about this recent development. I don’t even have a chance to respond when she continues. “You went to see Matt…” Her eyes avoid mine as she sits up and plays with her hands nervously. “To discuss the email he sent?”
My heart plummets. Wait, how did she know about the email? Did that asshole forward it to her? “How—”
“He texted me. Showed me the email,” she says as she hands me her phone. On the screen is a screenshot of the email followed by a message from Matt.
Matt: Sent this to OUR beloved marriage counselor. Within minutes he was calling me, telling me to meet him at his office. Probably didn’t want to leave a paper trail that he was willing to trade you to save himself. I wouldn’t be so sure that he’d never give you up, my darling wife. Maybe the pussy wasn’t worth his practice? Gotta love the irony, after all of the lies, you’ll be left without anyone to take care of you. Which is all you really wanted, right?
I am fuming. I want nothing more than to find him and rip him limb from limb. I do not need a reason to be angry with him, having spent the better part of the last hour resisting the urge not to lunge across my desk for his throat.
I note the timestamp on his text message. This was before we met at my office. Smug bastard actually thought I was going to give in to his bullshit?
“You didn’t believe this, did you? Did you really think I was going there to give you up?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “But I just wish you would have told me.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you. I just didn’t want you to worry.” I stroke the hair from her face. “There is something else…”
Her brows furrow slightly and her teeth find her bottom lip. My cock tries to respond, but I will it down. Not the fucking time.
“There’s a tape…” I trail off. “Matt bugged my office.”
Her eyes widen to the size of saucers and her hand covers her mouth in horror. “Bugged as in…” She looks away from me in confusion. “But…when? How? You mean like…he heard us?”
“Yesterday during his session. And yes, that would mean he heard us this afternoon.”
“We…I…” She lets out a breath, and the tears well up in her eyes instantly.
“My father handled it, baby. Everything is okay.”
“How!? Between that and whatever his private investigator has, he has a strong case against us, against you. I’ll hate myself if he makes trouble for you. Legal trouble.”
I pull her into my lap and stroke her back. “No hating yourself. It’s taken care of. My father’s a dick, but he’s a great lawyer.” I shake my head. “Him planting that bug was the worst thing he could have ever done. It’s a federal offense, Charlotte. He tampered with people’s privacy. Yours included.”
“Oh…he has other people on tape, too?”
“I saw four couples in between your sessions.”
“And he heard…” She blows out a breath.
“J.R. knows what he’s doing. He’s handling this. Your soon to be ex-husband doesn’t want to risk incarceration, Charley. Nor does he want this in the public affecting his reputation.”
“Can you get in trouble for your patients that were compromised?” It’s all I’ve been able to think about since I heard Matt’s revelation. I have a responsibility to my patients and due to my actions, I’ve betrayed them. As a consequence of my behaviors, their privacy had been violated. They trust me with their secrets…their skeletons, and my sins have allowed them to be brought to light.
“If we were to proceed with prosecuting Matt, then I would need to inform everyone whose privacy was violated. My guess is it won’t come to that. But…I still have the responsibility to tell my patients, Charley. I may not have done r
ight by you and Matt, but I’ve tried to do right by all of my patients.”
“You did right by me,” she says, and I have to resist the urge to snort.
“I think you’re a bit biased. An unbiased party would say I had a large hand in bringing chaos to your life.”
“I welcomed it.”
“I was your counselor…they would say I took advantage of the situation.”
“You may have been a counselor, but you are a man first. An unbelievably gorgeous man.” She smiles. “And I’m a woman who was attracted to you. Things happened. I don’t think you manipulated me or used your position to influence me. You weren’t telling me in between thrusts that I was making the right decisions for my life. That your dick was the road to enlightenment or whatever psychobabble shit you used to spew at Matt and me before I called you on it.” She giggles and I pinch her sides at her smartass mouth.
“Watch it, woman.”
She giggles, but just as fast as her laughter comes, it’s replaced by a frown. “So, what happens if you tell them and…they go to the board?”
“Then I deal with it. Ethically it’s the right thing to do, Charley. I took an oath,” I tell her honestly.
As unfortunate as it is, especially if Matt never breathes a word of what he knows, I’ve come to the startling realization that I still need to turn myself in. Maybe if I throw myself at the mercy of the board, they will only suspend me temporarily.
“I guess I was just hoping you could get out of this without losing anything.”
“I’m not doing anything tomorrow, Charley, but it is a very real thing I’ll be needing to take care of. I promise I’ll discuss it with you first, okay?”
“Okay…”
I can tell something else is on her mind. Talk to me, baby.
“What are you thinking?”
“Well…” She chews on the inside of her cheek and looks at me. “Why didn’t you tell me about the email? Is it because you weren’t sure what you were going to do?”