Chapter 10
Accidentally just opened my front camera. I remain grateful that some men truly appreciate a great personality.
— Pepper’s secret thoughts
PEPPER
I was going to go to jail tonight.
“ I’m sorry, but what?” I asked, making sure that I’d heard.
“ We’re here to find our husbands,” the group of women said. “ We know they’re here. We traced them here by these apps we hid on their phones.”
I looked at the phone that the woman in the middle was holding out for me to look at.
I studied the app, then looked at the women.
“ Tell me everything,” I urged.
“ Well , we all live on the same block,” the first woman started. “ Our husbands are all best friends from college.”
“ Yeah ,” another said. “ And so they say that they want a guys’ weekend, and we all agree to give it to them because they said we can take a girls’ weekend next weekend.”
“ Okay ,” I said. “ And what happened to make you think they are here with other women?”
They exchanged glances, then one woman said, “ I don’t think they’re here with other women.”
My mouth might’ve fallen open at that. “ What are you thinking?”
“ I think they’re all in some weird relationship… with each other,” a third whispered.
“ Continue ,” I said.
“ Well , here’s the thing,” the fourth and last woman said. “ We all met in college. We got married. Had babies. Then they all thought it would be great to move to this new neighborhood. We live in a small cul-de-sac in Mansfield . This year, though, we started noticing something fishy. Each man would come and go from each house interchangeably with their own. To the point where it was getting weird. I found her husband’s underwear,” third woman pointed at the first woman. “ In our laundry.”
“ And I found a shirt that wasn’t my husband’s,” second woman said, “but I remembered seeing her husband wearing it a few months ago.” She pointed at third woman.
“ We all have similar stories,” she said. “ So we started snooping, bringing it up, and we think that they’re all in a sexual relationship with each other, and have been since college.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“ And they all only rented two hotel rooms… that conjoined,” fourth woman said.
Wow .
“ Okay ,” I said. “ I mean, sure, I’d love to help, but…”
“ And we think they’re sharing one woman,” second woman blurted. “ She’s friends with all of the men, but none of us. Comments on only their posts. And I think that they’re all sending her money.”
“ We think that they all have kids with her, too,” first woman said. “ She has a kid that looks exactly like my youngest… who is the same age as my youngest. Meaning , they were together while we were together.”
Ohh , juicy.
“ I don’t…”
“ We’ll pay you,” they all said at once.
I still hesitated. This had the possibility of going really bad.
I might love my job, and if I lost it, I’d lose my place to stay.
Hell , I might even go to jail.
I truly didn’t know why this kept happening to me.
I mean, logically, I knew when I’d started this that I was opening a can of worms.
The first time this had happened, it’d been a pregnant woman with her two-year-old on her hip that had come in looking for her husband.
The wife’s husband’s dad had passed away, and she was desperate to find the husband.
She’d tracked him here, to this hotel, and hadn’t seen the warning signs.
I’d taken pity on her and went against hotel regulations—and the laws of Texas —and had not only given out the hotel room number, but I’d given her a key card.
I’d walked up with her and knocked on the door. Lightly to act like I’d done it but had only put on a show for the cameras that I knew would be checked later.
And when I’d opened the hotel room door, it was to find the woman’s husband fucking some seventeen-year-old on the kitchen counter.
Everyone had screamed.
I’d ended up with a two-year-old in my arms.
And the woman’s water had broken.
I’d had that woman’s kid for seven hours before the woman’s mom came to pick the kid up.
From that point, I’d tried to stay away from helping betrayed women, but I just couldn’t help myself.
Men sucked.
“ I’ll do it under one condition,” I said.
“ Anything ,” they all said at once. “ My dad is a politician. I have all kinds of influence,” the first one added.
“ My dad’s a hedge fund millionaire,” the third said. “ Trust me when I say that I’ll cover any costs.”
“ If I lose my job, you help me get it back,” I said. “ I live here. They’ll kick me out.”
“ I’ll buy you a house if you help me figure this out,” the second one said. “ I have a prenup. If he’s the one who gets caught cheating, the little stipulation that I get nothing is null and void.”
“ Perfect ,” I said.
Had I known at the time that every last one of these mother fuckers in the room with one woman were dirty businessmen, I might’ve said no, but that was only a might.
They were pretty convincing. And they were all so sad.
“ Let’s go,” I said. “ Feel free to come in while I have the door propped open.”
I walked them up to the floor.
I then caught up a stack of towels, knocked ‘lightly’ again on the door for the cameras, then let myself inside.
“ Housekeeping !” I called out, flicking down the door stop as I moved into the room.
The towels dropped to the floor at what I saw.
A real-life human pretzel, with one woman in the middle having so many holes filled that I didn’t think that it was possible.
I flinched when I realized that one of those holes ended up being a double-stuff sandwich in her mouth.
How could she breathe?
“ Oh my God !” woman one gasped. “ Brian !”
Brian pulled away, being one of the men who had double-stuffed her mouth.
“ Gabriel !” woman three screeched.
Oh , boy.
“ You have the right to remain silent.” The man was taking great pleasure in reading me my Miranda Rights .
“ I want her barred from this establishment!” Brian cried.
“ And I want her never to work in the city of Dallas again!” Gabriel growled.
They were big mad.
I didn’t blame them.
They’d just seen their perfect, carefully constructed lives go up in smoke.
I just had to hope and pray that the women would have my back like they said they could.