Chapter 11
“Do You Believe Me?”
There was nothing like coming home on a rainy evening after a long day hassling investors and threatening to cut off a few heads if Lara didn’t get her way.
Kennedy had to remain in town to finish up some paperwork, so Lara summoned her driver and returned home, far away from the downtown ruckus.
She looked forward to a quiet dinner and lounging in her room, playing music, enjoying the fire, and organizing her makeup case.
If her spouse managed to get her ass home at a reasonable time, even better. Maybe they could soak in the bath together.
Of course, Lara was not so lucky recently. The first person she encountered upon entering her spacious home was none other than Chloe, who appeared to take Lara’s coat and umbrella.
“Did you have a good day, ma’am?” she asked, her cute little face almost enough to make Lara throw up. “Roberta says your dinner is waiting for you.”
Lara eyed her suspiciously. “Bring it up to my room.” She shook off her sweater and piled it on top of her coat in Chloe’s arms. “If my partner comes home, tell her I want to see her.” They had a cuddle appointment.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lara hoped that was the last of seeing any help that night. As soon as she had her dinner waiting for her on a small table in the primary suite, she switched on one of her favorite TV shows and enjoyed it until she was full and happy enough to go about her business.
She slipped into something more comfortable, which amounted to a thin white T-shirt and cotton shorts, topped with a red silk robe that was more style than function.
It mattered little to her. Her body ached from the trials of the day, and if her damned spouse would respond to her texts, she could find out if she should take a bath without her or wait.
Damnit, forgot my seal. She was in the midst of gluing invitations together for a soiree she was throwing at the beginning of February, shortly after returning from her second honeymoon.
She paused the TV and shuffled into the hallway.
Her office was a few doors down, and she was sure that’s where she had last left her seal.
Unfortunately, Kennedy’s office was another stone’s throw away from her office. This meant she had a fantastic view of her open door and the light spilling out.
She’s home? That was annoying, if only because she never texted Lara, and nobody came up to inform her after she explicitly asked them to do so. I need to hire new help. And a new spouse. Huffing, Lara marched down the hall, bypassing her office to head straight to Kennedy’s.
She caught Chloe going through the locked drawer. A key dangled from her fingers.
“What the!” Lara suddenly became three times as large, overtaking the office doorway the moment Chloe freaked the hell out. She slammed the desk drawer shut, locking it with no more finality than Kennedy ever did. “What the hell is going on here?”
They came to an instant impasse. Lara, finding the help going through her wife’s belongings; Chloe, caught with a key hanging from her hand. Her face was so pale that she looked almost spectral.
“Mrs. Anderssen…”
“That’s right.” Lara found her bearings and approached, not giving a shit if her robe slipped open and Chloe saw the boss’s bouncing tits beneath a thin white T-shirt. “Mrs. Fucking Anderssen. Care to tell me what the fuck you are doing here, little girl?”
Chloe really did look little and girlish. She looked like a teenager caught sneaking out, or a small child caught peeking a look at the gifts beneath the Christmas Tree. But she wasn’t a child. She was a grown-ass woman. A grown, sexualized woman caught going through the mistress’s belongings.
Or had that key been given to her? Not even Lara had a key to her wife’s desk. She knew where to find it, but had never been given one…
“I’m so sorry… Ms. Anderssen told me to…”
“Told you to what? Oh, I bet this is rich.” Here it was. Here came the confession. Chloe couldn’t deny it any longer. Either she was up to something too nefarious for words, or she was cheating with Lara’s shit of a spouse.
“She told me to pick up and drop things off here. I’ve been helping her with a project.”
“What project?”
“I’m so sorry!”
Lara was no match for how tiny this girl was. Chloe was able to slip easily past her, bolting into the hallway with the key still clasped in her hand. No matter how loudly Lara called after her, she could not convince the girl to stop, confess her sins, and meet her fate.
You’re kidding me!
Lara went into her wife’s office, slamming the door behind her.
I will expose this asshole. She went to the coat closet full of tax files and receipts.
There, on the top shelf, was an inconspicuous box where Kennedy kept some valuables.
Sure enough, Lara quickly found a tiny ring of keys, one of which was sure to go to her desk.
I may regret this, but I don’t care. Lara tried one key after the other, crouched low between desk and office chair. No matter which key she tried, however, nothing budged the lock.
Not until she reached the second-to-last key, which snapped everything open.
Lara gasped, mentally preparing herself for whatever she might find. Love letters? Dirty books? Presents exchanged between adulterer and mistress? Whatever was in here, it was not meant for Lara’s eyes… but for some reason, Chloe was more than invited to partake.
That alone was enough to give Lara the strength to pry it open.
She looked upon a mess of books and papers.
Neatly organized, yes, but a mess, nonetheless.
Piles of Kennedy’s stationery, neatly covered in her handwriting, stared back at her.
Spiral-bound books and what looked like a manuscript were crammed into the corner.
Everything was covered in colorful sticky notes, some of them with Kennedy’s handwriting, and others with what looked like… Chloe’s.
What the fuck? Lara pulled out the top stack of papers.
They were neatly creased in the middle, the perfect size of Chloe’s bag that she packed around the house when she went about her job.
They even smelled like her, if that was possible.
Sure enough, Lara found a pink sticky note on top, written in girly handwriting. “This is really beautiful!!!”
“I’ll show her a beautiful bruise…” Lara ripped off the note, crumpled it in her hand, and began reading the sordid love letter her spouse wrote the maid.
“The first time I met my wife, I thought I was crushed by the weight of the universe and sent to the afterlife. That’s because she looked like a glamorous angel come to deliver either very good or very bad news about my soul’s fate.
Instead, she came up to me and asked if I knew where the women’s restroom was.
She was one of the only women there, which should have tipped me off regarding how deliriously intelligent and bullheaded she is. ”
What the hell?
“Lara Losers was definitely not a loser, no matter how much people made fun of her for her name or for being a woman, let alone a conventionally beautiful one. She was a winner through and through. In that first hour meeting her, I learned that she had dominated her internship at one of the biggest real estate agencies in the city. There were vicious rumors that she slept her way to the position. These are lies, meant to slander my wife. But, even if she had, it didn’t demean her in any way to me.
She proved her merit when she showed me her portfolio of one hundred high-class sales… all within the past year!”
Lara flipped through the first half of the papers. Her name showed up at least once on every single one of them.
“What. The. Fuck.”
She reached back in and pulled out more papers.
“For our wedding, Lara wanted to have only three bridesmaids, which pleased my mother greatly, since I have exactly three brothers, and if I insisted on ‘looking like a man’, by hell, my mother would get her heterosexual wedding aesthetic to show her friends.
However, the drama that erupted because I chose two friends over two of my brothers almost caused us to elope in Vegas.
I brought it up more than once. It would have been easy enough to do…
hop a plane and get married at the nearest Elvis Station.
Yet I knew how much a family affair meant to my wife, and convinced her to take on two more bridesmaids.
She ended up picking a pair of cousins she hadn’t talked to since she was nineteen.
I think they thought they had stepped into Cinderella’s castle on our wedding day.
I couldn’t blame them. I thought she looked like a princess as well. ”
Lara fell to her knees in front of the open drawer.
There were more pages – pages upon pages – with Kennedy’s meticulous handwriting scribbling her thoughts on her wife, marriage, and even bits and pieces about her career and home life.
“The first thing she told me when I asked her to be my girlfriend was that she didn’t want to have children.
Was I okay with that? Would I pressure her in ten years to give me an heir?
You must understand, if you’re not in our society, it can be confusing…
but women don’t have a lot of freedom regarding children.
It’s mandatory in many of the more conservative families to have an heir, preferably two.
You know the saying – an heir and a spare.
Lara was upfront, saying motherhood wasn’t for her.
Until then, I had been on the fence about children, assuming that my wife would make the final decision.
Well, she did, didn’t she? I wouldn’t take a gaggle of perfect children in exchange for my wife. ”