by Brynne Asher
Beautiful Life
Brynne Asher
Published by Brynne Asher
[email protected]
Text Copyright © 2015 Brynne Asher
All Rights Reserved
Dedications
The Mister to my Mrs. –
Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for wanting my dreams to come true. Thank you giving me what I need, when I need it, but especially before I even know I need it. Your selfless love inspires me.
Elle –
You’re my alpha reader, my beta reader and my editor. But you’re really the truest friend in every sense of the word. My heart still aches when I look out my front door you’re not across the street anymore, rather across the country. Even though we still talk daily, I miss you dearly.
Goodreads Readers –
Thank you for giving me a chance as an author and investing your time in me. I appreciate each and every one of you and will never take you for granted.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Changes Are Coming
Chapter 2 - Tony Torture
Chapter 3 - Another Step
Chapter 4 - Drink It In
Chapter 5 - What Ifs
Chapter 6 - It’s a New Year
Chapter 7 - It’s Done
Chapter 8 - You’re Coming Back To Me
Chapter 9 - Sleep Naked
Chapter 10 - The Way You Look At Her
Chapter 11 – This
Chapter 12 – Happy
Chapter 13 - The Ugly Road
Chapter 14 - You’ve Claimed It
Chapter 15 – Soon
Chapter 16 - Scary Specifically
Chapter 17 - Madonna and the President
Chapter 18 - You Love Me
Chapter 19 – You’re Ready
Chapter 20 - Let Me Be Yours
Chapter 21 – Nothing Between Us
Chapter 22 – Carpino Disaster
Chapter 23 – Where Is She?
April Showers Bring May Flowers
Epilogue
Prologue
“You stupid bitch,” he seethes at me through his teeth.
I can’t run. I’ve tried to run, to hide, to lock myself away but it never works and I always wonder if it’s worse when I try. It’s always bad, I have no idea if bad could get worse by prolonging the inevitable. What I do know is it’s become inescapable.
It’s become my life.
My life that has turned into a living hell. But just not hell, I think I might take hell over this. My life has turned into something from the deepest, darkest hollows of fire and brimstone. Hades. I think I would settle for hell on Earth as bad the life I’m living has become.
My body starts to shake, conditioned for what’s to come and even though I know what’s predestined, instinctively my mind can’t help but to look for an escape and that’s when I miss it. Looking to the side for my next move, I fail to see his hand coming at me square from the side connecting right with my eye.
Shit, that’s harder than normal.
I guess he really didn’t like my news, moving us out of the normal.
“Please, stop. I promise you won’t have to do anything. I won’t even let it affect your life,” I cry, starting to sob. I can’t open my swelling eye and I’m trying to catch my balance again.
“A kid? A fucking kid? I told you ‘no’ so many fucking times, even after having to put up with you begging and whining for one,” he spits and I can smell the liquor on his breath.
I bring my hand up to my eye and start to turn away when I’m all of a sudden pushed with such strength and absolute brute force that without being able to do anything to stop myself, I land against the wall in the dining room with my arm taking the initial impact. Like a rag doll, I fall to the ground with a pain in my arm so acute it almost makes me forget about my eye. I try to roll away but my left arm is now useless.
“Is it even mine?” he screams at me. Leaning down close, he screams again at the top of his lungs, “Is it even fucking mine, bitch?”
I hear him turn away, his steps moving him out toward our bedroom. I try to even out my breathing, until I hear him come back again. His steps are quicker this time and I barely get my good eye open enough to see his foot come at me. His slim black patented leather dress shoe connects directly with my lower abdomen with what feels like all the strength he could muster.
“That’ll teach you not to test me, Leigh. Don’t ever fucking test me again.”
And I feel it.
I know.
Don’t ask me how but I know.
Minutes later after he left and I was alone again, I feel the blood start to seep out of my body. As it starts to leak out, I feel the emptiness swallow me up that’s been creeping into my life for years now. My cries turn to sobs for my baby I wanted so badly to have and to love.
That’s when the emptiness eats me alive and swallows me whole.
I was gone.
Chapter 1 - Changes Are Coming
Late October
This mahogany table is enormous. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve…yep, it seats twelve. Not only that, but the chairs are big and comfortable. They are those really dark leather ones that swivel and rock with armrests so the table is super big to house all these big cushy chairs. The table is stained dark and I really have to concentrate to follow the grain of the wood.
I bring up my good arm, which is really my bad arm since I’m left handed, but seeing as my good arm is now casted and hanging in a sling, my bad arm is now my good arm. Of course he would break my good arm.
Honestly.
I didn’t think it was possible for him to find yet another way to add misery to my miserable life, but he did.
With my bad arm that I’m doing my best to make my good arm, I start to trace the grain of the wood with my index finger. I’ll do anything to avoid looking up and across the mammoth mahogany table at Preston.
I really need this to be over. I don’t understand why I have to be here today. I thought Mr. Carpino told me he would just send the papers for me to sign since he rushed this through, but I got a call this morning saying it was important I attend this meeting. I thought this was going to be quick and easy since I want nothing from him. I really never thought I would have to see Preston again, making this even more upsetting. But here I am, doing my best to concentrate on the wood grain in front of me so I can ignore everything else going on in front of me.
“Leigh,” I hear my name bitten out from my side.
I look up and over to see Tony sitting next to me and answer with a distracted, “Hmm?”
Tony narrows his eyes on me and I know him enough to know he’s trying to control his frustration. I’ve known Tony since I’ve known Gabby. Gabby is my best friend and has been since the third grade. Tony Carpino is her cousin but they are as close as siblings.
Well, not really like siblings.
Siblings fight and bicker, I should know. I have about the worst relationship with my sister anyone could have with a sibling. No, Tony and Gabby are like best friends that fight and bicker but would do anything for one another. Tony was a year ahead of us in school and since I’ve been a staple in Gabby’s life since we were eight years old, I know Tony well enough to understand the glare he’s giving me. And that glare is pure frustration.
“I’ll repeat myself, Mrs. Briggs. You need to sign these papers. They note the changes we’ve discussed today, in addition to having your last name changed back to your maiden name,” Tony explains slowly. I’m guessing this isn’t the first time he’s explained it to me.
I feel my eyes go big as I gingerly adjust in my seat so my good-bad casted arm doesn
’t bump the table and look up at him.
“What changes?” I ask, barely hearing my own voice.
I didn’t think it was possible, but his almost black eyes narrow even further on me and he turns back to my husband’s attorneys, “May I have a moment with my client?”
I look over at Preston’s attorneys, doing my best to avoid Preston. The entire group looks super pissed off now, a new look for them since they waltzed in here looking quite smug only twenty minutes ago.
One of them blurts, “Sure, why not? Let’s see what else she can change her mind about.”
Tony, almost but not quite, slams his hands to the table forcefully thrusting his chair back, again hinting to his level of frustration. Nevertheless, he carefully pulls my chair out for me, turns it and gently taking my new good elbow to help me up. He leads me out of the conference room, shutting the door in back of us and walks me down the hall about ten feet. He turns to me while crossing his arms over his chest.
Now, I’m tall for a girl at five-nine. He only has five inches on me but it still seems like he’s towering over me with his stance, not to mention the glare on his face. I’m starting to realize today isn’t turning out like I thought it would. I guess I need to start paying attention.
I ask, “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on,” he repeats my question to me as a statement.
Hmm, odd.
“Yeah, what’s going on, Tony?” I repeat.
He takes his hand and pulls it through his lush dark brown hair he leaves a little longish. It’s longish enough that it barely turns at the ends over his ears and neck, pushed back on top with a few strands falling to his forehead naturally without looking styled. How he pulls that off while looking like a professional attorney, I have no idea.
He yanks his suit jacket back to put his fists to his hips. His suit fits him perfectly. It’s a man’s suit, not like the suits Preston wears with that metro-sexual look to them. No, Tony’s is so dark grey it’s almost black with just a hint of stripe you can scarcely detect without looking closely. It fits his tall, muscular frame perfectly. I should know. I used to have a thing for men in suits. It’s what attracted me to Preston in the beginning, but that was back then I found his slim cut metro-sexual suits attractive.
But not anymore. No more men in suits.
Wait. Back up.
No more men. Period.
Trying to get my mind off Tony’s suit, I ask, “Where is your dad by the way? I thought he was representing me.”
“He had an emergency with another client and asked me to fill in since all that needed to be done was to sign the paperwork. But when I went over your case this morning, I changed my mind about you signing the paperwork.”
“What do you mean you changed your mind?” I ask, my voice sounding strangled.
“Do you know how much money he has, Leigh?” Tony throws his question back at me.
“Uh, yeah. I am married to him.”
“Then you need to take him to the bank.”
“I’m not taking him to the bank.”
“Why the hell not?” Tony bursts, his frustration peaking even more.
“I don’t want anything from him. Your dad knows this, I’ve told him repeatedly. You should know this too, you work for your dad’s firm. I’ve also told Gabby this same thing, certainly she’s filled you in the way you two talk. Can I just sign and get this over with?”
“Leigh, you don’t have a job,” he reminds me of yet another depressing detail of my ever depressing life.
“I know. I’ll get one after my arm heals, and well, all the other stuff heals,” I end on a breath because it feels like a knife in my gut every time I think about the baby I’ll never know or get to hold. The baby I wanted so badly, even if it was Preston’s.
Tony’s face softens and his body relaxes.
“Leigh,” he lowers his voice. “You need the money to start a new life for yourself.”
“I don’t want anything from him. I can take care of myself. I’m used to it,” I keep on.
All of a sudden, his soft face changes again and his almost black eyes become intense. I feel how intense they are as they sweep my face, drop to my body, my arm in my cast, finally settling back on my eyes. He pulls in a breath and looks to the ceiling. I’m hopeful this is Tony’s exasperated-giving-in-look, but I have a bad feeling about things when he looks back into my eyes.
He asks, but at the same time I sense it’s more of a reminder to me, “The firm is doing this pro bono, right?”
“Um, yeah,” I mutter, because they are.
Gabby’s dad was a partner here before he died in a car accident four years ago. Gabby now holds stock in the firm. But not just that, Tony’s dad took one look at me and said he wouldn’t accept a penny from me even though I tried to set up a payment plan.
In an instant, Tony’s soft-intense-frustrated-exasperated looks disappear into thin air. He looks down at me, sort of cocky-like, tipping the side of his mouth and says, “I guess that means you don’t have much of a say in how this goes, now does it?”
With that, he moves around me with purpose and I hear him open the door to the conference room while barking out to Preston’s attorneys, “Right. Let’s get this done.”
I’m left standing in the Carpino Law Partners posh hallway unable to move. He can’t do that. Can he do that? I turn to move my slowly healing body back to the massive mahogany table and decide it’s time to pay attention.
“Sign here, Mrs. Briggs,” Tony says, picking up where he left off before our hallway huddle.
My heart begins to beat fast because I don’t know what to do. I’m pretty sure I should have a say in how my own divorce goes, especially when my husband has beat the shit out of me for years and just two weeks ago beat me so badly I lost our baby. Even though it’s been two weeks, I’m still so tired and beat down in every way a person can be, the only thing I have the energy to do is look up at Tony and mutter, “I really don’t--”
But I shut my mouth the minute he levels his eyes on mine. The searing look he’s giving me doesn’t invite another peep. I begrudgingly snatch the pen out of his hand and scribble my married name on every paper he shoves in front of me.
“I have to tell you Carpino,” one of Preston’s attorneys’ growls out as he starts slamming his stuff back into a briefcase. “I thought more of your firm than this. Your father and uncles are class acts, but you blindsiding us today with this shit is uncalled for. We had a deal before we walked in here. I see the next generation of Carpinos are building a different reputation for this firm. Good to know,” he bites out, ending his rant with sarcasm.
“My client changed her mind,” Tony responds totally at ease, as if he’s chatting it up with a neighbor over the hedgerow.
“Yeah, I can see she changed her mind,” the attorney says and the way he says it makes me look up but all I see is Preston pinning me to my big leather chair with the daggers he’s shooting at me through his deep hazel eyes.
What I once found alluring and attractive, I now fear and hate with everything I am. His light brown hair is styled in its usual made-to-look-messy way and his lean tall, but ever so strong frame, is tense and foreboding as usual. I know first-hand just how strong he is and have become trained to cringe with panic when I see him like that. I squeeze my eyes shut to look away. I never want to see him again.
“You have five business days to respond to our offer or we’ll see you in court. By reading the first paragraph of the police reports we all know what a judge will say. I’ll look forward to hearing from you. I hope I don’t have to remind your client of the restraining order my client has against him. He had better not breathe her air or we’re calling the police,” Tony says, again totally relaxed, leaning back in his big leather chair as if he’s watching a basketball game or something.
With that, the team of assholes storm out of the conference room while muttering profanities.
Frustrated and now pissed, I stand, turn t
o Tony and rant, “Why did you do that? I told you I don’t want anything from him. He paid off my student loans when we got married so I’m debt free. I plan on selling my BMW after this is all over and buying something more economical, hopefully I’ll have a little something left from that. I don’t care what my last name is. That’s going to be a pain changing my name on everything. I don’t have the energy for anything Tony, especially extra paperwork. And by the way, since when do I not have a choice on how my own divorce is handled since your firm is doing this pro bono? Your dad advised me, but in the end he did as I asked.”
Now I’m the exasperated one and realize at the end of my tirade I wasn’t paying any mind to Tony’s demeanor. He really is a chameleon the way his emotions change so quickly. Now he’s back to intense. It gets more intense when he takes a step closer to me, as in pretty damn close, but doesn’t touch me.
I feel my eyes go big with the look on his face as he commences to rock my world by saying intensely, “I don’t care if you never touch that money, but you’re going to have it in case you need it. The answer is no, you don’t get a choice in how this goes. Listen closely, Leigh, and pay attention. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to make sure you don’t have one last reminder of the evil that controlled your life for so long. I’ll tie myself up in knots if I have to, but I’m going to make sure that part of your life is a distant memory, if not erased from your fucking head. That man you were married to is no man and you’re not only going to be rid of him, but you’re going to realize you have a beautiful life. I’ve just got to get you to open your eyes to see it. Changing your name is just the tip of the iceberg, sweetheart. Brace. Changes are coming.”
With that, Tony rounds me and stalks out of the conference room. I slowly blink my eyes, trying to get my body to respond to what Tony just threw at me. Changes are coming? What in the hell does that mean?
“Shit,” I mutter out loud.
With no other option, I make the same decision I’ve made about everything else the last two weeks. No, it’s the same decision I’ve been making for the last four years. I can’t think about this now. I’ll think about it later. I turn to walk out of the conference room heading straight for the reception area to find Gabby since she’s my ride. I need to get the hell out of here.
