Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 77220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
I observed his smug, carefully made-up face with narrowed eyes. To think I once thought he was my friend. Jesus, I must have needed my head examined.
He stood suddenly, and walked towards the large painting on my wall. “I’m not your sworn enemy, Max. I promise you.”
I had always tried to give Robert the benefit of the doubt, even when others told me to be careful, I had trusted him as my friend. But now as I looked at him, I saw him for what he truly was: a creep. “Aren’t you?”
He turned away from the painting and faced me. “No, I’m not, Maxie boy.”
The Maxie boy grated, but I kept my cool. “Four years of my life spent behind bars says different.”
“You keep harping on about those damn four years. What about the more than ten years before that we were friends?”
“Friends?” I murmured.
“Yes, fucking friends,” he shouted suddenly red with anger. “That was exactly what I was. A friend. A good friend who took a chance on your hail Mary scheme and helped you to build your dream with my money, and you repaid me by stealing my girl?”
“Your girl?” I drawled insultingly. I needed him to be angry and out of control. “Surely you’re not still living in that world where you thought Savannah was ever yours to begin with?”
“I met her first!” he yelled as he pointed a furious finger at me. “I introduced you to her and you stole her from me.”
“Savannah chose who she wanted to be with and that man was me. You were just a sore loser. But what’s new? You’ve always been living in my shadow and dining on my leftovers.” I leaned forward. “It ate you up that she wasn’t impressed by your name or money, didn’t it? The only way you could get her was framing me for embezzlement and catching her while she was in shock.”
A strange look came over Robert’s face, it was a mixture of loathing and frustration. “You think I’ve got Savannah? Then you’re an even bigger sucker than I thought.” He shook his head, and his voice was bitter. “I’ve never had Savannah and it’s not from lack of trying. She’s all yours. Now that we got it all cleared up, can we stop this war?”
I stared at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re not in a war… but at the fair…”
He shook his head. “I’ve been bluffing all this time. That was just pure luck. I believe the surprise she experienced from seeing you after all these years gave me an advantage. It was easy to make you believe she and I were an item because you were so ready to believe the worst of both of us.”
I felt anger rise within me. “Why? Did you not feel you had destroyed me enough?”
He shrugged. “I was mad with you, but I have been trying to make it up. I gave a check to not cut you off.”
I laughed suddenly. “You paid her to fuck me?”
Robert’s jaw dropped with horrified surprise. He looked like someone who thought he paid well below market price for a priceless painting and just realized he was the target of a scam. “You’re sleeping with her?”
“Do you think we were going to sit around drinking tea? Of course we’re fucking.”
“She is a gold digger,” he ranted vindictively. “She took money from me and you. She’s played us both for fools.”
I laughed at him. He just never gave up. “Are you trying to sell me the same old gold digger myth again?”
“Don’t fool yourself into believing that, that bitch is with you because she wants⎯”
I was out of my seat in a flash and I’d thrown the first punch before he knew what had hit him… and boy, did it feel good!
I stared him down while flexing my fingers. Go on, give me another reason to give you another reason to wear make-up. He didn’t disappoint. He retaliated with a punch to my gut, but I’d spent four years keeping myself fit and I jerked back so fast it landed as a weak jab. In fact, I was so hyped on adrenaline I did not even feel it. I grabbed him by the collar and delivered another blow to his precious face.
His hands flailed wildly in the air as he crashed to the floor. He didn’t even try to get up. He just sat there looking up at me with a slightly dazed expression. Blood trickled from his cut lip. His hair was crushed down on one side and I suddenly realized why he took such care to present it so perfectly coiffured. The perfection of his buoyant hair distracted you from his dead eyes. He had the emotionless eyes of a cold-blooded snake.
Standing over him, I felt a sense of triumph, not for having laid him on the floor, but for knowing that there’d never been anything between him and Savannah. I strode to my desk, picked up the photo, walked back to within three feet away from him, and flung it at him. He caught it, glanced at it, then looked up at me, a furtive look in his eyes.