Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
“Why? Being divorced or having a marriage annulled wouldn’t have scared me away. But being lied to and being made to feel like I was being played for over a year…that was awful.”
“I know. I got that message when you sent back my letters unopened and stopped visiting.”
“I don’t understand. Why were you afraid to tell me all this?”
“Because you’d ask questions, and I didn’t want to explain what an idiot I was. I knew you were skittish about what was happening between us to begin with. Let’s face it, you met me while I was in prison. The deck was stacked against me already.”
I looked out the window for a few moments as thoughts spun through my head. Do I believe him? Does it matter if I do? What if he’d been honest with me a year ago? Where would we be today? What about Oliver?
A part of me didn’t want to hear Gray’s story. The woman in me didn’t want to give him a chance to come clean. I would never trust him again anyway. He’d broken more than my trust; he’d broken my heart.
But the lawyer in me needed to get to the bottom of what had happened. And if I was going to be working with him, we needed to move past this mess. Otherwise, there would be something hanging over us forever. Etta seemed to think it would help Gray move on if he could tell his story and see that it didn’t change things between us. Maybe we both needed him to finally do that.
It couldn’t put any more strain on our relationship to listen and accept his apology.
I took a deep breath, put on my game face, shifted in my seat, and gave Gray my full attention. “Start from the beginning.”
Gray studied me for a moment and then nodded. “Max and I started the investment company together.”
“You told me about him. You said your partner set you up.”
He shook his head and closed his eyes. “Max isn’t a him. You assumed that, and I let you to avoid telling you the truth. Max is a woman. She was my partner, and my wife for a period of time.”
“The partner who set you up was your wife?”
Gray looked down. “Yeah. I saw none of it coming.”
“How long were you married?”
“Enough time to royally fuck up my life.” He paused. “Two years after we started the firm, we were managing upwards of a half-billion dollars in investments already. When we closed the biggest account we’d ever landed, Max and I took a trip down to the Dominican Republic to celebrate. We were both workaholics. We spent twelve hours a day together, but things between us were strictly business until that trip.”
“Okay.”
“We celebrated for a long weekend, and shit happened between us. The night before we left to come back, we got drunk and wound up getting married. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, or at least I thought it was at the time.” Gray shook his head. “I had no idea it was the beginning of a set up that would literally steal years from my life.”
“And you got it annulled when you came home?”
“No. That’s what I should’ve done. But instead, I started to warm to the idea of being married. I worked long days and didn’t have the time or desire to put into a relationship. Whenever I’d go out with a woman, I’d be upfront about not wanting a commitment. They’d say they were good with it, but that always changed after a few dates. Being with Max made it easy.”
“Did you love her?”
“I don’t know. I thought I did. Not so much as a wife, but as a partner and friend, at least.”
“How long did you stay married?”
“Almost two years.”
“You’d told me your partner set you up, and you took a plea deal because the evidence was so strong against you that you could’ve gotten ten years more than the deal they offered you. So you knew it was her and just couldn’t prove it?”
Gray blew out a deep breath. “I took the deal for her. It’s a long story. But she made it seem like one of the guys who worked for us had set both of us up. We were both being investigated. I was indicted first. Hers was supposedly on its way. I took the deal because our lawyer said there was a good chance we’d both get more than ten years. I would’ve risked it for me. I was fucking innocent. But I couldn’t let Max—my wife—go to prison. My lawyer was able to negotiate a deal where I’d do a few years if I took the blame for the entire thing. Max got immunity from prosecution.” He shook his head. “Betrayal doesn’t come from your enemies. It comes from the people you care about.”