Page 24

I watched as he filled two short crystal glasses with dark liquor, and when he returned to the island, he set one down in front of me and gulped his. I didn’t drink dark liquor, but the way he was acting right now, I would be an idiot to mention that now.

“Eva and I met our freshman year of college, but we didn’t make things official until the following year and then we got engaged the year after we graduated.

We got married two years after that because I started my first business and was focused on that.

I worked a lot and at first my long hours weren’t a problem because she claimed my ambition and drive is what attracted her to me.

” He chuckled, but it wasn’t humorous, more like disbelief.

“Anyway, we got married and three years into the marriage everything was going well, or so I thought. Suddenly, she began complaining about how I wasn’t home, so I changed my schedule and hired more people to alleviate my workload, and shortly after that, she began acting weird.

She would take calls in the other room, but she worked and developed software for a Healthcare company for their electronic medical records, so a lot of the things she worked on were confidential.

Since I also worked in tech, we always discussed business away from each other to avoid any conflicts of interest, so her talking in another room didn’t raise any red flags.

But then she began staying out late and told me it was for work. ”

“My dad told me she was shifty, too sneaky, and my mom never liked her but there weren’t enough signs for me to confront her about anything, and I wanted to be married.

We started to argue one day because, after I made changes to be home more, I felt like she wasn’t meeting me halfway.

” He took another long sip of his drink.

“When she got pregnant a year later, I was the happiest man on earth. I was at every doctor visit. Hell I even scheduled a twelve-week paternity leave to be with her once our baby was born. Then…. She left me. I came home from work and her shit was gone, there was no note, I had no missed calls, nothing. It was like she vanished. I called her, and her number was disconnected. I called her job, and they told me she put in her two weeks’ notice because her husband got a job offer in Tennessee.

Well, I wasn’t aware I was going to Tennessee, so I was confused.

At the time I was more worried about her and the baby than I was angry.

I tried to call everyone we knew but no one knew anything. ”

“She sent me an email a week later that said she was ok. That was all she said. When I tried emailing back, the address was inactive. I was about to hire a private detective after she disappeared to at least find out where she went because she wasn’t using credit cards.

About two months later I got a call from her cousin in Tennessee that I met once at our wedding, and she told me Eva was staying with her.

After she gave me her address I hopped on the first flight to Nashville.

When I showed up she answered the door and had a baby in her arms.”

“I could tell from the look on her face that she didn’t know I was coming and since our baby wasn’t due for another three months, I assumed it was someone else’s baby she was holding.

But when I looked past her and into the house, I saw her cousin who called me, and her grandmother had this look of pity on their faces.

Her grandmother was Jamaican, and when she began yelling at Eva, I couldn’t understand anything because they were speaking patois, but I had a feeling what it was about.

” Titan’s hands were trembling, and my heart was breaking for him and when I tentatively reached my hand out, Titan grasped it tightly and held it like he needed the support.

“Eva told me right there on her grandmother’s doorstep that I wasn’t the father of our baby.

I had no words because my damn heart was shattering, and it took everything in me not to fall to my knees and cry.

I was in complete disbelief. You hear about shit like that happening, but I never thought it would happen to me.

Instead of choking the life out of Eva, I walked away and got on the next flight back home.

I didn’t hear from her ass again until she served me with divorce papers and a copy of the paternity results that proved I wasn’t the father.

But the kicker was that she had the fucking audacity to want half of everything.

She even wanted me to pay a ridiculous amount in alimony to support her and the child because she claimed that I didn’t allow the father to be a part of the child’s life after she told me I was not the father.

She said I was mentally and emotionally abusive.

That woman was trying to destroy my name, so she could get more in the divorce settlement.

She had all these emails and text messages that were from a fake account that she tried to say were from me and the court was believing her.

Thank God for my family and my computer knowledge.

My family all wrote sworn statements to the courts that said she was a liar.

I hired someone to trace the emails she created, and they traced the IP addresses back to people she knew, and my brother Torrence was still in law school at the time, but he collaborated with my attorney and found documents that showed I wasn’t in town on the dates she was claiming I was abusing her.

“The divorce was finalized a little over three years ago, and in the end, she didn’t get a dime from me.

Our divorce was brutal because of all the lies that were unearthed about her and the lies she tried to tell about me.

My brother said I should sue for defamation, but I wanted it all to be over. ”

When Titan finished speaking, he looked drained. I was pissed off for him. I didn’t know Eva, but I wanted to beat her ass. I could tell from the emotion in his voice that her betrayal still affected him.

“I want to beat her ass.” I finally said what was on my mind and Titan chuckled and kissed my hand he was holding.

“I appreciate your anger, baby, but she’s not worth it.” He stood up to clear the dishes from the island and when he leaned down to kiss me on the lips, I wrapped my legs around him to keep him where he stood.

Titan immediately put the dishes down and returned the kiss with fervor.

I put all the emotions I felt in that moment into our kiss, and I could tell that Titan did the same.

His hands went to the back of my neck and unhooked the clamps that kept my dress on.

The dress was backless, so I wasn’t wearing a bra, a fact that Titan loved because his warm hands were palming my breasts as he sucked my tongue.

Suddenly his hands were under my knees, and he picked me up. I kissed and nibbled his neck while he carried me up the stairs to his bedroom.