Read Hot Chapters Of Novel Work In Progress: Padon And Adira!

My phone chimed just as the light turned green, and I knew it wasn't my fiancé because he was still in the air for at least seven more hours. Thinking it might be one of my customers, I pulled into the nearest parking lot and parked. It was an unknown number, and I opened the text, thinking it could be a potential client.

The message chilled me, causing me to suck in so much air I had a coughing fit.

We women need to have one another's back. Want to know what your man was doing while he was deployed? Or should I say 'who' he was doing? I just wanted you to know.

Then another text followed, but there wasn't a message. Just a video. A video that would turn out to be worth a thousand disgusting words.

Don't press play. Don't press play. My heart was begging me not to do it, but my head had taken the wheel.

Pressing play, I saw a beautiful brunette smiling into her camera. A topless, pretty brunette whose surgically-enhanced breasts left mine in the dust if we were having a competition for perkiness and size.

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"God you are so good at that, Padon."

Hit pause! Hit pause! Wait until Padon gets home and ask him to explain.

I had to let it play, feeling like I was going to get sick. He wouldn't have. There was just no way he would have cheated on me.

The camera turned to a man, his face between the woman's legs. Maybe it was a different Padon, but his hair color was the same and...oh, God help me, I knew those strong hands that were clamped around her thighs, holding her in place because he was that good at what he was doing.

"Smile for the camera, baby. I've got a month here all by myself before I get to go home and I'm going to need a reminder of you and all the delicious things you've been doing to me."

He lifted his head and any hopes I had that it really wasn't Padon died along with anything else inside me that had survived the loss of my baby. He wasn't smiling and he was irritated.

"Put the camera away, Kayla."

He even sounded annoyed.

Then, as if pressing play hadn't been enough of a mistake, I compounded it.

Wiping my nose with the back of my hand, not even caring how gross it was, I texted back this mystery woman.

How long was this going on?

About four months

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So he'd begun this after I'd lost our baby. The tears just kept coming, sobs bursting from deep within me, ripping and tearing through me like a chainsaw. Anyone passing by my car must have thought I had a wounded animal in here with all the howling and screaming erupting from me and they wouldn't have been wrong.

I opened the car door again to get sick for the second time, barely able to keep from falling down on the ground, I was shaking and shuddering so violently.

All this time, all this time, I'd been worried about distracting him from his job and keeping him safe, while he was distracting himself by having an affair with no thought to me. I'd been suffering with the agony of losing our baby, trying to survive each day until he, my safe space, returned...and he'd been fucking another woman.

My mind was an absolute mess, and without thought, I proceeded to vomit again, only this time, it was word vomit as I texted back this stranger who had been decent enough to let me know what Padon was doing behind my back.

How could he do this to me? We just got engaged before he left for his deployment. He asked me to marry him! We bought a home together three months before that. We have a house and a mortgage! And I found out I was pregnant six weeks after he left and I didn't tell him because the pregnancy was rough and I didn't want to worry him. I didn't want him to lose his focus for one minute. Then I lost the baby at just six months and I didn't want to upset him because I knew he'd worry, and he was in a dangerous place where his life was on the line. Why would he do this?

I hadn't thought things through very carefully. In my confusion and pain I'd poured all of that out to her. Did I say she'd been decent enough? I'd been very wrong about that.

Because in response to my oversharing text, she turned nasty, revealing her true self, and I could have kicked myself for my naivety in my moment of weakness and confusion. One after the other, her texts rolled in, each one finding a new insecurity of mine to exploit, each poison dart hitting the mark, her toxins spreading through me and paralyzing me with pain.

So, you failed to keep your baby alive. Like he needs a woman who can't even manage that simple task.

If you weren't so shitty in bed, he never would have turned to me. He needs me because I can give him what he wants in bed like you never could.

The laughing led to more tears and it took me a couple of hours to calm down so I wouldn't be a danger to anyone on the road. I still had four hours of driving ahead of me, a life to figure out and a murder to plan.

Well, not literally because felonies had a tendency to be forever. But it helped to envision revenge scenarios.

I needed to contact a lawyer to see how two unmarried people had to go about splitting up a house they jointly owned if one of them wanted to keep it. To see if I could prevent my former fiancé from allowing the vile creature he'd cheated on me with from moving in until we'd figured out how to handle the house. To ask if the repairs and improvements I'd made were something that could be figured into the value of the house if he wanted to buy me out. To see if setting fire to the house could get me in trouble since it was half mine.

I wouldn't actually do that.

The dark humor was helping me get through the drive home. Halfway there, my phone started chiming, and I refused to look until I was back at the house because if she'd somehow gotten another number to call me from after I'd blocked her, I had no interest in whatever toxic shit she wanted to add to the hazmat pile she'd already dumped on me.

And if it was Padon, I was in no mood to talk with him yet. Fortunately, because of where he'd come from, there was a mandatory quarantine for the returning servicemen. That gave me a two-week reprieve from having to see him, and I was thinking it would take that long to be able to speak to him without breaking down in tears. He may have broken me into little pieces, but I wouldn't let him see that.

I made it home well after dark. Once I parked in the garage and turned off the car, I threw my head back and sighed, exhausted, thinking of all there was to be faced. Picking up my phone that I'd turned off when even the vibrating had gotten annoying with text after text and call after call, I debated turning it back on. Ultimately, I decided against it. I wasn't ready to face anything, especially at this hour, and I was feeling sufficiently numb, which meant I might be able to grab a few hours of sleep. The night before in the hotel, I hadn't slept much because I was so excited that Padon would be coming home today.

Even if I couldn't see him because of the quarantine, at least he was back and physically closer, out of danger. Two weeks would fly and then I'd finally be in his arms, pressed to his chest, able to tell him everything. He'd hold me, cry with me over our tiny boy, and we'd help each other through it. I'd delayed much of my grief so we could share it when he returned. Then, I could fill him in on other things that were going on and everything would be out in the open.

Turning on the phone could wait until tomorrow. I'd dealt with enough horror today.

A knock on my front door scared the hell out of me. It was eleven o'clock, and this neighborhood shut down by no later than ten. Hurrying to the door, I checked the peephole and opened it to my neighbor on the right.

"Sasha, are you OK?"

......

What truths await when quarantine ends? Will revenge ignite, or can shattered pieces rebuild? The house hold secrets… and the clock ticks toward confrontation....

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