Three years into our marriage, Edna Swanson had sent me to the police station ten times. I'd sent her to the hospital eleven.
Because every time I beat up her first love, she called the cops.
And every time I got out, we'd fight until one of us ended up in the ER.
Then came the business trip to Dubai. She shielded me from shrapnel. I shielded her from a collapsing beam.
From two hospital beds, our hands found each other across the aisle and held on tight.
"No more fighting, baby."
"I'll send him away."
"Let's just live a good life together. Please."
Looking at the bandages covering both our bodies, I tore up the divorce papers with trembling hands.
"One last chance."
Clark Dickerson was gone that same day.
Every trace of him was scrubbed from her phone.
Edna gritted through the pain and had my name tattooed over her heart.
"I swear, you won't regret this."
On our seventh anniversary, the police called and asked me to come in.
A married couple had reported that my company's products gave their child food poisoning.
The husband was Clark Dickerson.
The wife was Edna Swanson.
She didn't even try to hide it.
"He and I have a three-year-old son. That's just the way it is."
We'd been back together for four years.
The kid was three.
Her friends told me I should be grateful she'd at least had the decency to keep it hidden.
I pulled out the divorce agreement from four years ago.
"Then let's make it official."
...
Clark left the station clutching his son, red-faced and fuming.
Because I'd shut him down so thoroughly he couldn't get a word in.
Not against my legal expertise.
It drove him out of his mind.
Back at the house, I walked ahead in long strides. Edna followed with a scowl.
"Would it kill you to have a better attitude? Picking on a father and his son—what does that prove?"
"Picking on them?"
I spun around.
"There is nothing wrong with my company's products. He obviously fed his own kid something he shouldn't have and tried to pin it on me for a payout. You really can't see that?
"So tell me—who's picking on who?"
Edna's brow furrowed.
I stepped closer.
"You know exactly how clean my formulas are. And you still helped them file that report."
A cold laugh escaped me. I looked at her with nothing but contempt. "You really haven't changed at all."
She let out a sigh.
"Alex Sanchez, you can be really heartless sometimes."
I froze.
"The boy is only three years old. Clark's a first-time dad. His kid gets food poisoning that bad—of course he panicked.
"You could at least show some understanding, but instead you go after a single father over one small mistake like you're trying to destroy him.
"You..."
She looked me up and down.
A mocking smile curled at the corner of her lips.
"Oh, right. You'll never be a father, so I guess you wouldn't understand what it feels like to have a child."
I stared at her in disbelief.
The next second—crack—my palm connected hard with her face.
"Edna Swanson! Whose fault is it that I can never be a father? You don't remember?"
Something finally seemed to click behind her eyes.
She lowered her gaze, avoiding mine.
But I wasn't letting her off.
"Back in college, you got drunk and picked a fight. They came at you with a broken bottle.
"I took that hit for you. The glass severed my vas deferens. The doctors had no choice but to sterilize me."
Guilt crept across Edna's face.
I smiled bitterly.
"If I'd known you got into that fight over Clark Dickerson—that you were brawling with those girls because of him—I never would have stepped in. Not in a million years."
Edna shifted uncomfortably.
"I... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"You've said a lot of things you shouldn't have over these seven years."
I looked at her.
