My mother was lying in a hospital bed with a brain hemorrhage, waiting on emergency surgery, and the half a million dollars my wife's little assistant brought over to save her life turned out to be a stack of worthless arcade tokens.
I called Alberta Pruitt like a man losing his mind, begging her to cover the surgery.
The one who answered was that assistant of hers, Wilfred Delgado.
His voice was all innocence.
"Mr. James, you must be mistaken. What I handed you was five hundred thousand in cash. How could it possibly turn into arcade tokens?"
"Ms. Pruitt is taking her afternoon nap, and her schedule is packed after that. Please don't disturb her."
So I ran from one friend to the next, borrowing, taking out loans online, until I finally scraped the surgery fee together.
But because the operation was delayed, my mother survived only to be left paralyzed from head to toe.
For the next three days, I sat by her bed in that hospital while Alberta took Wilfred out for candlelit dinners, yacht rides, and hot spring resorts.
Three days later, I sold off my shares in Alberta's company and got ready to leave.
——
By the time I got home, Alberta was lounging on the sofa without a care in the world, Wilfred kneading her shoulders.
She saw me and frowned.
"Your mom just got sick, didn't she? Why are you only coming back now?"
I didn't answer. I walked over with my travel bag, dumped the five hundred thousand in arcade tokens out in front of her.
My voice shook.
"Alberta, my mother needed that surgery money to stay alive, and you let Wilfred fob me off with five hundred thousand in arcade tokens? How is that any different from murder?"
"Do you have any idea? Because of these tokens, her surgery was delayed, and now she's paralyzed for the rest of her life!"
Alberta's expression shifted, just slightly.
Behind her, Wilfred spoke up, perfectly calm:
"At the time, the company needed cash for year-end bonuses. Ms. Pruitt knew your mother had surgery scheduled, so she had me bring you five hundred thousand right away."
"Mr. James, are you trying to say I pocketed that five hundred thousand and swapped it out for arcade tokens?"
Alberta cut in immediately:
"Wilfred knows exactly where the line is. There's no way he'd ever switch five hundred thousand for arcade tokens."
Then she laid it out coldly:
"And even if you really did end up with five hundred thousand in tokens, don't I give you fifty thousand a month for living expenses? Pulling together five hundred thousand wouldn't be hard for you at all."
"So…"
She stared at me, her tone turning ugly.
"Your mom isn't paralyzed at all, is she? You just want to smear Wilfred. He's only my assistant. Why are you so dead set against him?"
Her accusation hit me like a bucket of ice water poured straight over my head. The cold went all the way through me.
The way Alberta and I met was something out of a trashy drama.
She'd gotten drunk at a bar and two thugs were shoving her around, and I'd grabbed a brick and saved her.
She was barely conscious. I couldn't get an address out of her, so all I could do was take her to a hotel.
When I carried her into the room, she suddenly wrapped herself around me.
When she woke the next morning, the look in her eyes had none of the heat from the night before.
What she said stunned me.
"Since we slept together, we'll go register the marriage right now."
Out of a sense of responsibility toward her, I ended up registering and marrying her.
It wasn't until after the wedding that I learned she was the CEO of a company, worth hundreds of millions.
She signed thirty percent of the company's shares over to me, with one condition: I was never to set foot in the company's operations or management.
She wanted me to stay home like a good boy and play the househusband.
I fought it. But no matter how hard I tried, I was just an auto mechanic, a working stiff, and everything I earned wasn't a fraction of what Alberta pulled in running her company. So I accepted my place.
We settled into a by-the-book married life. I handled the home, she handled the world. I was as gentle and attentive to her as I knew how to be, and she treated me with cool, distant courtesy.
I thought we'd spend our whole lives like that. Until Alberta hired that male assistant.
And just like that, everything changed.
