Chapter 116
- The all-night orgy with Marco, Jess, and her agency girls was a high watermark for debauchery. Afterward, work for both Jess and me picked up. She pushed hard on her escort business. Over the next three months, her client base grew from six to twenty. She had added one new girl, a real estate agent who was a friend and Brittany and shared her passion for fitness and rough, kinky sex. Jess was taking appointments almost every day. Cash was piling up, but she didn't want to give up her part-time gig at Dr. Vivianno's office. I didn't push her on it, though, because I was consumed with two major projects of my own. First, I was winding down my career. Next week, my last big bonus payment from the Jonathan Summers hedge fund deal would come through, and I'd retire. Second, we had narrowed our house search down to three choices.
- Something larger lurked in the background. Kat had passed her third wedding anniversary with James. She was entitled to twenty percent of their community estate now. Sure, his family had walled off a great deal of their wealth to protect it, but she and James still shared fairly substantial assets. The endgame of Kat's marriage would be messy and, likely, protracted, I assumed. She was paranoid that James was having her followed by a PI, so we had paused our usual trysts for the past two months. That coincided with Kat insisting that she and James attend marriage counseling. We confined our communication to an encrypted app, which Kat downloaded and then deleted twice a day.
- On my end, I knew Kat was right to be paranoid about being followed. Because I had hired a PI to keep tabs on her and James. I wanted to know how dirty he was going to play in the divorce. What surprised me is that it appeared he genuinely didn't see what was playing out in front of him. Neither did his family. It readily became apparent that he kept his growing marital discord secret from his parents. He worked a lot, but he disappeared from the banker happy hour scene I had cultivated before their marriage.