Hershey's Kiss: A BWWM Pregnancy Romance Novel (11 page)

An emergency? What could it be? Was Jason okay? Was it another corporate scandal? Was it another two-faced lie? For an emergency, Jeanette sounded awfully calm. A panic suddenly came over Brandon. Since the jig was already up, and he had nothing left to hide, he picked up Hershey’s phone.

“Jeanette? What’s going on? Is Jason okay?”

“You bastard!” Jeanette said. “I’ve got you now. I’m recording this conversation, and now I have proof that you’re cheating on me. Not good enough for divorce court? Try me. I’ll bet the judge will wonder why you answered this black slut’s phone at 3 a.m. in the morning. I’m going to take you for everything you have!”

Brandon was stupefied. For a second, he actually believed that there was a real emergency. Now, this lapse in judgement could potentially cost him half of his fortune.
Billions…
Brandon silently held the phone to his ear as the weight of Jeanette’s words sunk in. After a long silence, Brandon responded. He didn’t speak of divorce or Hershey. He simply wanted to know that his family was safe.

“I thought you said there was an emergency…”

“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Precious Boulder Manor is burning to the ground as we speak.”

It is human nature to think that a large things can never be destroyed. The Titanic could never be sunk, yet it sits at the bottom of the ocean today. Brandon felt similarly about Boulder Manor.  He built it after his company went public nine years ago. It was his magnum opus. As a joke, he often referred to his manor as an independent nation. The independent nation of Boulder, he called it. Brandon used to think that the Boulder Manor would survive longer than most any part of his legacy. By his own estimation, he thought that it would survive at least 10 generations of Boulders. That fantasy was going up in flames at this exact moment. Brandon and Hershey drag raced back to the manor. They could see the flames from three blocks away. Before they even arrived, Brandon knew that his beautiful home would be destroyed forever.

Smoke rose up into the sky like a giant chimney. There were over ten fire engines working furiously to quell the flames, but even the officials looked dejected and hopeless. Brandon arrived at his home in a screeching halt. He and Hershey leapt out of the Maserati and for the first time, they understood the full devastation. Sirens were deafeningly loud. There were screams and howls trampling the airways and creating a sense of panic. The fire itself blazed loudly. Its power reminded Brandon of the Niagara Falls. The flames burned with the same powerful heaviness a as the millions of tons of water which rumbled along the Canadian border.

There were hissing and crackling noises layered on top of the heavy gusts of flames. Those menacing noises served as a subtle reminder not to behold the mighty flames in awe. This wasn’t a tourist attraction. This was a disaster. At the very least, Brandon wasn’t yet sure if this was the worst day of his life.

“Jason?!” He yelled with cupped hands around his mouth. Nobody responded. “Can somebody tell me where the hell my son is? You. Fireman. Where’s my son? His name is Jason, he’s four years old. Where is he?”

The fireman studied Brandon’s face for an extra split second. Perhaps he’d seen Brandon on TV and it took him a while to register the face. After recognizing Brandon, the fireman’s demeanour shifted. In addition to saving lives and putting out the fire, the fireman was now concerned about kissing the feet of this billionaire.

“Mr. Boulder, it’s an honor and a pleasure to meet y--”

“My son. Jason. Where is he?”

“Oh, um, of course. One of our men is watching him. He’s over there.”

The fireman pointed to an ambulance fifty feet away. Brandon’s heart sank.

“Jason!” he yelled.

Brandon sprinted to the ambulance with Hershey in tow. He feared the worst. Nausea came over him. If his son was hurt. He’d never forgive himself, or Jeanette. He got to the back of the Ambulance and violently elbowed his way past the EMTs. With them aside, Brandon could see his son lying unconscious in a stretcher. There was a oxygen mask over his face. Brandon placed his arms over his child’s body and immediately starts sobbing. “My son! Everything’s going to be okay. Daddy’s here now...”

Brandon looks over his shoulder at the EMTs behind him. “What the fuck happened to him?!” he yelled, sounding annoyed that they hadn’t already told him.

“Your son will be fine. He’s inhaled a lot of smoke, but he’ll be fine.”

Brandon looked over to Hershey, who was standing close to the EMTs. The look on her face was pure concern. She gave him a supportive nod. As if on cue, Brandon began wailing over his son. He wasn’t too much of a man to cry over his child. He loved Jason more than anyone in the world; Hershey understood that. He kissed his unconscious cheek and ruffled his hair, by and tears of anguish and relief.
I’m so sorry.
He thought.
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry…

The flames burned on for several more hours. When it was all said and done, Boulder Manor was completely destroyed. Reporters hovered in helicopters, capturing live footage. Ambulances were filled with Brandon’s staff. Those who weren’t hurt stood around the flames wrapped in blankets. Several of them were now homeless. There was only one person who was conspicuously missing from the scene: Jeanette.

* * *

It had barely been a day since the fire, and divorce proceedings had already started. Jeanette wanted to strike while the iron was hot. She also had enough money and power to make the courts drop everything and take her case. Brandon also agreed to the quick divorce. After she’d left their son in critical condition, not to mention being the world’s biggest bitch, Brandon wanted to dispose of Jeanette as quickly as possible. So, while the embers were still burning at Boulder Manor, Jeanette and Brandon prepared their legal teams for a full fledged war…

Brandon’s first strategy of attack was the obvious one. Did Jeanette burn down Boulder Manor? If she did, then it would have been an open and shut case. No divorce court would dish out billions to an arsonist. Brandon’s legal team charged head-on with the arson investigation, but they soon experience some major holes in the case against Jeanette. For starters, Jeanette had a clean and clear alibi. She had a confirmed rehab appointment at her clinic,
Soul Cleanse
. Everyone in attendance could verify this, and if that weren’t enough, Jeanette had taken selfies with several of her Soul Cleanse buddies that night. Convenient. The legal team lost a lot of confidence after this bit of information came to light, but Brandon urged them to keep digging. His gut said that Jeanette did the whole thing. More details emerged…

Melted fuel containers were found in the rubble, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the fire had been started with gasoline. This was definitely an arson, but the melted fuel tanks seemed to exhonerate Jeannette and bring forth a whole new suspect. The tanks came from Brandon’s groundskeeping crew. Also, firefighters found a lighter at the source of the flames. The lighter belonged to one of Brandon’s groundskeepers, one Julio Alvarez.

Police wanted to interrogate Julio, but unfortunately, he was the only victim of the fire. Firefighters found his charred body a few feet from his lighter and the melted fuel tanks. As more evidence emerged, it seemed obvious that Julio was responsible for the fire, not Jeannette, however there was one question that the evidence could not answer. Why did he do it? Nobody could recall a single time which suggested that Julio held a grudge against Brandon. By all accounts, he loved his work and he enjoyed the pay.

Jeanette on the other hand, had an answer for everything. She had an alibi, hard proof that she was nowhere near the fire. She had a perfectly rehearsed response for any question, not to mention an award-winning cry session to garner as much sympathy as she possibly could. There was, however, one detail which she couldn’t answer. Why didn’t she come back for her son? She knew that Jason was in clear and obvious danger but she did nothing about it. When asked, Jeanette grew silent and kept a blank expression.

Brandon was frustrated. Even though all of the evidence pointed to Julio, Brandon couldn’t shake his nagging suspicion that the evidence was wrong. He smelled a rat, but he couldn’t prove it. Now, in light of Jeanette’s bold attack, Brandon could see what his wife had been hiding from him he entire time. She was a maniac… a psychopath… a sociopath… or whatever. She was wicked, and was perfectly capable of exacting pure evil to achieve her objectives.

Brandon felt stupid for ever having feelings for Jeanette. Though any notion of “love” was long gone, he realized that the whole time --  for their whole marriage --  Jeanette had been playing one long, elaborate con. She was after his money the whole time, and she’d been waiting for the perfect time to fuck him out of everything. The more Brandon reflected on this betrayal, the sadder he became. He used to trust Jeanette. At least enough not to have gotten a prenup.

He remembered their final conversation about prenuptial agreements. He and Jeanette had gotten into an argument about it during trip to Costa Rica. “How could you ever ask me to sign a prenup?” she said. “Don’t you trust me?” she said. Jeanette wasn’t winning him over, so instead, she sharply changed the subject. There was a forest hike scheduled for that morning, so instead of talking prenups, she rushed Brandon out the door to catch the bus to the forest hike.

That morning, they hiked into the forests, and while climbing down steep gully, Jeanette slipped on some moss and almost plummeted to her death. Jeanette hung on for dear life by a small nook in the rocks. Brandon begged her to grab his hand. “Trust me.” he said. “I’ll catch you.” he said. Jeanette looked at him and responded, “I trust you with my entire life.” Then she let go of the ledge and grabbed his hand. They never spoke about prenups again.

STUPID!
Brandon thought. He couldn’t help but wonder how many times she’d played him like a fiddle.
She must have cheated on me more times than I could count.
He thought. Brandon could think of several fishy instances. There were strange, overly friendly men who she’d shoo away. There was suspicious behaviour. There were long nights out. They’d go weeks without sex. Brandon’s blood boiled knowing that Jeanette could nail him for meeting the love of his life, while her legs stayed open like a 7/11.

Now, Jeanette had the perfect weapon against him: Hershey. Jeanette had a sliver of evidence, and she fully intended to milk every bit of life out of it. Jeanette’s lawyers painted Brandon as a life-long philanderer. In addition to Hershey, Jeanette trumped every bit of circumstantial evidence that she could find.

“He named his private jet after a miss Julianna Sundress. Doesn’t that sound suspicious?” Jeanette’s lawyers said. “He’s just purchased a small rainforest, and rumor has it that it will be dedicated to one of his local Fijian romances. What kind of man throws this kind of filthy behaviour in his wife’s face?”

Jeanette was making a huge spectacle of the divorce. The media was already reeling from the fire at Boulder Manor, now, she wanted to keep that momentum going. She released a new statement to the press:

“I pray to God everyday that he’ll give Brandon the strength admit the wrongs that he has done. This is the best way for our family to heal.”

The media had a field day with Brandon’s divorce proceedings. The same major news websites which obsessed over Brandon’s sexy hip flexors a year ago, were now going the other route. When people woke up to check their Facebook feeds in the morning, they would find the most unflattering pictures of Brandon that they’d ever seen. Pictures that made him look obese and haggard. How quickly the people would turn on you…

Soon after that, people started tweeting about Brandon, using the hashtag #BadDad.  By lunchtime, news anchors were interrupting regular television programing to break the Boulder divorce story. Almost all of the reports slandered Brandon for being unfaithful. As one reporter put it: “He’s a villain… a bad example to husbands everywhere for having sex with the black nanny.”

As each hour passed, the public grew more outraged that Hershey had ‘stolen’ Jeanette’s family. Of course the media jumped on the opportunity to paint the black mistress as the villain. They didn’t care about the truth, just the destruction of the sacred nuclear family, or at least the image of it. By early afternoon, there were even some fanatical Christians who picketed outside of the general hospital where Jason was staying. These were the types to picket military funerals. They were bad news all around. The word had gotten out that Hershey was with Jason at the hospital, and this only infuriated people even more. There were insults on each picket, like “jezebel,” “whore,” and “gold digger.” Hershey would look at the crowds from the hospital window. She had never felt lower in her life. Would this love of hers be worth it? Only time would tell.

Jason was feeling much better since the fire. He’d inhaled a lot of smoke, so he was taken to the hospital overnight. Now, he was almost back to his normal self. Hershey kept the television off. She was also extra careful to keep Jason ignorant of the public divorce that his parents were having. Hershey wanted to protect Jason more than even his mother did. She had fallen in love with Brandon’s son almost as much as she had fallen in love with him. She had never grown quite so fond of one of her client’s children. Every once in a while, Hershey would look out of her window, and she’d see the little protesters on the sidewalk. All things considered, things could have been worse. While Brandon had been in court all day, Hershey had lots of time to catch up on her lessons with Jason. She was helping him read through the Harry Potter trilogy.

“Grrrriff.” Jason said.

“Keep going. Sound the word out…” Hershey said.

“G-r-y-f-f-i-n-d-o-r.” He said.

“I wanna join Gryffindor, like Harry!”