Chapter 12
"Hello, Mr. Angelis," Zoe greeted with forced politeness. The moment Colette heard Matt’s voice, she bolted for her bedroom and locked the door behind her, her hands shaking.
"I am here to take my wife home," Matt told Zoe rudely. He had never liked Zoe; to him, she was as crazy as they come.
Zoe stood her ground, arms crossed over her chest. "Colette, do you want to go home?" she shouted towards the locked bedroom door.
"NO!" Colette shouted back with all the force she could muster, hoping it would convince Matt to leave her alone. Her voice trembled but was resolute, filled with desperation and defiance.
"There you go, Mr. Angelis. Goodbye, Mr. Angelis." Zoe spoke sweetly, about to close the door on Matt’s face, when he sneakily stuck hi foot in through the door to stop her from closing it.
Zoe’s smile turned vicious. Without warning, she brought her large, pointed heel down hard on his foot. Matt winced but didn't let the pain show on his face. Instead, he twisted his body, using his strength to push Zoe aside and force his way inside.
"I need to talk to my wife!" he repeated, his voice rising as he threw Zoe off balance. She stumbled but quickly regained her footing, brushing off her clothes as if nothing had happened.
"Please, feel at home, Mr. Angelis," she said with heavy sarcasm, her eyes narrowing. "Would you like some tea? No?" She answered her own question before Matt could respond. "Then I’ll make a cup for myself." She moved to the kitchen to put on some hot water, all the while keeping an eye on Matt, who was pacing the room like a caged animal.
"Colette! How can you do this? Damn you! How can you leave me?" he shouted, his voice echoing through the apartment. "I won’t leave until you come out and talk to me!"
"So, how’s Ms. Iris?" Zoe interjected softly, her voice dripping with sarcasm. That was all it took to set Matt off. He turned on her, his eyes blazing with fury.
"Don’t insert your nose where it doesn’t belong!" he snapped, his anger palpable.
Zoe laughed, a harsh sound that cut through the tension. "Jesus Christ! I thought she was your secretary. Why are you suddenly being so defensive about it? I was just being curious..."
Matt glared at her, his temper barely in check. "Sit down," Zoe said, pointing to the couch. "Give her some time. Maybe she’ll calm down and come out to listen to whatever shi— I mean, thing you have to say."
Matt dropped onto the couch, burying his face in his hands like a broken man. He just didn’t know what to do. He had messed up this morning, but he had never expected Colette to just get up and leave him like this. He loved her, for God’s sake!
"You always had the hots for blonde women, didn’t you?" Zoe continued, giving him a look of pure disdain. "So, what’s she like? Your secretary? Gives you a blowjob under the table type or quickie in the bathroom type?"
Matt shot up from the couch, his body shaking with a kind of rage he had rarely felt before. He wished he could grab Zoe by the neck and snap it in half just to shut her up. "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" he roared, his voice reverberating through the apartment.
"Fine! Okay! Okay!" Zoe threw her hands up in the air. "Don’t tell me if you don’t want to." There was a brief silence as Matt resumed pacing the room, like a frustrated caged animal. "She left me without even a note!" he shouted to himself. "Does she know how scared I was when I couldn’t find her anywhere? She just disappeared…"
He had been half out of his mind with worry before he called her uncle and aunt, who swore they hadn’t heard from her since last Christmas. Then, he decided to check here as a last resort. It was a shocking realization how isolated his wife actually was. She didn’t have many close friends, and her relationship with her uncle and aunt wasn’t very close either. He was all she had. For the first time, Matt felt a twinge of guilt for leaving her alone for such long stretches of time. No wonder she had been trying so hard to gain his attention; she had been lonely.
Once she calms down a little and forgives him, he will take her on a long vacation as their second honeymoon. They will talk and make love, and all their problems will be resolved. Because she couldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t let her. He was pacing the room like a madman when he felt Zoe’s gaze on him again. She was giggling.
"You know, Mr. Angelis, when I met you for the first time, I was in awe of you. Your personality and charisma and stuff," she giggled again. "But now, whenever I look at you, all I can remember is—you don’t like the feel of a condom on your dic—" She burst out laughing. "Oh! Don’t come charging at meeee!" she shrieked. "Your dear secretary said it last night to your wife, no less, when she gave her the contraceptive pill."
"Iris would never say such a thing!" Matt shouted defensively, instantly on his feet again. Colette, listening from the bedroom, smiled bitterly. Zoe never pulled her punches.
"I know Iris. She is a professional businesswoman who would never utter such vile things," Matt roared at Zoe, but she just smiled.
"I’m sure, except when Iris is giving your 2-inch limp dick a blowjob under your office table. She’s not very professional then, is she?"
As soon as those words were out in the open, Colette knew things had finally crossed the line. Matt wouldn’t tolerate this, and she didn’t want Zoe hurt in any way. There was a deafening silence outside as Colette finally came out, watching the two adversaries face each other like bulls in an arena.
"I would warn you to use that tongue carefully, Ms. Zoe, or I won’t be responsible for my actions," Matt said, his voice low and dangerous. He was breathing heavily, and there was a murderous glint in his eyes that Colette had never seen before. She was a little scared. She knew that Matt would never hit a woman, but no woman had ever tested his patience like Zoe had.
"Carefully use my tongue?" Zoe smiled thoughtfully. "Oh, you mean like your dear secretary does? Uses her tongue to lick your balls during all those very often business trips you take together?"
Colette winced, not because of the crudity in those words but because there was a chance they might be true. Matt was looking thunderous now, and he would have attacked Zoe if Colette hadn’t come between them right then.
"Stop it, Matt!" she said, her voice trembling. "Itty!" Instantly, his anger dampened as he looked at his wife.
"Itty, let’s go home. We will talk there," he demanded, trying to assert his control.
"No, Matt! I am not going anywhere with you!" Colette declared, standing her ground.
He didn’t look happy at her refusal, but she hadn’t expected him to be. He was used to a wife who asked, "How high?" when he said, "Jump."
"Okay! Okay! Fine!" he nodded after a moment, giving in. "Okay, then we talk here. Tell me what you want, Itty, and you will have it delivered at your feet. Ask whatever you want, and I will give you that. I was thinking we could take a vacation together, somewhere alone, just the two of us."
Colette wanted to laugh. It took her leaving him for him to think about a vacation. In the last two years, barring their honeymoon, he had taken her nowhere.
"Have you checked it with your secretary? She might not be comfortable with it," Zoe muttered with a snort. Colette had almost forgotten she was still in the room. Matt looked like he wanted to murder Zoe on the spot.
"Zoe, can you please leave us alone for a while? I—I think we need to talk," Colette requested.
Zoe agreed, but to her credit, she went to her bedroom all the while glaring at Matt, who glared back challengingly. Colette sighed.
"Itty, please come home with me…" Matt's voice softened as he looked at his wife, trying to appear remorseful.
"Okay," Colette said, surprising even herself with her readiness to agree. But then, she added, "But I have one condition."
"Whatever you want, my love," Matt replied eagerly.
"I want Iris out of your life. Fire her, and I will come back home with you," Colette stated firmly.
She didn’t need to hear his words to know what was going on inside his head. She could see it in his face—the way he clenched his teeth in frustration, the cogs of his mind turning as he tried to think of how to convince her to drop her condition. But she wasn’t dropping it. She would never drop it again.
“Itty, she worked very hard for that position. She is a model employee, never slacked in her work, threw ten years of her life away on that company. Now, you want me to just pick her up and throw her out. Can you imagine how unfair that would be?” He beckoned her to see logic while all Colette did was smirk. ‘Threw ten years her life away on that company?’ God! How naïve was he? That woman hadn’t been spent those 10 years in vain, she had invested it, on her husband. Hoping that one day, he would finally see her as not only a personal assistant but as something more. Colette looked at her husband from the corner of her eyes, trying to decipher if there was actually any kind of emotion in those dark eyes. It was clear that he didn’t want to let his dear Iris go but was it only as a employer that he was making this decision or was somewhere deep down did he have some kind of emotions for that woman that he wasn’t himself aware of?
She already knew he respected Iris, cared for her, they shared a very easy kind of camaraderie between themselves, Colette had the misfortune to witness that with her own eyes. But was there….also Love? Did he love that woman?