Chapter SIXTEEN

JOSEF

A week after our Las Vegas wedding.

Volkov Towers stood tall and ominous against the graying skies.

We were expecting another fucking thunderstorm.

Nothing unusual for New York City in the Spring. But it was so damn tedious.

Summer was just around the corner, and any day now, there would be nothing but blue skies and sweltering heat.

I usually hated the summer. But I was looking forward to it now.

Maybe I hated it because it used to remind me of her. Of what I lost. But she was here now. With me.

My wife.

The same woman I’d been avoiding for the last seven days.

That little trip down memory lane I’d gone on during the flight home from Vegas was like tearing a scab off a raw wound.

I thought I left all the hurt and pain her betrayal had caused behind me years ago. All that angry indignation and insufferable despair from her rejecting me. The way I felt torn up and lost.