"Let me guess. You cheated on him, like you did me?"
The sobs were gone and replaced by venom in her voice when she snapped out, "No,actually. He found someone younger."
I let out a laugh. Karma really was a bitch. "That sucks. I guess your only option is to tell me what's going on."
"I hired someone to do a job and now I can't pay them," she hissed. "There, are you happy now?"
Not even a little bit. Something was definitely off about the whole thing. "Actually, no. Who the hell did you hire? The mob?"
When Charmaine didn't answer, I cursed. "Tell me you're fucking joking?" Even divorced, this woman was making my life hell.
"No, it wasn't the mob but something close to it."
"I'm coming to get Andrew. He can stay with me until this shit blows over."
"What aboutme?" Charmaine screeched loud enough that I was forced to pull the phone away from my ear.
"You're not really my concern anymore," I said when it was finally safe to talk again.
After all the shit she gave me, she really expected me to protect her when I didn't know what she needed protection from.
"I wish they would've killed you!" she screeched again.
Warning bells went off in my head. I never told her what happened to me and Sarah. As far as my ex was aware, I survived a plane crash.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I snapped at her. "What did you do, Charmaine?"
"Screw you, Graham!" Then she hung up on me.
"What was that all about?" Matthew asked after I slammed the phone on my bed.
"I think Charmaine is behind the pirates capturing us," I told him through clenched teeth.
There was no mistaking the shock Matthew felt at my words. His jaw practically hit the floor. "What would make you think that?"
I chewed over Charmaine's words again to see if maybe I had been mistaken but no. Everything she told me pointed in that direction. "She said she wished they would've killed me," I explained. "And before that, she mentioned hiring someone that she couldn't pay, so they were now threatening her and Andrew."
"Son of a bitch!" Matthew hissed.
"Yeah, exactly." I ran my hand through my hair, unable to believe where things were headed. "I need to get Andrew away from her. I don't give a shit what happens to Charmaine, but I'll be damned if her mistakes hurt my son."
"Yes, you do." I popped an eyebrow at my friend and team leader, not sure what he meant by that. "You say you don't care, but yes, you do," he further explained. "You might hate her guts and rightfully so, but at the end of the day, she's Andrew's mother, so you care enough to want her alive, for his sake."
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I hated that he was right. "And if she really did hire someone to kill me?"
"Then we'll deal with it, but you're a better person than she is, so at the end of the day, our team will help her."
Yeah, our team would because that was what we did. Besides, it wasn't like the pirates were actively trying to kill me and Sarah. Beat me? Sure. But kill me? Nope. At least that wasn't the impression I got, so maybe I was missing something.
"Let's go get my son."
Matthewand I pulled up in front of the villa Charmaine rented hours later. The perk of having a private jet allowed us to get there a lot faster than driving ever would. I barely had one foot out of the SUV before Charmaine was stomping out the front door, yelling.
"You can't be here! Our custody agreement doesn't allow for this."
Never in my life did I want to murder someone as much as I wanted to murder my ex-wife in that moment.
"I'm pretty sure hiring a hitman to kill me negates any custody agreement." I crossed my arms over my chest and widened my stance.
