Walking into Nightmares

The Fight

He glanced around his office calmly. To most people, it would look like he was disinterested in his surroundings, but those that knew him would know that every bit of his calculating mind was on the person in front of him. He wasn't trying to charm the woman who sat nervously in front of him. He was a professional after all. Just because he could charm the woman into forgetting about her husband, didn't mean that he wanted to.

Speaking of her husband, he wondered where to start. Thirty- three year old Matthew Jacobs was a bad, bad husband. He worked for a small insurance company and left most weeks for a few days to work. Or, at least, that was what he had told his wife. A month or so ago, Jacobs wife of five years, Susan, had stumbled into Liano's office, looking like Liano was going to eat her. While, at first, it had been amusing, it had gotten annoying within minutes.

Honestly, he wasn't even sure why Mrs. Jacobs had bothered coming to his office in the first place. She clearly knew about her husband's double life. Or, well, triple life, as the case may be. After a bit of digging, he had found out that Matthew Jacobs, also known as Michael Jacobs, and Jacob Matthews in a fit of stupidity he was sure, was not only married as one of his aliases, but two of them, and engaged in the third. The idiot was, apparently the father of not only Mrs. Jacobs unfortunate four children, but two more by his second wife, while his fiancé was pregnant with his 'first' child.

How the fool had managed to get away with this for so long, he had no idea. It wasn't even that the man was particularly smart either. Two of the three women lived within five miles of each other, while his second wife lived about fifteen miles away from the first one.

What really annoyed him was that wife two, Charlotte Jacobs, said that her husband was not only an excellent father, but a great man and provider, before asking him if his wife was stupid enough to support him. Clearly, she didn't notice the fact that he, the sex god, Emiliano Altieri, was a bachelor for life. He didn't wear a ring, nor did he have that stupid tan line like most men who tried to pretend that they were single.

He understood how the man had pulled one over on wife two, but his fiancé, Laura Grey, was working for a lawyer's office and seemed like a smart girl. She, out of all three, was probably the most intelligent and calculating twenty- six year old that he had met.

She was only two years older than him, but it seemed like that stupid saying was true. Love was blind, or just stupid. Liano wasn't sure which.

Nevertheless, she fell for the same trap as the other two, which made her an idiot in his book, no matter how attractive he thought she was. It just went to show that not all attractive people were as intelligent as he was. Narcissistic or not, he had gotten lucky enough to have both brains and beauty. Laura Grey clearly didn't.

Liano mentally shook off the thought and made sure his posture was both straight and self assured. Mrs. Jacobs was someone that he needed to handle carefully unless he wanted her crying all over him. He really, really didn't want to have to deal with that, so he made himself slightly more unapproachable as he went through his findings. He presented wife one with not only pictures of her husband with the other two women, but a slew of strippers that the man seemed to have a thing for.

Finally, his hour was up, and he calmly thanked her for coming, and received the final payment for the case. What happened from now on wasn't his business. If she divorced her husband, confronted the other women, or shot the man, he didn't care. If she took his findings to the police, as long as they left him alone, he didn't care. As soon as she walked out his door, she was no longer his problem.

He could say one thing though, he was glad as hell that this case was over. All four of the adults involved, if anyone could actually call them that, had acted ridiculously. He felt a brief pang in thought of the children that would have to deal with the fallout, but easily reminded himself that it wasn't his business.