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Chapter 1

As soon as Stephanie Marshall opened the front door of her Key Largo condo, she ran straight to her computer. “Good thing I rarely turn my computer off,” she said to herself, as if she would not survive the minutes it would take her to turn it on.  She quickly retrieved Daniel Perry’s telephone number from her old contact list, and then dialed the number.

“Hello,” a male voice answered.

“Dan, is that you? This is Stephanie,” she said, still fuming about what had happened only a few hours earlier, and not bothering to say hello.

“Well, long time no talk.  It’s been years. So, what do you want?” Dan asked brusquely, surprised at the call.

“Don’t play games with me, Dan,” Stephanie interrupted him harshly, “Why did you send the video to my boss?”

“What are you talking about?” asked Dan, not understanding why Stephanie seemed upset.

“We’ve been divorced for over seven years, and the video that we made together was supposed to be destroyed long ago, after our divorce.  So why did you do it?” asked Stephanie.  She was angry, and for good reason.  She had just been fired from her job at a private elementary school after the principal had received the video and told her that this was not the image he expected of his Assistant Principal.

“I admit that I didn’t destroy it.  But I didn’t send any video to your boss,” Dan protested.

“So tell me how did my boss get it? The only ones who knew about the video were you and me, and you were the only one who had a copy,” Stephanie said, not believing Dan.

“What’s wrong with you?” shot back Dan, now angry himself.  “First you emailed me and told me to mail it to you if I still had it, and now that I’ve done what you’ve asked, you’re complaining.”

“I never emailed you,” protested Stephanie.

“So then, you’re telling me that someone is using your name, email address and even your mailing address in California, just to get your video?”, asked Dan, still fuming from Stephanie’s accusations.

“All I can say is that I didn’t email you and I haven’t lived in California for almost four years,” replied Stephanie.

“Well, it’s not my problem is it?” Dan said, “As you said, we’ve been divorced for over seven years,” Dan added before he hung up on Stephanie.

Stephanie didn’t know it yet, but her problems were going to get worse.

##

As Stephanie was debating what had happened, and how she was going to deliver the news to Gregory Roberts, her fiancé, who was also Miami’s District Attorney, little did she know that someone else was listening in on the line during her telephone conversation with Dan.

After the conversation ended, the person then grabbed her cell phone and made a call.

“What’s next?” The private detective on the other end asked the caller.

“It’s time for the fiancé and his prominent in-laws to know about the video, don’t you think?” The caller said.  It wasn’t a question, it was an order, and the private detective knew it.  He liked the job that the caller had given him.  He had made more money in one month from the job than he would normally have made in a year or even two.  All the caller wanted was secrecy and someone who had the guts to bend the rules if it came down to it.  This job suited the private detective fine.  Everyone had a price, and the caller seemed to know his.

“Okay.  I’m on it.  I really thank you for giving me this gig,” the detective said to the caller.

“Don’t worry about it,” Stacy Marshall replied before hanging up.  “You have caused me so much grief Stephanie, and I’m going to destroy you,” Stacy said to herself before putting on a yellow bikini and diving into the swimming pool of her Fisher Island mansion in Miami Beach.

##

Even when polls showed that Gregory Roberts should cruise to victory in his reelection bid, Gregory was not taking anything for granted.  The election was two months away and he was still busy lining up new donors for his campaign. Not unlike many cosmopolitan cities in America, running a campaign in Miami could be quite expensive. Commercials would have to be run in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole, and campaign signs would also have to be in as many languages. Although he reveled in the spotlight that came with the job, this evening however, Gregory Roberts wanted to be alone.  He was having an awful day.

When he first ran for District Attorney, he promised the voters that his office would seek to crack down on violent drug-related crimes.  To some extent, his office had succeeded. As soon as he took office, his office vigorously prosecuted drug dealers and drug suppliers as he had promised, and put many behind bars. However, all his work could be for nothing due to the case of Miguel Chavez, a Panamanian-born American, considered the biggest drug distributor in Florida.

It was last year when the police, acting on a tip, got a search warrant to search Miguel Chavez’s home, where they discovered large pallets of cocaine with a street value in excess of seven million dollars.  Mr. Chavez, who was visiting Venezuela at the time of the search, was arrested as soon as his plane landed in Miami. Throughout the trial, Mr. Chavez claimed that he was innocent and that the drugs were planted by his enemies who wanted to frame him.

Gregory put his best prosecutors on the case to ensure that his office got the conviction that the City was seeking.  However, less than two hours ago, the jury had returned a verdict of not guilty.

As soon as the verdict was read, Gregory who was in the courtroom, stormed out and drove straight home, dejected.  He was still watching the evening news re-telling his office’s courtroom defeat, when the phone rang.

“Mother, can I call you later?  I’m having a bad day,” Gregory said, as soon as he picked up.

“I saw the news about the Miguel Chavez case and I’m sorry,” Mrs. Olivia Roberts said. ”However, I’ve something else to tell you.”

“Can it wait?  My day is not going well as you can tell.”

“Sorry son. It’s not going to get better. I have to talk to you about your fiancée.  She’s in a sex video.”

Chapter 2

It was early evening when Kevin Dupont left his house in Homestead heading to Stephanie’s condo in Key Largo.  Although Stephanie’s condo was only a thirty-six minute drive from Kevin’s home, the drive seemed to be lasting forever.  He did not know why Stephanie wanted to see him, but by the tone of her voice on the phone when she called him, he knew something was wrong.

“What’s wrong?” He kept asking. But Stephanie would only say that she was in trouble and needed his help.  The fact that Stephanie called him instead of Gregory made Kevin wonder whether the problem had to do with Stephanie’s love life.  He knew that he didn’t want to have anything to do with Stephanie’s love life. She broke his heart once when she chose Gregory over him, and although that was more than two years ago, the pain still burned as if it happened just yesterday. He was able to move on by staying away from Stephanie and Gregory. That’s why driving to Stephanie’s condo tonight only conjured mixed feelings for Kevin.
##

Although Kevin and Stephanie had remained friends, he had managed to steer clear of Stephanie by politely declining the few invitations that he had received to parties and other activities that Stephanie and Gregory hosted.  His decision to avoid Stephanie was a far cry from the early days, more than three years ago, when he first met Stephanie.

It was on a summer day, when he was invited to talk to some students at the Toussaint Elementary school about bullying, after a biracial kid who was teased constantly by his fellow classmates attempted to commit suicide, that Kevin first met Stephanie.

Although he was only twenty-eight years old at the time, Kevin was already the owner of a successful firm that provided telemarketing services to many of the large corporations in the United States.

When Stephanie called him at the office, a week earlier, to invite him to talk to the students about bullying, he thought it was a joke.

“Mrs. Marshall, I don’t know anything about bullying, so I’m not sure that I’m the right person to talk at the school on that subject,” he told her over the phone.

“I think you can help a great deal,” Stephanie insisted, telling him about the incident at the elementary school, and admitting that she found out about him when she saw his face on an issue of the Miami Trend Magazine, discussing his own biracial background. “The goal, Mr. Dupont, is to show kids that there are many biracial people who have survived bullying and now are successful businessmen and women.”

“But I’ve never been bullied,” Kevin argued, while thinking about his own struggles to come to terms with his biracial identity.

“Mr. Dupont, we are just trying to save lives and we believe you could help a great deal in that effort,” Stephanie said.

After a long pause, Kevin finally had said, “If talking to the kids may help…”

“Definitely,” Stephanie interrupted him, taking advantage of the opening.

##

When Kevin arrived at the school eight days later, he was surprised to discover that he was all wrong about how he imagined the school to be. He thought that the school would be more a collection of big buildings with narrow hallways, and classrooms facing each other on both sides of the hallways. Toussaint’s Elementary School could not have been more different. In front of the school sat a huge white house that looked more like a southern style mansion with four columns, surrounded by daisies that lined up along the sides of the property.  Placed between patches of daisies were marble benches for teachers and students to sit. Behind the lines of daisies were tall boxwood shrubs that grew all along the border of the property.  He learned later that the administration’s offices occupied the white house up front. Behind the main house, were several houses that seemed to be replicas of the first one. His speech was scheduled at 11:00 am, in the cafeteria, which was in the third house on his right. He was ten minutes early.

As he was walking toward the cafeteria, Kevin heard a female voice say, “You must be Mr. Dupont”, prompting Kevin to turn and look towards the bench where Stephanie was sitting.

She seemed around his age, and she was wearing a yellow dress that had the same vibrant color of the daisies that surrounded her bench. With the green boxwood behind her, and the landscape around her, she looked as if she was part of a beautiful painting.  She’s unusually striking for an assistant principal, thought Kevin, remembering the pudgy face of the large male assistant principal that he had when he was in middle school.

“Was it that obvious?” He asked, as she got up to greet him. In reality, Kevin knew that it was easy to pick him out in a crowd.  One only had to look at him to guess that he was born of multiracial parents, his skin tone too dark to be considered white, and too white to be considered black.  What people saw as a handsome exotic looking man, he saw early as someone struggling to accept that he did not fit into the usual racial category boxes.

“The suit gave you away,” Stephanie replied with a short laugh. “Our teachers don’t wear suits. Too formal.  By the way, I’m Stephanie. I’m very grateful that you could come.”

“Actually, me too. Call me Kevin,” he said, as he shook her right hand.

Her blond hair was cut very short, and except for a light lipstick, she was not wearing any makeup. “I was waiting for you to guide you to our cafeteria,” Stephanie said.

“Thanks. This place is beautiful,” Kevin told her, as he looked at the daisies.

“I agree,” Stephanie said.  “I fell in love with this place the first time I saw it.”

##

By the time Kevin left the school that day, Stephanie had convinced him to become a mentor to some of the students. Looking back now, Kevin still admired Stephanie’s devotion to help those who couldn’t help themselves.

Kevin was so deep in thought about the past and his first meeting with Stephanie, that he realized that he was at Stephanie’s condo building only when he saw the part-time security guard approach his vehicle at the gate.

Stephanie’s condo was located in a small gated community near the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park.    Besides the small man-made waterfall by the gate, there was nothing aesthetically pleasing about the condo development.  The gated community was made up of seventy-two condos housed in six two-story buildings.  Although it lacked artistic beauty, the development was centrally located near supermarkets and restaurants.  Most of the condo residents were wealthy retirees who used the condos as their second homes during the winter. At twenty-nine years of age, Stephanie was one of the few people in their twenties living in the community.

As Kevin knocked on the front door of Stephanie’s first floor condominium, he was still debating whether it was a good idea to be in the same room with Stephanie, given how strongly he had felt about her.

Stephanie was sitting on the sofa in the living room reading a twenty-eight-page document that she had received earlier in the evening when she heard Kevin knock. As soon as she opened the door and saw Kevin, her heart fluttered. When she had turned down Kevin’s profession of love, she had thought that Kevin reminded her too much of her ex-husband, too handsome for her to believe that he could be faithful to her or be counted upon when everything mattered.  However, seeing that he had come to see her tonight, even after what happened between them made Stephanie wonder if she had not made a mistake in believing that Kevin would be like her ex-husband.

When Stephanie opened the door to let him in, Kevin could tell that something was wrong. He had never seen Stephanie look so worried. Her pretty blue eyes looked red, as if she had been crying.  Except for her blond hair, that was now kept long, Stephanie looked the same as he remembered her.  However, her beautiful oval face seemed more tanned than usual.

“Are you okay, Stef?” Kevin asked.  Instead of responding, all of the events that happened to her that day came rushing to her mind, causing large drops of tears to roll down her cheeks.

Kevin had never seen Stephanie in this state.  He hugged her and held her in his arms for a moment.  Stephanie did not resist.  When he saw Stephanie that day at the school, sitting among the daisies, it was for him what his French-born mother called coup de foudre, (love at first sight). Now seeing Stephanie so sad, all Kevin wanted was to see her happy again.  He knew he would never be able to be with her, since she had already rejected his advances, but at least he could make sure that he helped her survive these tough times and overcome whatever problems she was going through.

Suddenly Stephanie separated herself from Kevin and wiped the tears still rolling down her face with the back her hand. “I’m sorry Kevin.  I had a bad day today and I need your help.”

Kevin then followed Stephanie to the sofa in the living room. Stephanie’s two-bedroom condo was tiny compared to the other condos in the building.  As you entered it, the kitchen and the dining area were on the left, and facing the kitchen on the right, were the small guest bedroom and guest bathroom.  Facing the entrance was the living room and beyond the living room was a spacious master bedroom.

“What’s wrong Stef?” asked Kevin.

Stephanie didn’t reply at first, and instead asked Kevin if he wanted a drink, which Kevin declined.

As soon as they both sat on the sofa, Kevin asked, “How is Gregory?  Did you talk to him?”

“I’ve been trying to reach him all day but no luck,” Stephanie replied.

“So tell me, what is it? How can I help?”

Stephanie paused for a long time. She wanted to make sure not to cry again. Then when she finally talked, she had a sarcastic tone in her voice.

“Where do I start?” she said. “First, I’ve been fired from my job because there is an x-rated video of myself out there that my ex-husband made on our wedding night when I had too much to drink.”  When Kevin did not react, Stephanie then picked up the document that she was reading from the living room table, and handed it to Kevin, “This is what I wanted to talk to you about.  I’m being sued for fifty million dollars.”