“So,” Hannah sighed, making herself as comfortable as possible in the lumpy chair, “this is your place?”

Dunstan gazed around the room, trying to see it through her eyes. It’s a hovel. It looks like a place where dignity would crawl under the floorboards and die, he thought bitterly. Even more so, compared to where I used to live. That place was a f**king palace in comparison, babe.

Aloud, he merely said, “Yep, this is my place.”

Hannah rose and examined the family portrait hanging nearby. “This is your wife and kid?” she asked.


“Yeah. Angela… and my kid’s Mona. She’s almost fourteen.”

“So, where are they?”

Dunstan frowned a little, eyes darkening. “They left. Angela took Mona with her, and they left me.”

“That’s terrible!” Hannah gasped. “Why would that happen?”

“It’s a long story, like I said,” Dunstan responded. “I should start at the beginning. As you know, I’m from the prestigious Diggory family. But I have a good bit of money on my mom’s side. She always talked about how she was related to this Hollywood bigwig… Dex Newman, I think she said his name was. Pretty fake-sounding name, probably a stage name. But anyway, this Newman guy apparently was a serious sleaze, married several times, weird stuff happened to the women he married, had a few kids… stuff like that. Mom said I looked kinda like him. I don’t see any resemblance.”

“So, if you’re from so much money, what are you doing in this hellhole?” Hannah asked.

“I’m getting to that. So, I was raised in some major luxury for a big chunk of my life. And then the downfall began.”

“Downfall?”


“I met these two girls, cousins. They were ‘fixer-uppers,’ I guess you could say. One of them was this naïve rich girl who’d pretty much always been sheltered from bad stuff. The other was this sarcastic, bitter hag who hated me, for some inexplicable reason. Cute, though. She hated that her older cousin was involved with me and tried to make trouble between us. Maybe she was jealous that I wasn’t into a kid like her.”

“Perhaps.”


“Well, one way, I met this girl, Angela. Beautiful, well-mannered, ladylike. At least, that’s what she fooled me into believing.”

“Angela… your wife?”

“Yeah. She turned out to be this cruel, manipulative monster. She even held me at gunpoint once. And then she revealed she was pregnant, claimed it was my kid. She threatened to drag my name through the dirt and take me for all I had if I refused to marry her. So, I did, albeit reluctantly. My father was furious and disowned me. Kicked me out the house, fired me from my job, the works. So, Angela and I moved here, into this... this shack. When Mona was born, I thought maybe then Angela would leave, since she had what she wanted. But, no such luck. She said if I divorced her, she’d sue for child support.”

“So, then, why did would she leave?” Hannah asked.

“She met another man.”

Author's Note: Thanks, Montridge! I knew I'd be able to work it in somehow.