TRASH HUSBAND TO TRILLIONAIRE EX-HUSBAND

Chapter eight: How dare he!

Hannah shifted on her seat, wine glass froze in her hand.

 "Benjamin? What did he do?" 

 "He's hooking up with another woman Hannah!" Margaret screamed, vein bulging on her temple. "With your money. He's showing off with cloth you bought him.You need to stop feeding that trash man, he's getting arrogant and he's going to ruin your public reputation. He insulted me! He attacked me!

 "Benjamin?" Hannah repeated with a mix of surprise and more confusion.

 "You heard me, Hannah." Margaret blurted, anger radiating off her.

 Hannah was confused, bordered between believing a friend’s narration or believing that the man she'd married for four years attacked a woman first. 

 Four years in the marriage, Benjamin had never raised his voice at her at any point, he'd never spoken to her with a harsh tone even.

 "Benjamin can be anything— call him any names you like but attack a woman?" She shook her head in firm disapproval.

 "Relax Margaret," Lizzy chipped in calmly, eyes steady on Margaret who was still boiling with anger. "Tell us exactly how it happened."

 They nodded.

 Margaret narrated everything that happened with clarity in anger and bitterness, spinning the moment Benjamin stepped up to make payment for Cassandra, saying he paid another woman to hook up.

  Hannah laughed. An amusing crackle.

 "Benjamin bought two bottles of champagne? You must have seen someone else, Margaret." 

 "I'm not blind, Hannah! It was him with Aria at Velvet Ember! He spent $2000!"

 "Again? Velvet Ember is one of the most expensive places in the city. Do you know, Margaret?" Lizzy cut through her words in disbelief. "C'mon Maggy we all know Benjamin can't even afford a bottle of water sold at Velvet Ember." 

 "I'm not lying!" Margaret's voice rose to a Shriek now frustrated no one was believing her narrative. "It was right in front of me. He made a transfer of $2000 with a black card on a whim!"

 Silence.

 They stared at Margaret with an expression that suggested they understood everything she'd just said but they couldn't come to believe it.

 Lizzy breathed through her nose. "Margaret. Are you really sure it was Benjamin you saw at Velvet Ember?"

 "He insulted me. Humiliated me! I could have torn him apart but  because of Hannah."

 "You should have." Rosalie said.

"What do you mean?" Margaret asked. She turned her look to Hannah when she didn't get any response from Rosalie.  "What did she mean by that?"

 "Benjamin filed divorce." Hannah said quietly.

 Margaret's eyes dilated in shock.

 "And he's already hooking up with another woman with your money?!!"

 "I told you he had a sleazy plan with the divorce. Men like him have nothing to lose so would he initiated a divorce if not because of your money." Lizzy said, her lips twisted in distaste. " He's coming at your friends now to force you into signing away the divorce benefit."

 Hannah sat still, surrounded by suggestions that tainted husband...ex-husband in a bad image because they believed he was attacking friends to squeeze divorce benefits from her.

 Benjamin. 

 Her finger curled in anger under the table.

 She thought he was childish earlier but he's even stupid thinking he could attack her friends to make her succumb to signing away  the divorce benefit away to him.

 "Excuse me, ladies." She rose to her feet and strutted out of the restaurant. She stepped into a quiet corner where she pulled out her phone and dialed Benjamin's number.

 The phone rang away the first time.

 Again, she dialed.

 The phone rang out the second time. Benjamin..her husband in the past could have picked up at the first time. Frustration crawled at her chest with anger.

 At the third dial, Benjamin picked up the call.

 "Took you long to respond." She hissed into the speaker. "You're angry because you couldn't handle the divorce you initiated? How childish of you, Benjamin." 

 "I don't know what you're talking about, Mrs. Cross." Benjamin's voice was blunt. No attachment. No informality. Just clinical detachment wrapped in steel.

 The impassive response from Benjamin struck Hannah like a physical blow. Her fingers tightened around the case so hard her knuckle cracked.

 "Don't act dumb with me, Ben." She sneered. "You attacked Margaret. It is even more shameless to be seen in public hooking up with another woman behind my back."

 Benjamin paused on the other end for two seconds as understanding settled in his mind.

 "Is that what you believe?" 

 "I'm asking!" 

 "You asked." Benjamin said, his voice flat. "I decide if I should answer or not." He said.

 "Your carefreeness is ruining my public reputation."

 "You should believe anything you wished to believe, Hannah." He clipped. "I have no business with you anymore. Whatever I do from this moment has nothing to do with you."

 Hannah's teeth clenched. "You— you think you can handle Aria's responsibility?" She scoffed, throwing her hair behind her back. "You're nothing without me, Benjamin. You can't live without me."

 Benjamin chuckled at her last statement that shouldn't have been sound like an amusing line in the past but a romance clause.

 "Anything you say, Hannah." 

 "You—"

 The call connection snapped.

 Margaret stood there without moving, shaking with anger as her carefully composed pride wobbled.

 She swung the phone across the corridor where it clattered against the wall.

 "How dare he!"