"Breaking News" by Callum Hanson

[ShortStoryContest]

The following story has been selected as a featured runner-up in our 2015 short story contest (Contest Theme - "The Self-Destructiveness of Vengeance and Hate")

"Breaking News" by Callum Hanson

If Mike Diamond noticed the Los Angeles sun sinking below the horizon, he made no effort to gaze at it one last time. Diamond sat on the metal bed, staring up at the drab ceiling, pondering how is life had gone so wrong. Of course, he knew where it had started to go off the rails: the day he met that bitch, Suzanne.

He had been instantly captivated by her curvaceous figure and witty conversation. But that had been before she had met Justin. How had Diamond been so stupid to not question Justin Garcia when he rolled up in his Porsche claiming to be an old school friend of Suzanne? Of course she was getting off with him, it seemed so obvious now. But at the time, Diamond had never thought to do so much as raise an eyebrow. Why would he suspect his doting wife of being unfaithful? They had been happily married for 6 years, with all the luxuries of the perfect LA lifestyle. His status as the CEO of a multi-million media empire had afforded him a gargantuan house in the most exclusive district of Beverly Hills; he had been able to treat his wife to whatever she wanted: clothes, shoes, surgery, handbags and almost anything else she could think of. But apparently this was never enough for Suzanne, she always wanted more.

So while Diamond was out earning money for her to spend, maybe organising a film premiere or commissioning a new reality TV sensation, she would have her toy boy in their marital bed. But then he had caught on, he found the Calvin Klein underwear that had been left behind tucked under the bed, Suzanne constantly spraying herself with perfume to cover the smell of his Lynx Peace. And so determined to discover the truth about his wife’s infidelity, Diamond had installed a secret camera in the headboard and connected it to his laptop at work. Although he did not feel it necessary to learn the explicit details of his wife’s betrayal, the videos were enough to enrage Diamond.

There was no way his public image would survive a divorce, even though she was the guilty party. But then again he couldn’t let her carry on like that behind his back, pretending to be sweet and innocent whenever he returned home. Without realising it, the media mogul began planning how to murder his wife and get away with it.

The day Suzanne Diamond died began like any other in this area on the West Coast, the sun burst through the clouds and blazed down onto the assortment of supercars parked on pristine driveways. Mike Diamond took a day off work for ‘some quality time with his wife’, a rarity nowadays. At around 2 o’clock that afternoon, Suzanne Diamond stepped out onto the balcony she would eventually ‘fall’ from. It took her husband only 5 minutes to ensure that there was no one around and muster up the courage to dash out onto the balcony and shove his infidel wife over the balustrade. There was no way Suzanne would survive the 12ft drop onto the harsh concrete slabs of the driveway below. Death was instantaneous and she died contorted into an inhuman position with her new Versace sunglasses still perched on the bridge of her nose. Diamond again checked to see whether his crime had been witnessed before crying out, crocodile tears beginning to run down his cheeks.

The police had never suspected him at first; it was only until Suzanne’s connection to Justin Garcia was discovered that Diamond himself came under suspicion. It didn’t take long for the plot to unravel: Diamond had tried unsuccessfully to flee the country to Canada, Garcia had provided an infallible alibi for the day of Mrs Diamond’s death and then the camera in the bed was discovered by Crime Scene Investigators re-examining the bedroom. Diamond was arrested making a second attempt to flee the country, this time to Mexico, in his scarlet Lamborghini Aventador along State Route 111. After a laborious trial at the District Attorney’s Office, Mike Diamond was sentenced to 25 years in California State Prison for first degree murder.

Now in his year 5, Diamond had grown accustomed to the prison regime. From what scraps of information he got from the outside world, his business was bankrupt and his public image was irreversibly tarnished. But that was not what traumatised Diamond the most, it was the nightly visits. Every night without fail, Suzanne would appear in Diamond’s cell wearing exactly the same clothes she died in, including those Versace sunglasses which had always looked so good on her beautiful, blonde head. Suzanne would stand there crying, moaning at Diamond and rubbing her neck. The skin along her spine was perforated with the black, blue even purple stains of the bruising that killed her and her legs were never precisely straight.

“Mike? Mike? Say you’re sorry, Mike. Please, just say you’re sorry,” she would whimper into his ears. But Diamond would never apologise to hat woman. She had ruined his life. But she would return every night, just to get her apology.

The apology only came in the suicide note left by Mike Diamond after he hung himself in his prison cell, exactly 5 years after the murder of his wife. In the premeditation and implementation of his scheme, he had slowly been chipping away at himself; until death became his only option. The once world-famous tycoon with a media monopoly rivalling Branson and Murdoch was now a cold, naked corpse, swinging from the legs of the jumpsuit he had tied around his neck.

Although the death of Mike Diamond was widely publicised, no one felt sorry for the ex-magnate. To most people, the death of Diamond was justice for the death of his wife; it was a relief that even men in the public eye experienced the same system that governed them.

[Major]

You cannot use colloquialisms like 'getting off with him' in narrative, unless you are putting it in dialogue.
You have a nice idea, but you need to use a grammar programme and pay more attention to proper paragraphing. This could almost be a first chapter of something longer but you really need to polish your writing skills, sorry.