CHAPTER TWO
COURTNEY
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Rude.
Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised. Zander Sterling is just another successful, wealthy man in this town who treats women with disrespect.
I know what he thinks of me.
I’m a nobody who came to Manhattan with nothing and married a billionaire.
He’s right.
I am all of those things.
Except I didn’t marry Adam for his money, although in some ways I did.
I grew up poor in Arizona, wondering every day if there would be food at dinner, if I’d get in trouble for not having the textbooks at school, and patching up my shoes so I wasn’t made fun of.
Being malnourished makes it really hard to learn, think straight, and get good marks. I did okay. But it didn’t matter, I wasn’t going to college anyway. I wasn’t that smart, and my parents didn’t have a college fund for me.
Hell, we could barely afford food and rent.
The number of times I thought we might lose our home kept me awake at night. It scared me. When I asked, after the landlord came knocking when I was about ten, and we all hid behind the sofa, I was slapped. Hard.
So, I never did that again.
My parents were functioning addicts, I guess you’d call them.
In some ways, when I left school, I was happy. I began working at the local Walmart, and the day I got my first paycheck, I felt giddy. I made plans to get my own place and thought about what I could do with my life. Perhaps I could study. Travel. Buy a home one day.
I created a Pinterest board with how I saw my life: married with a baby, one of those entrepreneurial women who juggled life and carried a big handbag. Posting photos on social media with her husband and kids from their tropical vacation....
Until the second month into my new job, when I came downstairs, plaiting my hair, and Mom was sitting in the kitchen spooning cereal into her mouth.
I stopped dead.
“What are you doing?” She’d only had her cleaning job for three months and was usually well gone by the time I left the house.
“My baby girl is working now, so I can retire,” she announced, taking another mouthful.
I felt my stomach flip.
No, no, no, no.
“Mom, that’s not how this works. I am saving money to move out. To...do things. Maybe go to college.”
She snorted, choking on her cereal. “Oh honey. You barely made it through high school. Your grades were average at best. No college is taking you. I raised you and paid for everything for eighteen years. You got a job. I’m proud. But Momma needs a break.”
A break?
Meaning, she thought I should pay for everything. My dreams began to shatter before me.
My father had walked in then, yawning and scratching his bare stomach. I hesitated, waiting to see how his mood was. Coming down off drugs made him unpredictable, and while he never truly hurt me, he yelled. Some days he was fine. Others, not at all. I’d walked around on eggshells most of my life.
It didn’t make me meek so much as highly alert.
When I was little, I asked what drugs he took, but I knew he never answered me honestly.
“It’s just dope, baby girl.” He’d ruffle my hair. “When you grow up and have to deal with this hard world, you’ll understand why.”
I hated being called baby girl.
“Dad!” I yelled, slamming the pantry door. “Mom quit her job. I can’t pay the rent from now on, that’s not fair.”
“Life ain’t fair.” He muttered, then opened the fridge. “Where the hell is the cream?”
“All out.” Mom shrugged.
I stared at them both as they seemed to be completely uninterested in the situation. But I didn’t drop it.
“I’m trying to save so I can move out. Get my own place. You can’t expect me to support you and pay for everything for the rest of your life. Dad, you don’t have a job right now. I can’t pay for all three of us. There isn’t enough money. I don’t earn enough money.”
I began spiraling. Fear and panic settled heavily on my chest as a new future began to build inside my mind. One I did not want.
Dad shut the fridge door with force and shared an annoyed look with my mother. The two of them had always stuck together through thick and thin as if I were a burden.
I knew in that moment I wouldn’t win the argument.
And I didn’t.
I loved both my parents despite their addictions and the way they behaved, but that day I rode the bus to work with my headphones on and let the tears fall.
It was the first time I let myself see them for what they were: broke addicts who were never going to change.
It caused me enormous pain to admit that my mother had left her job to live off my earnings, knowing it would stop me having any kind of future.
Selfish.
That’s what she was.
When I was hungry and needed new shoes, she’d spent her money on bottles of wine instead of feeding her child.
As rent became due, Dad bought drugs.
No kid owes their parents for raising them and certainly not for neglecting them.
I had no idea where my sense of survival came from, but that morning on the bus, I knew I had to make some terrifying choices.
“Your mother has worked hard all her life to look after you, Court. Least you can do is let her have some time off.” Dad had said that morning when he joined Mom at the kitchen table.
Just thinking about it made me feel sick to the stomach. I’d be stuck in a low-paying job, stuck at home with the two of them leeching off me and never able to make anything of myself.
It was as if they’d waited eighteen years for me to be their retirement plan.
With no qualifications or job experience, except for the short time I’d worked at Walmart, I saw no path out of this.
So I prayed.
Which is what you do when you’re out of ideas.
That night I lay in bed and did a calculation of the money I had in my bank account and purse. Then made a life-changing decision.
I was going to New York.
I wanted to see Times Square and Broadway. I wanted to see the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and walk through Central Park.
Dreams could come true in New York City, and I wasn’t staying in Arizona to let my addict parents leech off me.
That was abuse.
I deserved more.
I wanted more...I wanted my Pinterest dream.
Sitting in the offices of Sterling Obsidian & Partners to discuss my divorce just over six years was not the dream. Nor were the events that led me to this point.
But here we are.
Sure, I’m rich now, or I will be soon. Technically, I am. New York state dictates that half the marital assets are split when you divorce, but Adam has already told me he’ll fight so I get nothing.
Which is disgusting, given what he did to me.
I haven’t told anyone but some days I wish I had. The shame is also mine, and that keeps my lips closed.
Maybe if you did what I told you to do, we’d have a child. I’d have an heir.
“It might not be me!” I yelled back that fateful day and then regretted it.
“You bitch!” Adam screamed.
I barely remember the rest. The pain, the ungodly pain, and then falling to the floor. The feel of his large shoe kicking me in my empty womb, the piercing sense of my hair being torn out as he ripped me off the ground.
The smell of anger on his breath as he spat in my face.
Then blackness.
Adam wanted children sooner than I did. He’s ten years older, so I understood. I had no idea that he would turn into a monster, though, when we struggled to get pregnant.
After that day, I knew I had to leave.
The fear of becoming homeless made me hesitate, but once my face and body healed, I moved the money I needed from Adam’s account and left.
Then searched for a divorce lawyer.
“Get the best,” Kylie, my best friend and a supermodel, told me. “Adam will eat you alive if you don’t.”
I’d heard Zander Sterling referred to as the Shark of Sixth Avenue and figured if he’s as good as his reputation, then he won’t let a man like Adam Blackmore push him around.
As he had done to me. Marrying him hadn’t been the dream I thought it would be. He’d never let me study, never given me access to our money, and controlled who I could be friends with.
Now I had the opportunity to be free.
Truly free.
If that means I have to put up with this rude and obnoxious lawyer, then so be it.
He might be one of the most desired bachelors in Manhattan and have a very striking jawline and the bluest eyes I’ve seen, but I only want one thing from him.
To be the shark he’s claimed to be and get me my money.
I run my hands over the skirt of my Karen Walker dress and slowly glance around the table.
It’s time to take my power back.
“Thank you, Mr. Sterling, yes, let’s start by you all telling me who you are and your qualifications.”
These men are not in charge.
I am.
Zander’s nostrils flare.
Most people would’ve missed it, but I don’t. Growing up walking on eggshells, you notice everything.
Every fucking thing.