Page 88 of Empowered
Chapter 24
Sarah’s detached, dreamlike state could not last forever. At some point, it had to puncture, like an old, sad balloon floating above the floor, trying to prove a point but knowing that it’s time was almost up.
That moment happened the next day, when Sarah went home after a restless night with Lucas.
He spent most of his morning on his phone with his divorce lawyer, arguing over whether it was worth pursuing custody now that he was associated with someone like Sarah. The insinuationAnd breaking up with her is not an optionhung over everyone’s heads.
Sarah went home feeling confident about her boyfriend and the ability for all of this to blow over soon. Lucas’s custody battle had grown more difficult, but that said more about Jill’s ethics than his own, honestly.
“I don’t care what you’ve done in the past,”he told her the night before.“You’re not a bad person. I love you. What else is there?”
She arrived home on the verge of a meltdown.
Not that she knew it yet. She wouldn’t know until much later, when everything was in full swing and she made brash, unfortunate decisions sure to ruin her life.
The first thing she saw was her mother in the midst of meeting Carly for the… what? Second? Third time? Nigel had taken her home to meet the folks once already, but Sarah didn’t think they had ran into each other since then. Not until now, when everyone silently acknowledged that the only reason Elizabeth was in town was so she could watch over her delinquent daughter. When Sarah entered, it was to interrupted silence that insinuated she was the current topic of ceased conversation.
“Don’t mind me,” she said, bypassing the living room and heading straight to her own. Maybe they stared at her because she wore the red wig again. It was the only way to sneak by the paparazzi looking for a quick, sexy story outside of her building.Fucking crows.She could see them from her bedroom window. That meant they could probably see her from a building across the street if they were brazen enough to go that route.
They were, weren’t they?
She closed her curtains and removed her wig. A message lit up on her phone. She assumed it was from Lucas, or perhaps one of her employers asking for an off the record favor.
It was neither.
They were Google alerts. Ones she set to her name a long time ago, when she was job hunting with Nigel right out of college and wanting to make sure her potential employers didn’t see anything unsavory. (Well, that was out the window now.) She had seen one or two over the past couple of days as her name came up in some lesser articles, but now?
Over two-thousand hits dumped into her Google profile.
“WHO IS SARAH CLAYBORN?”the first headline read.“EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT’S SORDID PAST REVEALED.”
“THIS WOMAN HAS SCREWED MORE MILLIONAIRES THAN YOU CAN NAME.”
“OUR BODY EXPERT WEIGHS IN ONTHATVIDEO – FINAL VERDICT? EH, COULD BE BETTER.”
“BILLIONAIRE HOTTIE LUCAS BLACKBOURNE REPORTEDLY DATING.”
“SEX AND DEPRAVITY PLAGUES THE UPPER ELITE. TELL US SOMETHING WE DON’T KNOW.”
Every article had Sarah’s full name and pictures of her outside of her Angel persona. Many of the so-called reporters were lazy enough to simply use the PI photos of her and Lucas during their getaway. A few, however, were slick enough to find photos of her from public records on friends’ social media accounts. Who knew Sarah had gone on that many outings over the years?
They didn’t bother her. Not at first.Turn off the phone and walk away.The internet would be a bigger hell hole than usual for the foreseeable future. Like Sarah kept telling herself, it would all blow over as soon as another scandal came along. She practically worked in this field when it came to keeping her employers’ images clean. If the press found out that Mr. and Mrs. Monroe still practiced (even doctor approved) BDSM while she was pregnant…
Sarah made the grave mistake of answering the door an hour later, however.
If anyone else had answered it, perhaps this all could have been avoided. Nigel would have quietly shut the door in the woman’s face, and Elizabeth would have slammed it with a few choice words that were sure to echo in the hallway. Either way, Sarah would not have had to deal with the bullshit that soon came.
After all, when there was a knock at the door, a person answered. That was good manners.
“Can I…”
A harsh hand landed on Sarah’s cheek.
“You fucking whore!”
Sarah was too shocked to respond right away. It took Nigel leaping up from the living room couch to keep the woman in the fur coat and $500 root touchup from clobbering Sarah on the head with French-tipped fists.
“I had to look you in the fucking face, you depraved bitch!” The woman was no match for Nigel, who promptly picked her up and removed her from their entryway. Elizabeth was on the phone with the police, a bottle of pepper spray in her hand.For God’s sake, Mum!The last thing this family needed was pepper spray flying in the house! “My God damned husband! You fucked my husband, slut!”
