Page 59 of Empowered
“Yeah. That.” Sarah could flash him her tits and Lucas still wouldn’t be cheered up after sharing a story like that. “I filed for divorce. Part of the reason it took us so long to finalize the damn thing was because of custody. I was willing to give her whatever money she wanted, but I demanded full custody. My lawyers blew hers out of the courtroom, but by that time she had gone through rehab again and sobered up. Even I was almost moved when she claimed to be a changed woman who needed her son to stay on the right path. Since Victor is so young and we lived in different countries, the judge decided to give her custody with the most ridiculous visitation rights you’ve ever seen for me.”
“Hardly seems fair.”
He thought she was being sarcastic, but Sarah meant every word. Lucas probably didn’t have evidence of his wife’s rages and the possible danger to their child. He was a man who traveled all around the world for business, and she was a stay-at-home woman who hinged her recovery on taking care of her son. Bullshit.
“I’ve born it for the past year. Made sure they were well taken care of. I hold no animosity toward her family, and I don’t hold much against Jill, either. She’s stayed sober so far, but what if she slips again? Besides, Victor is going to be old enough for school soon, and quite frankly, I want him in Denmark. Unless I can convince my wife’s family to move back to Copenhagen, however, I have no choice but to fight for custody again.”
Sarah could be as discerning as Mr. Blackbourne. “That’s why you’re here. Working with Mr. Monroe is a convenient cover.”
“Damon’s doing me a favor. He doesn’t need my help or expertise. Nor do I need to be ignoring other business matters back in Europe. But I need to be here to build a case. I need to be near my son. When we end up back in a courtroom, I need him to be able to say that he knows me and loves me. I can’t do that if I’m in the middle of Europe most of the time.”
Sarah let out a low whistle. “Good luck with that. Seriously.”
They were quiet for a few minutes. Lucas ordered another round of drinks and pondered his life in the bottom of his bourbon glass. Sarah combed her flattened hair with her fingers and wondered what she would do if she were in his shoes.Guess I’ll never know, will I?The thought forced her brows to furrow.
Life was such bullshit.
Lucas reached across their table and lightly placed his hand on hers. A friendly gesture. Nothing more, she supposed. “You’re not the only one trying to make sense of things. Forgive me for thinking dating you might be a nice reprieve from everything going on my life.”
Was that an honest apology? Because Sarah had been thinking the same thing.“Sorry for using you as an escape to empower myself.”Now she couldn’t say something like that. Oh, well.
“I’m sincerely sorry for snooping where my nose didn’t belong. I honestly didn’t think I would uncover what I did about you.”
“You mean the affair I had with my boss’s father and getting knocked up with his baby?”
“And the other stuff that happened after that.”
“Yeah, well…” God, what should she say? “Shit fucks you up.”
“I’m still missing quite a bit of details, of course. Not that I need you to tell me them.”
“After you told me about your drunken ex-wife smacking you around?” Ouch. She probably shouldn’t have put it that way, but it was already out there. “Seems unfair to not share my own toxic drama.”
“You don’t have to.”
But she was already thinking about it. The casual sex with a man she was only somewhat attracted to. The dawning realization that she was pregnant. Telling the father that he might be having a second son when the first was thirty years old. Waking up to blood and fear. Being told she would never have children again. Going to her mother’s house for a month and feeling so empty that she wondered if she would ever reclaim her soul again.
That was when I first felt like a completely separate entity from my brother.He could never get pregnant. He could never know what it was like to lose a child growing inside of him. He couldn’t be taken advantage of like that. The sexism Sarah faced in the world had felt so miniscule when she had her brother to lean on for most of her life. A fact of reality. A “oh, yes, that exists, doesn’t it?” state of mind she could no longer embrace.
Sarah was alone in that. Her thoughts, her fears, her crippling feelings… only she could overcome them, if she chose to live that long.
When she slowly opened up about those experiences, she felt like she was talking about someone else. Some other Sarah who went through unspeakable tragedy and pretended nothing happened, because what could she do? She couldn’t shut down. She couldn’t retreat from the world. Her brother lost his job trying to protect her from the man who hurt her. She had to keep working in a highly competitive job. Mr. Monroe had already fired her once. It was Mrs. Monroe who re-hired her.
Life went on. Sarah found her ways to cope in her off-time. What else could she do?
So she told him everything. The coercion, when she was so convinced that she was in control of the situation with Russell Monroe. The pregnancy. The way that man lured her into comfort and promised her whatever she wanted, aside from marriage, of course. Sarah was fine with that. She would take her baby and live a peaceful life somewhere. Maybe Nigel would come with them and be the awesome uncle he was born to be. Sarah didn’t need a husband when she had a twin brother for people to make incest jokes about.
“I thought of it as our baby.”
The tears slowly fell when she remembered what he said two nights ago.
The miscarriage. The doctor’s diagnosis. Retreating from the world and wishing her mother knew how to make it better. Finding out months later that her brother was pushing pregnant Alice Monroe down stairs because Russell was a eugenic who didn’t want her – or Sarah, for that matter – tainting his gene pool. If Nigel hadn’t agreed to do the horrible thing, Russell threatened to rape, beat, whatever he could think of regarding Sarah’s bodily autonomy. He knew how to get to Nigel. That’s what a manipulative sociopath like him did.
Only then did Sarah also find out Russell’s roll in her miscarriage and infertility.
“He drugged my drink – that I shouldn’t have even been having, but I couldn’t help myself – and had his bodyguard beat me when I was passed out. He couldn’t even do it himself.” She swallowed the last of her drink. “Sometimes I wonder how the man did it. Did he use his fists? Punched my stomach until I started to bleed from my cunt? Or did he use a small club? Did Russell watch to make sure the job was done? Or did he leave the room to go have a drink with his son? How much of a coward was he, really?”
“My God, Sarah.” Lucas looked like he was going to be sick. “I’m so sorry.”
