LITMIR.BIZ

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organizations had an advertising budget. Beaumont Brewery put their name front and center for a year, getting television coverage, interviews and even fashion bloggers.

      She had finished her yogurt and wiped down her desk by the time Chadwick came back. He looked terrible—head down, hands jammed into his pockets, shoulders slumped. Oh, no. She didn’t even have to ask to know that the meeting had not gone according to plan.

      He paused in front of her desk. The effort to raise his head and meet her eyes seemed to take a lot out of him. Serena gasped in surprise at how lost he looked. His eyes were rimmed in red, like he hadn’t slept in days.

      She wanted to go to him—put her arms around him and tell him it’d all work out. That’s what her mom had always done when things didn’t pan out, when Dad lost his job or they had to move again because they couldn’t make the rent.

      The only problem was, she’d never believed it when she was a kid. And now, as an adult with a failed long-term relationship under her belt and a baby on the way?

      No, she wouldn’t believe it either.

      God, the raw pain in his eyes was like a slap in the face. She didn’t know what to do, what to say. Maybe she should just do nothing. To try and comfort him might be to cross the line they’d crossed on Monday.

      Chadwick gave a little nod with his head, as if he were agreeing they shouldn’t cross that line again. Then he dropped his head, muttered, “Hold my calls,” and trudged into his office.

      Defeated. That’s what he was. Beaten. Seeing him like that was unnerving—and that was being generous. Chadwick Beaumont did not lose in the business world. He didn’t always get every single thing he wanted, but he never walked away from a negotiation, a press conference—anything—looking like he’d lost the battle and the war.

      She sat at her desk for a moment, too stunned to do much of anything. What had happened? What on earth would leave him that crushed?

      Maybe it was the hormones. Maybe it was employee loyalty. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, she found herself on her feet and walking into his office without even knocking.

      Chadwick was sitting at his desk. He had his head in his hands as if they were the only things supporting his entire weight. He’d shed his suit coat, and he looked smaller for having done it.

      When she shut the door behind her, he started talking but he didn’t lift his head. “She won’t sign off on it. She wants more money. Everything is finalized except how much alimony she gets.”

      “How much does she want?” Serena had no business asking, but she did anyway.

      “Two hundred and fifty.” The way he said it was like Serena was pulling an arrow out of his back.

      She blinked at him. “Two hundred and fifty dollars?” She knew that wasn’t the right answer. Chadwick could afford that. But the only other option was...

      “Thousand. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

      “A year?”

      “A month. She wants three million a year. For the rest of her life. Or she won’t sign.”

      “But that’s—that’s insane! No one needs that much to live!” The words burst out of her a bit louder than she meant them to, but seriously? Three million dollars a year forever? Serena wouldn’t earn that much in her entire lifetime!

      Chadwick looked up, a mean smile on his face. “It’s not about the money. She just wants to ruin me. If I could pay that much until the end of time, she’d double her request. Triple it, if she thought it would hurt me.”

      “But why?”

      “I don’t know. I never cheated on her, never did anything to hurt her. I tried...” His words trailed off as he buried his face in his hands.

      “Can’t you just buy her out? Make her an up-front offer she can’t refuse?” Serena had seen him do that before, with a micro-brew whose beers were undercutting Beaumont’s Percheron Drafts line of beers. Chadwick had let negotiations drag on for almost a week, wearing down the competitors. Then he walked in with a lump sum that no sane person would walk away from, no matter how much they cared about the “integrity” of their beer. Everyone had a price, after all.

      “I don’t have a hundred million lying around. It’s tied up in investments, property...the horses.” He said this last bit with an edge, as if the company mascots, the Percherons, were just a thorn in his side.

      “But—you have a pre-nup, right?”

      “Of course I have a pre-nup,” he snapped. She flinched, but he immediately sagged in defeat again. “I watched my father get married and divorced four times before he died. There’s no way I wouldn’t have a pre-nup.”

      “Then how can she do that?”

      “Because.” He grabbed at his short hair and pulled. “Because I was stupid and thought I was in love. I thought I had to prove to her that I trusted her. That I wasn’t my father. She gets half of what I earned during our marriage. That’s about twenty-eight million. She can’t touch the family fortune or any of the property—none of that. But...”

      Serena felt the blood drain from her face. “Twenty-eight million?” That was the kind of money people in her world only got when they won the lottery. “But?”

      “My lawyers had put in a clause limiting how much alimony would be paid, for how long. The length of the marriage, fifty thousand a month. And I told them to take it out. Because I wouldn’t need it. Like an idiot.” That last bit came out so harshly—he really did believe that this was his fault.

      She did some quick math. Chadwick had gotten married near the end of her first year at Beaumont Brewery—her internship year. The wedding had been a big thing, obviously, and the brewery had even come out with a limited-edition beer to mark the occasion.

      That was slightly more than eight years ago. Fifty thousand—still an absolutely insane number—times twelve months times eight years was...only $4.8 million. And somehow, that and another $28 million wasn’t enough. “Isn’t there...anything you can do?”

      “I offered her one fifty a month for twenty years. She laughed. Laughed.” Serena knew the raw desperation in his voice.

      Oh, sure, she’d never been in the position of losing a fortune, but there’d been plenty of desperate times back when she was growing up.

      Back then, she’d just wanted to know it was going to be okay. They’d have a safe place to sleep and a big meal to eat. To know she’d have both of those things the next day, too.

      She never got those assurances. Her mother would hum “One Day At a Time” over and over when they had to stuff their meager things into grocery bags and move again. Then they finally got the little trailer and didn’t have to move any more—but didn’t have enough to pay for both electricity and water.

      One day at a time was a damn fine sentiment, but it didn’t put food on the table and clothes on her back.

      There had to be a way to appease Chadwick’s ex, but Serena had no idea what it was. Such battles were beyond her. She might have worked for Chadwick Beaumont for over seven years, might have spent her days in this office, might have attended balls and galas, but this was not her world. She didn’t know what to say about someone who wasn’t happy with just $32.8 million.

      But she could sympathize with staring at a bill that could never be paid—a bill that, no matter how hard your mom worked as a waitress at the diner or how many overtime shifts as a janitor your dad pulled, would never, ever end. Not even when her parents had filed for bankruptcy had it truly ended, because whatever little credit they’d been able to use as a cushion disappeared. She loved her parents—and they loved each other—but the sinking hopelessness that went with never having enough...

      That’s not how she was going to live. She didn’t wish it on anyone, but especially not on Chadwick.

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