Across the street, she caught a glimpse of a familiar figure stepping out of a towncar and heading toward the entrance of her former home. It was Wesley’s new girlfriend, and she was wearing the custom-made cashmere coat that Cassie had bought for herself just last month.
The first week of Cassie’s new life was spent in a grimy, flickering motel near the industrial district of Pittsburgh. The walls were so thin that she could hear every heated argument and every television show from the surrounding rooms at all hours of the night.
She used a portion of her limited cash to buy a cracked, second-hand phone at a pawn shop and an ancient laptop that groaned every time it tried to connect to the internet. Cassie spent fourteen hours a day sending out resumes for roles as an administrative assistant, a wedding planner, or a receptionist.
Not a single person responded to her applications because her name had been dragged through the mud by Wesley’s well-paid public relations team. The local tabloids were filled with cruel headlines mocking her as the socialite who had never worked a day in her life and was finally getting her comeuppance.