VALENTINA
Iwondered at what point the man across from me had stopped listening—or if he’d ever started. Maybe he was just letting me talk, nodding along every couple of seconds so I’d believe he could actually help or at the very least try.
But to my utter disappointment, he couldn’t. Instead he told me everything I already knew.
“There’s really nothing else I can do besides remarry? I thought you were good at this job. Aren’t you supposed to—oh, I don’t know, take him to court or something?”
The bored lawyer looked at me from across the other side of the table as if he’d rather be anywhere else but here, listening to me ask him the same question every time I talked myself into a circle full of hope. His suit looked cheap. Polyester, maybe, which I’d expect from a free government-assisted lawyer’s office.
With a sigh, he looked down at his papers and then back at me. “Yes, Ms. De La Vega, those are the terms that were set.”
I stared at him. “And you don’t see the problem with that?”
“It’s not about whether or not I see a problem,” he said as he pushed his plastic glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “The terms of the trust were set by your late husband. They’re legally binding.”
It was wrong to hit someone in the face because they weren’t telling you what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it? Still, I felt tempted to do it anyway.
“A dead man has more of a say than me—that’s what you’re saying?”
“That’s ...” He cleared his throat. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he said in a strained voice.
“What if I don’t get married? What happens then?”
“The funds remain in the trust,” he explained. “Indefinitely.”
“Indefinitely,” I echoed. “So Romano gets to hold onto my money forever, and I just have to sit here like a good little girl and play along?”
He hesitated. “The trustee’s role is to manage the funds according to the terms of the trust. If those terms aren’t met?—”
“I get nothing,” I finished for him. “Great. Perfect.”
He didn’t argue.
“Ms. De La Vega?—”
I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder, cutting him off. “Thanks for the chat.”
I left the lawyer’s office with my coat barely pulled on, heels clicking against the pavement.
Waste of time.
I should have known better. Government-funded, bottom-of-the-barrel legal aid. Some guy with a receding hairline and coffee stains on his shirt telling me, in so many words, that I was screwed. That my money wasn’tmymoney unless I played by Max’s rules. That the best option—theonlyoption—was to get sober, get remarried, and hope Max didn’t decide to move the goalposts again.
I hadn’t even been listening by the end of it. I was just nodding along, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from telling him exactly how useless he was before walking out.
I couldn’t keep getting by like this, blackmailing the poor bastard at AA to sign my attendance slips, pretending to be sober when I knew damn well it was only a matter of time before someone pissed me off enough that I’d need a drink to cool the fire in my veins.
I knew I couldn’t keep it up, but I would, because I was still Valentina.
I could fake it for a while, sure, but then something would happen—a look, a word, a particularly bad day—and I’d feel it. That itch, that pull, that slow, creeping,desperateneed for something to take the edge off.
And Max expected me to stay clean long enough to get married?
Ridiculous.
As if marriage was some magical cure for addiction. As if a wedding ring would somehow rewire my brain and make me the kind of woman who sipped herbal tea and did yoga at sunrise instead of spiraling the second the walls closed in.
But I guess this was how they kept wives in the family.
