The irony wasn’t lost on me. My mother-in-law, Eleanor, had spent every family dinner for 15 years telling everyone how I was just a secretary playing dress-up and that real Drexler women don’t need to work. She’d made me serve appetizers at her charity events while introducing me as Marcus’s wife, who has a little job downtown. Meanwhile, I’d been restructuring multi-billion-dollar operations, and my expertise was worth more than Eleanor’s entire real estate portfolio.
But I’d learned long ago that defending myself to her was pointless. Marcus would just sit there, silent as always, while his mother diminished everything I’d accomplished. That was about to change. I just didn’t know how dramatically.
When I walked out of Technova’s glass towers for the last time, my banker already processing the wire transfer for my new beginning, the Malibu property took my breath away the moment I saw it. Four bedrooms, floor-to-ceiling windows facing the Pacific, and a private beach access that made every sunrise feel like a personal gift. At $4.8 million, it was the most expensive thing I’d ever bought.
