The Fight Within Read Online Free PDF Page B

damnedest to keep a smile on her face, when all she truly wanted to do was scream a series of colorful expletives.
    “Mr. Owens, please take a look at the other mockups, and share your thoughts. I need to take this call but will only be a minute.”
    “Fine, but please hurry. I don’t have much time.” He huffed as he averted eye contact, keeping his sights upon the majestic and obscenely expensive prototypes. She turned her back, her heels clicking noisily along the floor as she carted herself away, out of earshot of any wandering eavesdroppers in the vast warehouse.
    “I’ve asked you to not call me during working hours unless it is an emergency,” she began, not wasting a second with the unceremonious greeting. She’d had about enough of Jackson, and had made that clear without a shadow of a doubt; however, he still pushed against her clearly defined boundaries as if they were designed to be overthrown, stomped on, and pulverized.
    “Look, I need you to keep the kids this weekend,” he panted, as if his mere call was a favor. She could envision the man twirling about in his oversized leather chair behind his desk, the big window to his back, showcasing all of Manhattan as if he were some urban God. “Something has come up.”
    “You mean something has come down , right? Like another whore’s panties on your behalf.”
    “Not this shit again…”
    “No, this is your weekend to spend time with your children, Jackson! Remember them? You have a sixteen-year-old son and a fourteen-year-old daughter! Would you like to see their birth certificates to help jog your memory?”
    “I don’t need this crap right now, Treasure. I can’t have them over this weekend, okay?! I have a really big case to prepare for on Monday, and I will be working on it the entire time, non-stop. This is serious.”
    “And so are Brian and Asia. This is the third time in a row you’ve come up with an excuse that surrounded work. Where are your priorities? You haven’t seen them in two months! Do you even know what’s going on with your kids anymore, Jackson? Do you even care ?!” She quickly glanced over her shoulder, hoping and praying her raised voice didn’t meet the sensitive ears of Mr. Owens, though he seemed a million miles away in thought, and distance.
    “I’m working like this to keep you and the kids in that damn house! With as much alimony as I’m payin’ you, you’d think you could cut me a damn break.”
    “You really are unbelievable! Alimony can’t replace a hug from a father to his children. Fine, Jackson, skip out on your children again. I’m done lying to them on your behalf, though. I’ve been covering for you, and now I’m done with that!” She quickly ended the call and made her way back over to her client who was now twirling one end of his mustache, reducing it to paper-thin consistency, angled into a tight, pointy tip.
    “I’ve made a decision,” he said sternly as he rocked back on his thick, shiny brown heels, his hands pushed deeply into his pants pockets as if he were some world-renowned speaker in a jam-packed auditorium.
    “Wonderful.” She smiled from ear to ear, folding her hands dexterously over her milk chocolate cake colored skirt. “Which one did you choose?”
    “None of them. I wish to see the quartzite tile catalog!” he declared, throwing his hands in the air as if this was something she’d wished to hear.
    Her entire body burned as if the bowels of hell became her internal inferno. The heat began its rapid trek from the bottom of her freshly pedicured feet until the blaze rushed to her ears, scorching them so, no doubt turning them freshly pricked blood red. Surely, profuse swirls of smoke were tumbling out of her eardrums, as if she were some cartoon maniac that had transformed into the Tasmanian Devil. She’d spent literally hours with the man, going over this and that, trying to speak reason into him, but she finally gave into his demands at his insistence that