Chapter 18
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Survival quickly replaced vanity. Within a week, Cassandra’s hidden cash reserves were completely depleted. Hungry, exhausted, and desperate, she was forced to do the one thing she had sworn she would never do: look for menial labor.
Her resume was completely empty. She had never worked a day in her life, having coasted on her trust fund and her marriage. When she applied for office jobs, hiring managers recognized her name from the viral video of the gala and instantly tossed her application into the shredder. No one wanted to hire the toxic, abusive socialite who had enraged the Sterling Conglomerate.
Eventually, Cassandra found a job at a dilapidated, twenty-four-hour diner on the edge of the industrial district. The manager, a gruff man who didn't care about high society drama, hired her on the spot to scrub floors and wash dishes for minimum wage.
Cassandra Vance, the woman who used to wear custom Oscar de la Renta gowns and sip vintage Dom Pérignon, was now wearing a stained, ill-fitting gray apron. Her perfectly manicured nails were ruined, cracked and blistered from harsh industrial cleaning chemicals.
She spent her nights on her hands and knees, scrubbing grease off the diner's linoleum floors. Every time her knees ached, and every time a rude customer snapped at her for being too slow, the memory of her own cruelty haunted her.
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"Look at me when I speak!" a drunken customer yelled at her one evening when she accidentally spilled a drop of coffee on the table.
Cassandra flinched, the words echoing the exact phrase she had screamed at Elena. She grabbed a dirty rag and desperately wiped the table, tears of profound, bitter karma stinging her eyes. She finally understood the soul-crushing humiliation of being treated like an object, realizing too late the absolute horror of her own past behavior.
