The CEO Hit My Car And Mocked Me, Now My Injury Attorney Owns His Mansion

The television in the kitchen—ironically, a massive screen Preston had installed to watch stocks—flashed the breaking news. "Disgraced CEO Preston Sterling Hospitalized After Altercation in Federal Prison." The anchor spoke about prison news with breathless excitement. Apparently, his arrogance hadn't played well in the yard. He had tried to buy protection with money he no longer had.

I held my coffee cup, waiting for the surge of satisfaction. It didn't come. I didn't feel happy that he was hurt. I just felt... nothing. The hate that had fueled me for so long had evaporated, leaving space for something else.

I turned the TV off. The silence was peaceful. I walked out the French doors into the backyard. The expansive lawn, once manicured to an inch of its life by expensive landscape architecture firms, was now wilder, softer. I had planted roses. Real ones, with thorns.

"I don't need gardening therapy," I said to the wind. "I just need to grow something."

I knelt in the dirt, digging my hands into the soil. The soil didn't care about bank accounts or lawsuits. It just gave back what you put in. I planted a bulb, covering Preston’s legacy with fresh earth. Let him rot in the concrete box he built for himself. I was building a garden.