A/N: I've written a companion piece called Starting Over - Chapter Interludes for Chapters 8-9 from Ranger's POV, and I'll add occasional chapters to that when I feel like adding another POV to this story.

Chapter Eleven

Stephanie POV

After a day of performing searches at Rangeman, it was nearly time to meet with Mr. Manoso, the lawyer on loan to me from Rangeman. In the morning, I had worked on the searches mostly by myself, but Tank was seated next to me doing paperwork. He would point out helpful hints and look over what I had done, but he seemed satisfied with my results. After lunch, he moved me to the cubicle he had assigned, and I found it a lot easier to do the searches with two big monitors to look at. I had several files done and I handed all of them to him at once. He said he'd review them, and we'd go over his thoughts in the morning.

"Steph?"

"Yes, Tank?"

"Do you want me to sit in the meeting with the lawyer with you, or would you like to do it alone?"

I thought about it for a few moments. On one hand, if I got emotional, Tank could take over since he pretty much knew everything at this point. On the other hand, I hated to take up his time with my problems. "I'd love it if you would come, but if you have work to do, I am fine to meet him on my own."

"Steph, I can come. It's fine."

I smiled. "Okay then, thank you."

We went to the break room, where I poured a cup of tea for myself. He got some coffee, and then he showed me to the conference room on the second floor.

We waited for about five minutes before the door opened and Ranger came in, followed by an older man who greatly resembled Ranger. In fact, Ranger would look like this man in twenty or thirty years, so that would make him…

"Babe, this is my father, Ricardo Manoso. He's the Rangeman lawyer. Papa, this is Stephanie Orr." I blinked. No one told me the lawyer was Ranger's father. They called him Mr. Manoso, but no one had ever told me Ranger's last name.

I quickly stood and offered my hand. "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Manoso. He was a very handsome man in his late fifties or early sixties, with that stereotypical distinguished touch of grey at his temples. He had a very charming manner and when he spoke to me, I could detect a slight accent.

"It's so nice to meet you. What should I call you? I assume I shouldn't call you 'Babe,'" he said, his eyes twinkling as he looked over at his son.

I laughed. "You can call me Steph or Stephanie, please. I never want to be called Mrs. Orr ever again."

We sat down at the conference table across from each other, Tank at my side. Ranger excused himself after the introductions and Mr. Manoso smiled. "Stephanie, please tell me a little about your marriage and what has happened to bring you to this point."

I sighed. "We've been married for five years, but we were together for two years before that. We met at college, Rutgers. We live in New York City, and have one daughter, Zoë. Last week, I was bringing my daughter back from the aquarium and when I got home, I put her to bed. I heard some noises coming from my bedroom and I thought my husband Richard had come home early from work. Instead, I found him cheating on me with our nanny."

"I'm so sorry, Stephanie. That must have been quite a shock," he said sympathetically.

"It was. More shocking was his belief that after I took a two-week break here with Tank and Jeanne Ellen, my sister, that I will come back and we'll resume our lives together. Tank performed a background check on Richard, and discovered he has a second family in Greenwich, Connecticut. He married her very soon after we had our daughter, Zoë, and they have twin boys according to what Tank found."

He turned to Tank and asked, "do you have a copy of this file of information?"

Tank nodded. "I'll give you a copy after this meeting."

Mr. Manoso directed his gaze back to me. "Stephanie, while these are extremely distressing circumstances, they do qualify you for an at-fault divorce, and there is evidence to support your cause. Tank, how much evidence did you collect on Richard's Connecticut marriage?"

"Debra is the Connecticut wife's name. They had a ceremony in Greenwich, where she grew up, and became pregnant approximately a year after the ceremony. Their twins are just over two years old now. We only collected the preliminary information and have not determined how much time they currently spend together or the circumstances of their meeting and details leading up to their so-called marriage. There's a marriage certificate on file with the Connecticut courts."

I spent the next hour or two answering Mr. Manoso's questions about our marriage, finances, routines, and our daughter while he filled an entire pad of notes. At the end of the meeting, he shook my hand again, this time with one hand grasping mine and the other cupped on top of ours in sort of a hand sandwich. He was very comforting, and I found myself relaxing a tiny bit. I didn't think I'd be completely relaxed until it was all over, but I felt a little better that I had a lawyer and there was going to be a game plan.

"Stephanie, I will be in touch on Friday, and I'll have a plan in place for our path forwards. We can go over everything then. Sound good?"

I nodded. "Thank you. I'll look forward to your call."

He smiled and doffed his hat, then disappeared down the hall. I looked at Tank. "Should we maybe do some more research or find out more about this other woman, this Debra?"

"I was waiting for you to ask. We can definitely get all the intel you're going to need. I'll have a plan set by tomorrow."

With that decided, we went back to the fifth floor. He veered into his office, and I went back to the cubicle to pack up my stuff to head home.

When I got back to Tank and Gigi's house, which I was starting to think of as home after only a couple of days here, I was bowled over by the small body of my daughter barrelling into me to give me a big hug. "Hi, Zo-zo!" I said, lifting her and hugging her tightly. "How was your day?"

"Mommy, we made coloured glass!"

I looked up at Gigi questioningly. She clarified, "coloured cellophane project to put on windows."

I nodded, smiling. "Sounds like you had a great day, Zo-zo." She nodded happily. "We made cookies too. Mama, come have a cookie."

I let Zoë lead me to the kitchen by the hand until she ran ahead and grabbed a cookie from the plate on the kitchen table. She held it out to me proudly and I took it from her. Oatmeal chocolate chip. One of my favourite types of cookies ruined by oatmeal, but I took a bite anyway. Okay, it was rather good. I made yummy noises and Zoë beamed proudly. I finished the cookie and said, "thank you, Zo-zo." I picked her up and whirled her around, making her giggle. "You're such a good baker. That was a delicious cookie. From now on, you do all the cooking okay?" I teased.

She laughed again and said, "mama, I can't cook. I'm just a little girl!"

I held my forehead to hers and replied, "how about you just keep being the best girl in the world and I'll do the cooking, then."

She nodded firmly in agreement. "Auntie Gigi let me have one cookie and said I could have another one after dinner."

"I agree, I think that sounds like a great plan."

I set her back down on the floor and turned to my sister, who had followed us into the kitchen and snagged a cookie for herself. "I don't feel like cooking tonight. Want to go to Rossini's for dinner?"

"That sounds great. They have stuff Zo-zo will eat too?" I asked.

"Yep. Fun for the whole family. Maybe Tank can just meet us there instead of coming home first." She picked up her cell phone and texted Tank, then added, "that's set. He'll meet us there for six o'clock."

"Do we need to make reservations?" I wondered aloud.

"We can but they've usually got space. And six is sort of early for dinner."

I snorted. "Six is early? You do remember that restaurant is in the 'Burg, right?"

She rolled her eyes, but I noted she picked up her phone to look up their phone number. After she located it, she dialed and made a reservation for tonight at six.

We had a great time at the Italian restaurant. Though it was quite old, it was still charming and well-maintained. I ordered an old favourite, fettuccine alfredo with sausages, which tasted as delicious as I remembered.

Later that evening, after two stories and one song, Zoë was sleeping, and I made my way back over to Gigi's house. At dinner, we decided to discuss gathering more 'intel', as Tank called it, on my cheating, conniving soon-to-be ex-husband.

I knocked on their back door and entered, finding them sitting at the kitchen table. I poured myself a glass of white wine, then sat down with them.

Tank smiled. "Are you ready to hear my thoughts?"

I nodded. A part of me was sad that my marriage had come to this, but the bigger part of me was angry that I had wasted pretty much my entire adult life on this guy who had no respect for me or the vows we had taken. He gave me my daughter and for that, I will be forever grateful, but not grateful enough to waste any more time on him.

"I'd recommend surveillance to determine the answers to our main questions. One, how much time does he spend with her, and when. Two, I'd like to know more about his and their finances. Three, and this isn't a question, I want to determine how this will affect his law career. And finally, my fourth point. Steph, how far do you want to take this? Do you just want out with what is due to you? Do you want to burn his life to the ground?" Tank and Jeanne Ellen both looked at me expectantly.

I paused. What did I want? Do I want to blow his entire world apart? What would that mean for Zoë? Could I do that to her father? I let out a deep sigh. "I don't know what I want. I need to think about that. But we can gather the 'intel' in the meantime, right?" I grinned as I put air quotes around the word Tank introduced me to.

He smiled indulgently. "Sure, Steph. You can always decide later what you want to do."

We spent the next hour going over Tank's ideas for getting the information. He really needed me to do research at Rangeman, which he hated doing, and he said he'd rather be the one tailing Richard and getting the info we needed. I agreed, and a lot of the reason why was because I didn't know if I'd go apeshit if confronted with my husband and his other wife, and I needed to keep my focus on my daughter.

After we made our plan, I bade them both goodnight and went back to the pool house. I checked in on Zoë, assuring myself she was fine and asleep, and then went to bed myself.