by Shain Rose
“Of course, of course. So, are you going straight home?”
As if on cue, the train screeched to a stop, and I shut my eyes as my mother gasped.
“You are on the L, Victory Blakely.” She hissed my name with venom. “I used to ride it, and I know exactly the way it sounds.”
My mother, once upon a time, conquered Chicago by climbing the ranks of the fashion industry here. She took the train every night, walked the streets without supervision, probably did some crazy shit like crossing the street with her eyes closed.
I stood to get off, whispering, “Excuse me, excuse me,” as I made my way down to the street. “So, then you know it’s perfectly safe for most people.”
“You aren’t most people.”
I tried to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, the sound my shoes made against the cement, the way the fall breeze kept the city air moving. “Mom, can we just not?”
“I told you I would get you a driver or a car.”
“I don’t want a driver!” I screamed and then scrunched my face to hold back my emotions. “I can’t talk. I have to go.”
I reached my apartment block and hung up the phone even though I heard her talking. The high rise boasted white-tiled floors in the lobby, as well as a doorman, and an expansive entryway. I never took the elevators, but I knew they were high-end. Just like the building and my apartment.
My mother had made sure of that. She made sure every single thing about my move was a well-laid plan. I should have thanked her. Yet, every day my resentment snowballed and my frustration built. I walked up the stairs to my apartment, each step a nail she hammered into my metaphorical coffin.
She wanted a daughter who would follow her rules, approach life with caution, look both ways and then some when crossing a street.
I wasn’t that daughter. I had been, but I couldn’t go back. Not after all we’d been through.
I set my work bag down and beelined to my cupboard. The wine I set on the counter stood next to a case of pills. The supplements were also my mother’s doing. She and my father had hired a nutritionist out of Portland, the best of the best. I remember her coming to the house, lining up all the vitamins and saying, “Now, these will help. But you have to will it, Vick. It takes the right mentality, besides diet and lifestyle.”
My mom nodded along with her. “We’re taking every precaution.”
My dad, a burly man who never said much, stared at me with pity in his eyes. He didn’t want to speak over my mother but knew the nutritionist was too much. He laid his hand on my shoulder, the best way he knew how to support me.
I stared at the supplements next to the wine bottle, then at my hands gripping the counter. My acrylic nails met the cuticle line perfectly. I’d told the manicurist to make them look natural with a light-pink hue. No one ever caught me with my real nails exposed; they reminded me of the time I’d barely had nail growth. They still grew out damaged, worn out far too early for my age.
The manicurist hadn’t asked questions and that terrible feeling of discomfort snuck up on me. When she’d started filing my nails, words bubbled out of me. “These nails have just never been pretty without a work of art from you professionals.”
She had tsk-tsked and responded, “We’ll clean them up, huh?”
I’d averted her discomfort and gained a new nail artist in a new town. Now, she talked a mile a minute at every session and never blinked twice at the wreckage she covered up.
I laid each of the pills on the counter, then swiped them all to the edge and into my other manicured hand. I poured my wine into a long stem glass and threw all five pills in my mouth. They knocked around in there before the wine washed them down in one large gulp.
My nail manicurist, along with my friends from college, didn’t know the whole story. They didn’t know that those pink nails I used to pop shut the pill case hid just one of the imperfections I’d been hiding for years.
When the leukemia snuck up on my family as I turned seventeen, I’d been a naive social butterfly, fluttering through high school like nothing could go wrong. Sure, there’d been the occasional terrible hair day and awful date, but I’d had friends every which way I looked. I’d had good grades, our volleyball team was going to state, I’d known what I was doing for college.
I gulped more red wine and pulled my laptop from my work bag.
Junior year, during a volleyball game before the state competition, I blacked out. I woke up in a hospital listening to that terrible noise.
The beeping.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
My mother delivered the news with my father standing by, holding her up. Holding my mother, the woman who could plow her way into a CEO position of a Fortune 500 company after coming from nothing, like she was barely capable of standing.
“We’ll beat it, sweetie,” she’d murmured as the shock of her words barreled through me. The beeping galloped faster and faster. Then and there, in that hospital room, I saw the first look of discomfort on my parents’ faces.
“It’ll be okay.” I nodded. “We’ll get through it.”
My mom’s hand shot out to hold mine and she squeezed it so tight I could feel her love for her only child flowing through it. I remember thinking of all the things I would have to get through. I wondered if I would lose my hair, if my friends would make me a card, if my boyfriend would break up with me.
All those things happened more quickly than I could have ever imagined.
I sat down at my kitchen table and opened my laptop, telling myself I needed to work.
I chugged more wine instead and stared at my phone. I’d hung up on her as if she could control the worry and love that consumed her heart. As if she hadn’t torn apart my history trying to find a culprit for the cancer that destroyed her perfect fairy tale. Her family. Her life.
Because cancer did that, infecting not just the patient, but the whole family.
Now, eight years later, I had beaten it and survived.
But my relationship with my mother hadn’t.
Our family hadn’t.
We couldn’t forget. She couldn’t stop bulldozing. Or stop searching for answers. Or stop worrying. My father couldn’t stop holding her up and staring at me with pity.
And I couldn’t stop the damn guilt of never wanting to talk to them, wanting to avoid all the awkward conversations and live harder than I had ever lived before, even if my mother wanted me wrapped in a plastic bubble of supplements, doctors, hospitals, fruits and vegetables. She wanted to place that plastic bubble in her home, in a nice little town away from the big city, and make sure I lived a long, prosperous, very boring life.
I gulped the wine she would scream at me for drinking and got to work, trying to forget about my wallowing. When I couldn’t forget, I drank more wine, and found myself mostly incapable of work.
I almost closed my laptop to go to bed, but the green dot next to Jett’s name on my e-mail list beckoned to me.
I opened our messages.
Me: This bad day started with you.
Jett: You’re up late.
Me: Have to start working like my new boss does.
Jett: I do like my employees motivated.
Me: Do you ever stop working?
Jett: I wasn’t working when I was with you last.
Me: You left me to work.
Jett: We’re still on that, huh?
Me: I don’t know what I’m on. I need to get off it though.
I slammed my laptop shut and unfurled myself from my cramped position, stretching out the stiffness to go to bed. I tossed and turned all night, wondering how I would get through working at Stonewood Enterprises the very next week.
14
Jett
Victory Blakely dragged the sun out of hiding the very next week when she showed up at work with her crew. She even wore a yellow blouse tucked into a pencil skirt, as if to solidify her joy through colors. A large bag hung from one of her shoulders, and she smiled like she wanted to be here w
ith everyone else who had arrived bright and early with stars in their eyes.
She showed all her teeth to Gloria who was introducing people, a grin so brilliant everyone should have known it was fake. Then she tried to laugh at something Stevie said, but her hand stayed on the handle of her bag, gripping it tightly.
Holding in her real feelings.
I stood in my office, leaning against a floor-to-ceiling glass wall that overlooked the office space below. I seated the best of the best in that space, right there in front of me. The open desk concept allowed ideas to fly freely and honestly. It gave me immediate access to everyone I needed on a daily basis too. This was my empire, and I ruled from a few steps above.
Gloria, like a king’s hand, moved down my list of onboarding duties, brutal in her six-inch heels and plum form fitting dress. I noted which men’s eyes lingered too long on that violet fabric and filed the information away.
Most men who let their dick overpower them on their first day wouldn’t last long at Stonewood Enterprises. It seemed I would do some firing sooner than I had anticipated.
Gloria, efficient and effective in all she did for me, snapped her binder shut. Her dark eyes flicked my way, and she nodded to indicate she’d finished. Last week she’d played up her sex kitten role because I’d correctly guessed it was the right way to butter up the men in that room.
Now, we were back to business, and that woman was the best at it. She knew as well as I did most of the men eyeing her would be gone within a few months. I’d never failed her in that regard.
I pushed off the glass and walked out of my office. I unbuttoned my suit jacket as I stepped down the stairs.
Eyeing Stevie first, I addressed him for the last time as the man I’d relieved of a business. “Happy to have absorbed your company, Stevie. It’ll be great having you work for us.”
He nodded, eager to please. “Absolutely. I think the acquisition will go through—”
“It’s already done, but the rest of your company will move here next month. That said, I have the people I want here now. We’ll be moving each of you to departments of need as Gloria said. Today, we have more onboarding that is personalized to your job descriptions.”
Gloria handed out files and more of my team appeared.
“My people will get everyone up to speed and show them to their departments. Most of you won’t be in this office. I have a very small team operating in here, personnel I need direct access to at all times. Every office throughout this building is a part of our family though. Remember that you’re one of us now. Welcome aboard Stonewood Enterprises, where the sky’s the limit for some, but not us.”
My canned welcome earned genuine smiles, but Vick’s was just as fake as my welcome. That woman wanted to roll her eyes at me, I knew it.
I turned on my heel and went back to my office. This was a normal day for me. We acquired companies all the time.
The only abnormal part was that I’d seated Vick and Stevie at two desks directly in front of my glass office. Gloria didn’t question why I wanted an associate lawyer and small business owner there. She eyed me with curiosity when I’d informed her of my decision though.
I wondered too. I told myself that after examining Vick’s file—which I did every now and again for new employees—I’d seen brilliance in her: she’d received a near-perfect score on her LSAT, turned down Harvard for a small school, and her mother used to run a Fortune 500 company. Having her on my team might be beneficial, but then again, I had Harvard graduates milling about in other offices.
So, maybe I was thinking with my dick that day too.
I saw most everyone peeling away from Vick and Stevie as they followed their mentors to the elevators. When the two of them were left with Gloria, I watched her give them the news. A high laugh burst from Stevie, a boy not able to control his emotions at all.
Vick’s amber gaze cut across the room to my office like a razor, catching me staring at her. She shook her head no and informed Gloria of the mistake.
“I’m just a junior associate. Surely Mark or John should be in this space.”
“I’m not mistaken,” Gloria replied. “Your desk is this way.”
Vick glared at me as she followed Gloria to a desk that was in my perfect line of vision. Stevie was directed to sit across from her. As Gloria gave them more instructions about their day, those amber eyes stayed glued to mine. She assessed the situation while I assessed her.
Game on, Pixie.
I headed back to my desk, determined to focus on work. My father’s number popped up on my cell as I sat down. I pressed the privacy button and the windows of my office tinted black so that no one could see in.
“Yeah, Pops?” I answered.
He sighed, “I could have been patching you on an important conference call.”
“And they all would have appreciated the father-son camaraderie.”
My dad’s laugh rumbled through the phone. “More like they wouldn’t have said shit to a Stonewood.”
I grunted in agreement. “What do you need?”
“We have signatures from the Armanelli family still?”
I glanced at my privacy button to make sure the light glowed red, indicating the room’s soundproofing had kicked in before I answered. “Why?”
“They’ll be trying to squeeze more from everyone in Chicago soon.”
“Bastian and I are good. They won’t ask us.”
“Bastian’s dad heads up Chicago, Jett. He doesn’t answer to his boy.” His tone wasn’t lost on me.
“Dad, making a fucking point through them to me won’t help you. You need to hand over the reins if you’re not going to steer Stonewood Enterprises with a clear head.”
“My head’s always been this clear.”
I turned to look out of my window at the lake Chicago abutted. The water shimmered in the distance, ever-changing yet always the same. “You keep up, I’ll give you that, old man. You don’t want to though. Your heart’s not in it. Mine still is.”
“Your heart was always in it. It’s a damn watch ticking to the beat of work. I’m not sure anything will ever jam up those cogs either.”
“Nothing will. Except potentially the Armanellis trying to take a bigger cut.”
“Bah.” My dad’s signature sound, the one he saved for my brothers and me, was his way of waving something off. He wasn’t going to give such an insignificant thing another thought. I wished I shared his ability to get past his concerns. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You called specifically for me to worry about it.”
Silence hovered on our line. My father’s voice was somber when he replied. “Maybe. Maybe I am getting a little tired of it all.”
The cogs stopped moving, jerked a little. Dad never admitted to wanting a break. The defeat in his voice shifted something in me. “It’s fall, Dad. Mom’s been emotional because of the wedding. It’s a lot. Take a few days, huh?”
“What if a few days is all I got?”
“Dad, come on.”
“I’m thinking I might agree with you after all this time and now you want to fight me?”
I cleared my throat. “Well, you not having your head in the game and half-assing it is still better than most people’s full-assing. The company needs you.”
“Not true. You and Jax handle things very well.”
“Jax is buried in algorithms half the time, and I’m stuck in meeting after meeting. We need you driving the stocks, your connections, your presence.”
More silence. “I’m thinking your mother needs me more.”
“Dad, come on. Not this bullshit again.”
“Love’s bullshit to you, son, but without it you wouldn’t be here.”
“You seem to forget the aftermath. Mom and you used to—”
“I’m aware our relationship damaged your outlook on love, Jett. Your mother reminds me of that more than anyone. But, make no mistake. What you witnessed between us was no aftermath. An interlude, sure. I’ll even admit
to a break. But we were never done. There’s no such thing as an aftermath with us. She’s the only person aside from you boys who I will always fight for.”
“You didn’t fight very hard when the company was at stake and I came to run things with you.”
When he didn’t reply at once, I figured my attempt to go for the jugular had worked. He needed to pull his head out of his ass though. Our empire couldn’t have a lovesick leader and if I had to kick him a little to shake the illness, I would.
“Jett,”—his voice was woven with anger as he sighed my name—“the company is yours. I’m not making the same error twice. Your mother and I are flying back to Kauai for a few weeks. I intend to renew our vows. I intend to make things right.”
“I … you … are you fucking with me?” My ball of hate for love and happily ever afters grew twofold as I sat there waiting for a reply.
My father didn’t respond. He breathed into the phone, and I could picture him with his full head of silver hair, sitting in a desk much like mine, his index finger and thumb pinching the bridge of his nose. After so many years of working with him, I knew he was leaning back in his work chair when I heard the leather creak over the line.
“Dad, I’m not running this company without you.”
“You already are. Jax will be there. I’m done.”
“You’re giving up a multibillion-dollar company that you built from the ground up to run off into the sunset with the woman you think was your first love? You two could barely stand one another ten years ago! And that woman flies off the handle as much as you do. You’re putting the company at risk for nothing.” I tried to check my rising voice. I straightened a file on my desk. “Let’s just back up a step.”
“I’m not backing up at all, boy. This is me and your mom. We built this empire for you boys. Don’t forget that she was just as much a part of it as I was.”
“She wasn’t keeping the company afloat—”
“She kept this goddamn family afloat,” he yelled. “She worked her ass off to raise you boys and did a damn good job. And she righted my ship so many times, I should give the company to her, not you. Don’t make me question my decision.”