Chapter 10
TEN
LOURDES
Twenty-six years old
Three years later
Time was a funny thing. Sometimes, it moved so fast that you felt like you couldn’t blink because you would miss a vital thing, and other times, it moved so slowly you wondered if you had entered a hellish dimension. In the end, it didn’t matter because time was still moving, and even though it felt like things hadn’t changed when you looked back, nothing was the same.
My life had been a lot of the same bullshit in the past three years. My grandfather still bitched and moaned because I was breathing, but the bastard wasn’t getting any younger. He had been having some health issues, and he’d been talking a lot about who would be taking the throne after he croaked.
It’s not like my father would be retiring anytime soon, but he wanted to make sure he had some input on who would be the next person to lead the company.
Dinners with him were much the same, but I had gotten better at being two-faced, smiled when he expected me, apologized even when I didn’t do anything wrong, and never shared my input because it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
My relationship with my father was improving. We had weekly Friday dinners, and since my father knew Pricilla and I would get along better in public, they were usually at a restaurant. Once a month, he would insist on taking me out to lunch.
He made more of an effort when I moved out of the house.
It had hit him harder than I had realized when I told him I would be moving into my own place. He had not expected it, and to be honest I wasn’t sure about my decision, because home was all I’d known. It was filled with memories of my mother, and it was the room I refused to change because she had designed it. But my home also stopped being home the moment she passed away.
There came a point in every child’s life where they had to spread their wings and find themselves, and that’s what I had been doing for the past three years.
I hated thinking about that day—the day Neo left. It felt like I had gotten everything I didn’t know I longed for and then had it ripped away the next second, making me wish I had never hoped for it.
Neo left his imprint on my skin, and I have been making him pay for it ever since.
The bastard left without a word. As if having his precious little fingers inside of me and gifting me a watch because he knew my grandfather wouldn’t be doing so excused him for leaving in the middle of the night without any explanation.
Asshole.
If I loathed Neo before, I hated him now. Time didn’t make the heart grow fonder. Time made my heart grow barbed wire and fill with poison. Sure, the company was having a minor overseas crisis, but that didn’t mean he had to leave and never return.
I was dead to him, but he wasn’t dead to me. His mother loved to brag about all the changes he was making. His friends loved to post whenever they visited him. Beautiful models always hung from his arms.
Everything felt like a lie.
What happened in the dark didn’t count in the light.
“Lou, leave it to me. I’ll make him pay.”
Nothing made me feel stupider than believing his words. Did he laugh at how na?ve I had been? Share a drink with Tatum and laugh at how they had played me.
Years passed, and the asshole saw no retribution. Whenever I saw him, he gave me a smirk, acting like he owned the whole damn world.
But I guess one good thing did come out of Neo leaving. His department became mine, and I was advancing the corporate ladder faster than anyone would have thought. Even grandfather had been impressed.
Marie stepped in, managing my department and her own, meaning she relied heavily on me to do the heavy work. She did that for about a year until I could do it all on my own. Things at work didn’t get better, but I had stopped trying to win over people. I didn’t need them to like me, I needed them to respect me if I wanted to be head of this company one day.
No one ever bothered to like the men they worked for as long as they got paid. Why the hell was there such a double standard for women? A strict male boss was responsible, he cared about his job. On the other hand, I was a frigid bitch.
Marie walked down into my office right before noon.
“You ready for lunch, darling?”
“Yes, let me just finish attaching these files so I can send these reports,” I said without looking up at her. “You want to know something? I always thought I would end up in accounting, maybe business relations because marketing was the last thing on my mind, but now I can’t picture myself in any other department.”
“You’re brilliant when it comes to marketing. Standing against your grandfather and shifting to the market while still keeping things classy was genius.”
“Tell that to my seven-percent margin increase,” I mumbled bitterly.
Marie scoffed.
“Those old men will make any of your accomplishments taste like ash if you let them.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Okay, all sent, let’s go. I’m starving.”
“Did you forget to grocery shop again?”
She gave me a stern look. Marie was known for sending grocery delivery services to my apartment one or twice a month to make sure I was eating more than just takeout.
“Hey, my girl dinner wasn’t all that bad.”
She shook her head.
“If your mother were here, she would have scolded you already.”
The first time she had mentioned my mother so casually, my eyes had watered. We had been working late, one month after Neo had left, and I guess my feelings were so fresh and raw that I couldn’t hold my emotions in.
Now, when she did it I couldn’t help but smile at how bittersweet it felt. My mother passed on, but her memory lived in those who loved her.
“She would have. Actually, she might have chewed us both a new one, at how much we have been eating at The Parrilla. All that lard can’t be good for our cholesterol.”
“Honey, I watch what I eat all week so I can let go when I’m there.”
“Okay, done,” I said.
We grabbed an Uber since parking on that side of town was a bitch, and our cars were so flashy they called for attention. But if you wanted good, authentic Mexican food, that was the side of town you went to get it.
I was used to my mom’s cooking, so whenever someone gave me a taco, and it had a hard shell, I judged. If it had a flour tortilla, I judged. And if the corn tortilla was undercooked, you bet your ass I judged that too.
Now, if you gave me tacos and the tortilla was fried just right, well, I practically fell in love. La Parilla had all that and more, and they were highly authentic in how they cooked their food.
I grabbed my purse and then walked out of my office, noticing most of my department had already disappeared for lunch.
Days when I didn’t run into Priscilla were always the best.
The food was tasty, and because it was Friday and I had kicked ass for another week, I allowed myself a paloma. I was mid-sip, enjoying my happy hour, when Marie casually let a bomb drop.
“Do you think the meeting we have scheduled for Monday morning is because your brother is back?”
I choked on my drink.
“W-what brother?” I wheezed.
She looked at me oddly.
“Well, your stepbrother… Didn’t you know?
I cleared my throat.
“I lost track of the days,” I lied. “Will he be taking over my department now?”
Losing my department was the last thing on my mind. Neo was coming back after being gone three years, and I was not ready to face him again.
My lunch was ruined. The rest of my day passed in a blur, and I felt dread when I walked into my condo.
The asshole didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me he would be coming back. If we were good at one thing, it was revenge. And if I knew him, like I thought I did, he would want to make me pay for what I did.
A thrill ran through me as I sat down on my ivory sectional and then cast one look around my home.
“Game on, asshole.”