Chapter 13
Triana~
Neither of my parents greeted me this morning when I had walked into work, and it’d been on the tip of my tongue to call out their childish behavior.
I mean, weren’t they supposed to be the parents in this relationship?
Weren’t they supposed to be wiser and more mature than a twenty-four-year-old?
Weren’t they the ones that were supposed to be reasonable and work to iron out any rifts in the family?
Well, whatever the expectation of being a parent was, by the time that lunch had rolled around, it was clear that my parents were choosing their pride over what made me happy.
They were taking my refusal to marry Romelio as a personal affront, and it blew my mind how they could see no fault in their actions.
I mean, did they really want me to be unhappy just so that they could save face?
It also hadn’t helped that Tomasco hadn’t been in the office today. One of our newest properties was having an issue with zoning concerns, so my brother had been scheduled to be up north all day, leaving me alone with our parents.
Nonetheless, it was closing time, and I was more than eager to get out of here. Since my job was in finance and accounting, I could work remotely from home if I had to, so it was easy to take the books home with me, getting me out of this current hellhole.
However, just as I was packing up my laptop, my parents walked into my office, and I braced myself for the apology that wasn’t coming. If they were here to talk to me about anything other than business, it was to strongarm me into agreeing to marry Romelio, and that just wasn’t going to happen.
Ever.
“I’m on my way out,” I told them rudely. “What do you guys need?”
“We need you to honor your family’s good name and do the right thing, Triana,” my father replied, and angry heat crawled up my neck instantly. “This ridiculousness has gone on long enough.”
“This ridiculousness is my life, Dad,” I fired back. “And I don’t fine it ridiculous at all.”
“El padre, hijo y espiritu santo,” my mother cursed, using the holy trinity prayer in vain. “Why are you being so difficult about this, Triana?”
“Are you hearing yourself?” I practically yelled. “How is not wanting to marry someone that I don’t love being difficult?”
“You will grow to love him,” my father stated, and it really did feel like we were playing out some thirteenth-century melodrama. “He’s a good man, so it’ll come naturally with time.”
Realizing that they were not going to change their minds about this, I had no choice but to put an end to their unreasonable hopes.
“I am not marrying Romelio,” I told them.
“I am not marrying him, and there is nothing that you can do or say that will change that.” I looked between them both.
“I am not marrying a man that I don’t love. ”
My mother let out a quiet gasp as my father’s chin went up. “Then you will leave us no choice but to leave you on your own. If you are not going to put the best interest of this family first, then this family has no obligation to care about your best interests in return.”
Even though I’d been expecting it, his words still hit my chest like a spiked two-by-four, doing maximum damage with only one swing.
He was basically disowning me, and I wasn’t na?ve enough to believe that his threat didn’t include firing me.
After all, they had built a successful business way before Tomasco and I had ever started working for them, so it was quite obvious that they could get along just fine without my help.
“So, that’s it?” I asked, doing my best not to fall apart. After all, these were still my parents, and I loved them, despite what was happening right now. “I’m no longer your daughter because you care more about what the Fuentezes think than what I want?”
Quiet tears were lining my mother’s eyes, but being the loyal Hispanic wife that she was, she wasn’t going to dare go against her husband, and I’d be crazy to expect anything different.
Granted, there was nothing wrong with honoring your husband if he was a good man, but it still hurt that a mother would choose a man over her children.
For some reason, I’d always been under the impression that a woman would always choose her children above anyone else.
Boy, was I wrong.
“No,” my father replied. “You are no longer a part of this family because you have chosen your own selfishness over what is best for everyone else. You want to muddy our good name, yet still profit from the paycheck that we provide for you, and we cannot allow that.”
Wow.
Okay.
Having always wanted to distance myself from our obvious nepotism, my office had always been one of absolute professionalism, so there wasn’t much that I had to pack up, and I was grateful for that small consideration right now.
While I knew that my father believed that I was going to cave, I wasn’t, and so I needed to get my stuff and leave.
Looking him straight in his eye, I said, “I’ll be packed and out of here in fifteen minutes.”
My mother gasped again as my father’s face turned red, but I didn’t care.
If she was going to allow this, then her guilt was between her and God.
Even though I had a mortgage looming over my head, I wasn’t going to let my parents bully and blackmail me into spending the rest of my life with a man that I didn’t love, pretending every day for the sake of our children.
“I mean it, Triana,” my father spat. “If you leave, you will not be welcomed back.”
Ignoring him, I walked out of the office, headed straight to the supply closet, grabbed a banker box, then returned to pack up my stuff. Thankfully, my parents were no longer in the office, so that made things a lot easier, despite my wet lashes.
Once I finished packing up everything that actually belonged to me, I walked out of the building without saying a word to either of my parents, but I knew that I was going to have to call Tomasco as soon as he got back from Traylor.
I also knew that I didn’t want him picking sides.
His future was with the family business, and I loved him too much to drag him down with me.
Tossing the banker box in the back seat of my car, I started the engine, then just drove, going to the one place that I knew no one would look for me at.
Yeah, I had to call my brother and Sonia eventually, but not right now.
Right now, I needed to process that this was actually happening, and I really just couldn’t make any sense of it.
My father was this upset about me refusing to marry Romelio, yet he didn’t care how people were going to talk once they found out that I’d been fired by my own parents.
If image was everything to him, then why was he going to this extreme?
As for my mother, I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to forgive her for being so compliant. She would rather see me unhappy than have my father upset, and no matter what happened next, my relationship with my parents was never going to be the same again, and I felt the loss significantly.
Pulling up to the Marigold Springs sign, I knew that Kairo wouldn’t be here, but that was okay.
He was a reckless dream that I had no business dreaming, and I needed to remember that.
Besides, I had bigger problems at the moment, and I wondered if I was going to have to move to the other side of the region to get a job.
At this point, I could see my father trying to blackball me all over town, and I didn’t need that kind of bullshit right now.
I had a mortgage and car payment that I needed to worry about, and even though I had enough in my savings account to get me through a few months, those few months flew by rather quickly if your options were limited.
Getting out of the car, I hit the key fob while making sure that my phone had a decent enough charge, then made my way to the cherry blossom tree.
Though it was only five in the evening, I knew that the sun would be setting soon, so I wasn’t going to be able to stay out here long, but it’d be long enough for me to just catch my breath.
Once I got to the tree, I sat down, then considered my options and the repercussions of those options.
Apart from Sonia and a few friends, my family was all that I knew, and so it was hard not to doubt my decision to choose myself over them, but that was the point I supposed.
How much did we really owe our families, and whose happiness mattered more?
Pulling out my phone, I sent my brother a quick text, hoping that my parents had the decency not to bother him when he was so far away.
Me: Hey, call me when u get home. No emergency, just want 2 talk
Now, while the situation felt very much like an emergency, I didn’t want to worry my brother. I mean, there were emergencies and then there was family drama, which usually didn’t fall under the category of a real emergency.
Toma: Sure thing (thumbs up emoji)
His easy reply was proof that my parents hadn’t told him anything yet, and at this point, I really was grateful for small favors.