Chapter 2
Zia~
I sat in my office, resenting every second of it. I was only here because my stepmother could give Lady Tremaine a run for her money, and for anyone who didn’t know who that was, that’s the name of Cinderella’s stepmother.
Certainly not the first or only, but my mother had died during childbirth, and though tragic and unfortunate, life had still gone on, and my father had met Julia only a few years later, and when I’d been around five-years-old, he had married her, and that had been the beginning of the end for me.
With no memories to compare to, I had mistaken Julia’s indifference for love, but once I’d gotten older, I’d seen it for what it’d really been.
Of course, once she’d given my father two more children, the favoritism had been obvious to everyone but my father.
Too busy working and providing a life for his family, he hadn’t paid attention to the little things that had been happening at home, and why would he?
His job had been to support his family, and Julia’s job had been to take care of the children and the household.
At any rate, for years, I’d been clamoring for my father’s attention, but it’d all been for nothing.
He had a son in Donatello, and he had another daughter in Louisa, and whenever I had complained about Julia’s favoritism or how my siblings had treated me, he’d always brush it off as normal family dynamics that everyone had to work through.
It also didn’t help that I’d taken after my mother’s side of the family.
Where my father, Julia, and my siblings had inherited the same dark features that usually applied to Spaniards, I’d been born with blonde hair, blue eyes, and I’d been a constant reminder of my father’s first love, and I still was.
In fact, I was the spitting image of my mother, Sabrina, and I could only imagine how much Julia hated that.
Things had only gotten worse when I’d been eighteen and contacted by an estate lawyer, claiming that my mother had left me an inheritance that would ensure that I’d never have to work a day in my life.
Now, when I’d been old enough to learn of my mother, I had also learned that she’d been an only child and that my grandparents had returned to Spain after her death.
While I’d been their only grandchild, the death of my mother had hit them hard, and returning to their home country had been a way to cope with that.
Honestly, a part of me had always wondered if they just couldn’t handle how much I looked like their dead daughter.
At any rate, growing up, we’d spoken on the phone often, but they hadn’t been a significant part of my life.
It hadn’t been until my eighteenth birthday that I had learned of the inheritance.
Once my mother had gotten pregnant with me, she’d made arrangements for me to inherit everything that she’d owned, which had been a significant amount left to her by her great-grandparents.
However, when she had passed, instead of my father inheriting her money, it had reverted back to my grandparents for safe keeping until my eighteenth birthday.
So, a few days after my birthday, I’d been contacted by a lawyer, and then my grandparents had made arrangements for me to fly to Spain to collect my inheritance.
It’d taken only a couple of weeks to handle all the paperwork, but instead of heading back home right away, I’d chosen to spend another two weeks in Spain, catching up with my grandparents and noting all of their financial advice.
Of course, when I’d gotten home, that’s when the real fireworks had started.
Though my father had always known about the inheritance, he hadn’t ever mentioned it to Julia because he had considered it a personal matter between his deceased wife and daughter, and she hadn’t taken that very well.
In fact, that’d been one of the few times when I could remember my father taking my side.
Jula had insisted on being ‘compensated’ for raising me all those years, and my father had become livid over such a request.
Truthfully, my inheritance had almost led to a divorce, but then Julia had quickly done the math, realizing that a divorce wouldn’t benefit her at all.
She’d had high hopes that I’d still be willing to share the money with my siblings once they gotten older, but being the assholes that they were, they hadn’t deserved that kind of generosity.
Luckily for me, with my newly-acquired inheritance, I’d been able to move out of their house immediately, and the plan had been to buy myself a little bit of happiness for a few years.
However, my father had ended up filling my head with a bunch of nonsense about my life having no value if I never learned the importance of work, commitment, or responsibility, and so he had lectured me on the benefits of going to college and actually doing something useful with my money.
He’d said that the personal growth would be good for me, but all I cared about was being far away from Julia as possible.
So, I’d gone to college, had gotten a degree in marketing, then had decided to give working for a living a try. Once I’d gotten my degree, I had applied to six different marketing firms, and when Ethan & Flowers had offered me a job, I’d taken it, not really caring which company I worked for.
Nonetheless, two years later, and I was still working for them because I refused to give Julia the satisfaction.
It also helped that I actually liked my job, though I resented the reason why I’d felt the need to get it.
Yeah, my father was constantly telling me that he was proud of me, but it still wasn’t enough, and that’s what years of neglect did to a person.
Still, I didn’t hold it against him. In fact, without Julia knowing it, since he’d gotten fired from his job at Pritchard Communications, I’d been secretly giving him money to get by until his settlement came through. In fact, I was the one who had paid for Quaid Crawford’s retainer.
The only problem was that money really didn’t buy a person happiness, and I was learning that firsthand.
Having spent most of my life being unseen by my father and mistreated by Julia, I didn’t know what made me happy, and so I spent a lot of my time overthinking things, and when I wasn’t driving myself crazy with my thoughts, then I was acting out because I craved attention.
Now, you’d think as a grown adult that I’d know better, and while I did, I still couldn’t help myself sometimes.
I hated being ignored or being treated as if I was invisible, and it brought out the worst in me.
Like a petulant child, I acted out, and I knew that it wasn’t a good look, even if it was understandable why I acted the way that I did.
I also hadn’t asked Mr. Crawford about the money because I stood to gain from the lawsuit. I’d been asking in hopes that it’d be enough to get Julia off my father’s back. Though they were hardly struggling, both Donatello and Louisa were in college, and God forbid they have to get jobs to help out.
I mean, at the end of it all, I’d like to see my father happy.
Now that I was older, I could see how he’d been dealt a shitty hand by having his wife die on him, leaving him to raise a little girl on his own, and while I might have some emotional scars because of it, he hadn’t ever meant any harm.
So, as far as I was concerned, Julia was the real villain in this story, and her two spawns were highlighted characters that really didn’t deserve anything from me.
Just then, my phone chimed with an incoming text, and because my day wasn’t already a shitty one, I opened it to see that my best friend, Cora, had sent me a link that I could have done without.
Cora: He’s an asshole n ur better off w/o him
Two months ago, I’d caught my boyfriend of two years cheating on me, and because he really was a fucking asshole, the link was to a picture of him and the girl that I’d caught him cheating with, announcing how fabulous their vacation in Italy was, announcing how their relationship was officially official, which was stupid in itself.
Why people needed to announce life events on social media baffled me. I mean, who cared?
Me: She can have his cheating ass
Cora: Hopefully, he gives her herpes (crossing fingers emoji)
Despite my crappy mood, that got a laugh out of me.
While Joel and I had dated for two years, it wasn’t like it’d been a wonderous two years.
Joel Trekker and I had spent most of those two years hooking up more than having an actual relationship.
Like most self-centered people, I hadn’t ever been inclined to inconvenience myself for Joel, and he’d felt the same way about me.
In fact, the only good thing that I could say about Joel Trekker was that he’d been good in bed in addition to being hot.
He had that classic American-boy-next-door look, and he’d been blessed with a big enough package to keep going back for more.
Of course, that got me to thinking about the last time that I’d had sex, and it’d been with Joel, and maybe that’s why I was feeling like I was stuck in a funk. Maybe I just needed to get laid to help relieve all the visible and invisible stress that was plaguing me lately.
Or, now that I was officially an adult, maybe I just needed to finally cut Julia and her brood from my life and choose happiness over misplaced obligation. After all, my father’s the one who married her, not me.
God, why was it so hard to just be happy?