Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77335 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
It was more than possible he had learned of my passionate lapse in judgement from another source.
As much as I dreaded this confrontation, there was no avoiding it.
He would just keep sending servants up to my room with nastier messages until I complied.
My fingertips pressed the cool washcloth to my red, swollen eyes.
Nothing other than an order from my father would have dragged me from the sanctuary of my bedroom today.
Some people took Saturdays off.
For my father, there was no such thing as a day off.
Even on the rare occasion that we went on vacation, he still worked for a full day.
I knew better than to make him wait.
So I headed there immediately, before my breakfast. Despite it being Saturday morning and despite my desolate mood, I dressed as if I was going to go out. I had no plans, but my father saw anything other than perfection as laziness. Laziness was a synonym for failure, and after twenty-four years, I knew failure was not tolerated.
I knocked on the heavy mahogany door and waited for permission to enter, staring at the same beautiful, original wooden door. This door was a symbol for everything in my life that I wasn’t able to do. Every single time I disappointed my father, I had to stare at this door first.
Every time my father gave me news that I did not want to hear. When he told me that I was not allowed to work an internship with my sister’s magazine, or when he said that I was the family disappointment because I had gone to a party with a few friends and was seen by the paparazzi.
It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been doing anything. I wasn’t even with the girl they had been there to photograph, but I was in the background of a photo that was on page six, and that was enough.
My father preferred this room for all meetings discussing bad news. However, he never gave me any good news. The few times something happened that I would consider good news, I was informed by a member of the staff. Or by an impersonal email.
If Luc heard the news before my father did or before my father had time to pass it on, then he would come to tell me in person, but even that rarely happened.
“Enter,” my father’s voice boomed from the other side.
I pushed open the heavy door and stepped onto the corner of the ornate Persian rug.
My father sat at his desk, tapping away on his computer, doing whatever needed to be done to be master of the universe while the taxidermy heads of half a dozen predators stared down at me in the same disappointment that my father did, or would whenever he got around to acknowledging my existence.
Ever since I was a child, I had seen those heads as a sign of my ineptitude or my incompetence. To this day I couldn’t look at a lion in the zoo without tears burning behind my eyes.
When I was twelve, I invented a little game to keep my mind occupied. I would trace the patterns of the floor with my eyes. Following the intricate floral designs, I liked to try to see if I could find one line in one color that would go from one end of the rug to the other.
So far, I’d never won my game. I honestly didn’t think the pattern would allow it, but trying kept my mind focused on anything other than what my father had called me in for.
I had learned very early that stressing about whatever he had brought me in here for wasn’t going to do anything but give me a panic attack. Panic attacks, of course, were another sign of weakness and, therefore, another way I was a failure and a disappointment to my family.
I knew it was much better to keep my mind occupied tracing the ins and outs of the floral designs until my father decided I had waited long enough.
I followed the floral patterns, and on my fourth try, I actually found one line that got me about halfway across the carpet.
I didn’t think I had ever gotten that far before.
I was actually starting to get a little excited that I might win my game when my father cleared his throat, making me startle and lose my place.
It was for the best.
That was his signal that he was ready to deal with me.
“I have good news for you, Charlotte,” Father said as he folded his hands in front of him, giving me his full attention.
This wasn’t a good sign. Usually he barely looked up from his computer.
“Yes, sir?”
“I have brokered a deal with the Zeigler family. Have you heard of them before?”
“No, sir.”
“They are a titled family from England. They don’t have any money, of course. None of those old families do anymore.”