Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
The parties and ‘Initiations’ that went on at the Oleander Mansion were the best kept so-called secret that everyone whispered about but few knew the details of. Except for my brother, Sully, who’d been an initiate not that long ago. He’d failed the Trials, which were hazing rituals on steroids from what I understood, and had been rejected as a member. When I’d begged for details, his face had grown stormy, and he’d said I was too young and innocent to hear about things like that.
I was nineteen, thank you very much. And not all that innocent.
“Mom, it’s just us here. Why can’t we relax a little sometimes?” I looked around our claustrophobic dining room, stuffed with antiques—which Mom had freaked out about if we even touched as kids. That made for a super fun childhood, tiptoeing around your own house so you didn’t get yelled at.
The greater irony? Our huge, once beautiful house was falling apart around us and all these precious antiques. Mom was barely able to maintain the outside and pay to upkeep the gardens. Few of the bathrooms worked, the dust was half an inch thick in most rooms, and the leaky roof stained half the ceilings in the place. Until I took over the company being held in trust for me, this was our reality.
Like so much of Darlington, we had the appearance of opulence from the outside, but inside—it was all moldering decay. It reminded me of that Bible verse about pretty, decorated tombstones hiding dirty disgusting bones underneath.
My mother just looked at me like I was the crazy one. “We are VanDorens. That name stands for something. It’s important now more than ever that we maintain decorum at all times after your brother…” She fanned herself as if even thinking of Sully made her faint. Then she set her fork down, at the perfect angle on her plate of barely touched food.
“It’s time to secure your future and the future of VanDoren Enterprises.”
I frowned at her as I stabbed at another piece of chicken marsala. “You know how hard I’m working to do just that. I take all my business classes seriously and I have one of the highest GPAs in my class.” I’d just finished my first year in the Undergraduate Business program at Emory. Then I’d go on to get my MBA. The business was being held in trust by a family friend until I finished school.
I was only home for the summer and already regretting not finding some way to stay on campus or in the city during the break.
But Mom had insisted she needed me home. Now I was starting to have a sneaking suspicion as to why. Which she confirmed with her next words: “I’m talking about finding you a young man, Jasmine.”
Wow. I couldn’t believe she’d just come out and said it. I dropped my fork and stared at her. “Are you kidding?”
She frowned severely at me. “I most certainly am not. The business your father worked so tirelessly to create isn’t going to run itself!”
My mouth dropped open. I’d graduated prep school at the top of my class. Not to mention my grades at one of the top Universities in the country. But it was never enough for her. I didn’t have a set of balls or a dick, so I’d never be qualified in her eyes.
Still, I tried. “I’m going to run the company, Mom. That was the whole point of the deal Sully made when Montgomery bought the company and put it in a trust for me.”
But Mom just waved her napkin at me and then wiped daintily at her lips. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Who’s going to raise the children? Your husband?” she scoffed.
I could only blink at her. How could a woman who pretended to be as sophisticated as she was, live so in the last century?
“Besides,” she continued. “I understand you’re a smart girl, honey, but we both know that the business world is a man’s game. They just wouldn’t take you seriously. I’m sorry if that’s not popular to say and if your classes are trying to put feminist ideas in your head, but this is the real world I’m talking about. Are you going to drive your father’s company into the ground because of your pride?”
A thousand rebuttals were on the tip of my tongue, and I felt my face going red from anger. I knotted my napkin in my lap and dropped my face, breathing out hard.
She’d never understand.
And God, of course some part of me was terrified she was right. She was digging at my worst fears. That I wasn’t good enough, or strong enough. That people in the business world wouldn’t take me seriously. I certainly had been disrespected and talked over enough even in my business classes at school. Not all, but a lot of my professors made the same assumptions Mom did about my abilities just because I was a Southern woman.