CHAPTER TWO

1565 Words
ABIGAIL   Most young adults move out of their parents' house as soon as they turn eighteen and go to college, or just because they want more independence, but that is not my case, I am close to my twenties and I am not just living with my parents, but I am under such a strict security regime that I am not even allowed to drive my own car or go anywhere alone.   And I owe it all to a crazy woman who became obsessed with my father before I was born, and now Mom thinks that she will come to kidnap me at any moment, just because she sent a few messages, or strange gifts, especially on my birthday, but even with all the technology that my father has developed or the efforts of dozens of private investigators and police they haven’t been able to find her, so for years I began to develop the theory that this woman does not really exist and is only an invention from mom to keep me in control.   I guess she was traumatized by what happened to her friends, the lawyers, who lost their first child in some kind of movie plot k********g in Mexico, and frankly it is hard to believe all those stories they have told us about what happened twenty years ago, and although at first, I believed them, when I was old enough to understand how things actually works, I searched the internet and couldn't find much, especially about our family, only isolated incidents are mentioned that frankly are not even close to the pretty serious incidents my parents and uncles were telling.   The only thing I could find anything about, was the coverage that had the news of the disappearance of Mrs. Pemberton when she was pregnant, and how she was found months later in Mexico, but without a baby, alleging that her brother, who was not really her real brother, had taken it; Then I found some articles, mainly from entertainment magazines, where they stated that she had actually fled to Mexico because the baby was not her husband's and that she had gotten rid of it there, which makes much more sense than the story that they told me.   But I can't say for sure, because they are good people and very good parents, or so they seem, they also do a lot of charity work and work to defend human rights and fight against child trafficking, but still, I don't understand how any of that has to do with me, why should I suffer the consequences of something that happened so long ago?   I look with annoyance at the business magazine in the car, and the image of my mother watches me from the cover, yes, the most important CEO of the last decade, one of the most influential people in the world, according to the giant letters that accompany her photo, which reminds me of how much we are physically alike, except for the color of our eyes, but how little we are alike in our ways of being and perceiving the world.   I want to live a calm and happy life, away from the noise of the city, from the hustle and bustle of the daily life of people who are too concerned about money and their jobs, about their partners, and their desire to be more important than others, I want to have a house in the mountains or in front of the sea, big enough for me, and not a gigantic mansion where nobody really knows where things are, and with enough space to house about ten whole families, I want to work in something that I like and travel around the world, I want to be free from all the expectations imposed on me from the second I was born.   My mother instead wants to rule the world.   She is smart, determined, cunning, ambitious - in a good way - and generous, because behind the success of her huge business group is the fact that she has sought to implement the best benefits for her employees, the highest salaries in the market, fewer hours of work, all kinds of medical coverage, a program so they can have their own home, which she started after several of her employees lost their homes due to a hurricane and she in response created a construction company which rebuilt their houses completely free of charge, and only charged the state for the net cost to build the other houses, which not only earned her the respect of many people who even went so far as to ask her to follow in my grandfather's footsteps in politics, but also earned the hatred of other construction companies looking to make a lot of money from state contracts to rebuild homes.   Thanks to all this, people literally fight to get to work in one of the Graham Group companies, every day there are lines of people carrying their resumes, and my mother is constantly approached by people wherever she goes, asking her for work or charity, and she always tries to help them as best she can; and at the end of the day, she ends up taking the best workers for her company, which has resulted in it having had much greater growth than the rest of the companies in the same area.   Well, that and the fact that she has my father by her side, who is basically in charge of creating all the innovative products that have put them ahead of their competitors, especially their facial recognition software, which, apparently, he created for me, to finding the crazy woman and capturing her so that I can be safe, even if they haven't done it yet, and that brings us back to me.   After describing them, I basically feel like the black sheep of the family, and I haven't even talked about my award-winning Uncle Joshua, the famous pianist, my Aunt Lucy and her public veterinary clinic, or her brother the oncologist; basically, everyone in this family has some kind of spectacular achievement that sets them apart from other people.   And then there is me.   Who can be differentiated from the others for being the only student at the university with private security, and whose highest achievement has been being elected president of the student council at the university, something that after having felt proud for days thanks to my devastating vote count, I discovered that the only reason I got the vast majority of the votes is that basically, no one else wanted the job, and now I understand why, as my tasks are extremely boring, the professors and the dean treat me like a useless rich girl, and the students only come to me to intercede for them when they have committed a serious offense.   And today's council meeting could have been just one more of the long, boring hours I dream of my home in the mountains, had it not been for his unexpected arrival.   He, who entered the boardroom as if he were at his own home, sat down without greeting anyone, took off his jacket, and threw it on the chair next to him leaving some tattoos exposed on his arms, while running his hand through his long hair, in an exasperated gesture and then he looks at everyone in annoyance, until his eyes fell on me and widened in surprise. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Free reading for new users
Scan code to download app
Facebookexpand_more
  • author-avatar
    Writer
  • chap_listContents
  • likeADD