Late nights at Eastern Park used to be LB’s escape—until a ghost from her past shows up with a message she can’t ignore. As her father’s name reopens wounds she thought had scarred over, LB is forced to decide: face the man who broke her or let the past continue to control her future. With her career hanging in the balance and temptation knocking in the form of her father's protégé, emotions run high and truths wait in the shadows.
Almost every light in the building was off by the time LB caught up with reality. She had spent so much time thinking about her father that she didn’t realize how much time had passed her by.
Janice didn’t fail to remind her, either. She waltzed right into LB’s office unexpectedly and scared her for the second time that day.
“Janice! What the hell!? Do you have a kink for scaring people!? I’m gonna have to get you some bells to put on your socks so I can hear you coming before you get here. Jesus! And what are you still doing here, anyway?”
Janice was in tears, laughing at LB’s rant.
She laughed so hard she couldn’t get her words out.
“Yeah, ha ha, laugh it up.” LB rolled her eyes and continued packing her things to take home for the night.
“I’m sorry!” Janice laughed. “I swear I didn’t mean to scare you. Again!” She laughed some more. “My goodness. Matteo has you riled up tonight, hasn’t he?”
LB didn’t say a word in response to her father. She was too angry and far too hurt to know where to begin. She didn’t take Janice’s laughter offensively, though. It was just awkward timing.
“What was that about earlier?” Janice asked as she settled onto the armrest of the couch in LB’s office.
The room fell quieter than it was before Janice entered it. LB wished she could have just taken her things and gone home to wrap her mind around the message from her father. But she knew Janice wouldn’t let her leave without an explanation.
“Matteo wants to see me,” she said. “His messenger says he’s sick and having an epiphany. So he wants to make amends with all the people he stepped on while rising to the top, I suppose.”
Janice’s eyebrows raised as she let out a gnarly gasp and said, “Well! That bold son of a bitch. No wonder he’s made it as far as he has in the industry. He really does step out on the ledge.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
LB went back to packing.
After shutting off her computer and making sure she grabbed her flash drive, she headed for the door.
Her mind was in a million different places and not one of them was Eastern Park or the conversation with Janice.
She wanted to go home. Sulk in a hot bath. Forget about it all.
Maybe even play with her rose while she fantasized about Orion, whom she knew things would get awkward with the minute he said he worked for her father.
“You never said why you were still here.”
“Oh!” Janice quickly remembered. “I was just going over some financial statements with the accountant. We’re doing pretty good. But we could be doing so much better. I wanted to talk to you about maybe signing on as a journalist too. The people would love to hear what Lydia Bellerose, daughter of two fashion icons, has to say.”
Janice was always creeping on a come-up. She thought of any and every way to make more money for the magazine and didn’t realize how much of her life Eastern Park had consumed.
Until it was too late.
“Just piling it on me, huh?” LB said. “I’ll have to think about that one, Janice. With Mattaeo making his grand re-entrance out of nowhere, I have a lot of things on my mind right now.”
“It’s no rush,” Janice said. “Just something to think about. I’m trying to bring new avenues to Eastern Park. With competition on the rise, I don’t want my life’s work to just die out.”
“Don’t you think you’ve given Eastern Park enough already?” LB asked. “Why not get into daytime TV or something? You can still do gossip and pinups. Just on TV.”
The largest smile crossed Janice’s face. She loved talking to LB because she thought outside the box. There were a lot of things that Janice wanted to do with the platform she had; she was just too afraid to do it.
“See! That’s why I have to run things by you!” she exclaimed. “You always come up with great ideas. I mean, I’ve always thought about doing podcasts and TV, of course, but you give me the spark I need in order to figure out which lane I want to travel on my way.”
“Well, don’t take too much advice from me,” LB replied. “I was kicked out of Bellerose. Remember?”
LB started working for her father’s company when she was just sixteen years old.
She was always obsessed with fashion, drawing, and creating outfits from recycled material and although it might sound cliché, becoming a Bellerose designer was the dream for her.
Too bad that dream crashed when she least expected it.
She wasn’t sure what exactly led to the crash, other than her mom falling ill, and even years after her mother had passed, she still didn’t know.
She had small flashbacks of a huge fight just before Matteo kicked her and her mother out of their estate, but for some reason, the flashback always ended before she saw why.
“Thanks for walking me to my car.”
She hit the unlock button for her trunk and placed her things inside.
The night was crisp and the Chicago wind wanted to blow her right back into Orion’s bed. But knowing that he was off limits because he was her father’s protégé kept her from thinking with her emotions.
“So, are you gonna sit down with Matteo? Figure out what he wants?”
“I don’t know.” LB closed her trunk and leaned against the tail of her car. “A part of me wants to hear what he has to say, but then there’s the other part of me. The part of me that won’t let go of my anger and says, Screw him forever.”
Janice chuckled and patted LB’s arm in a loving manner. She understood her frustration with her father. Even though Janice hated him too, she didn’t want LB to make a decision out of anger and pain. Because she knew firsthand how hard it was to live a life with regrets.
“I think you should, kid,” Janice said. “We’re all getting older now and there are some wounds that just won’t heal until the right questions are asked and answered. I know Matteo is a selfish man and can be very cruel and unkind, but he is still your father. And I think you should hear what he has to say before it’s too late.”
The look of sadness that was present on Janice’s face spoke more than her mouth needed to.
She regretted letting her husband walk out of her life and she didn’t want LB to live with that same regret. She also knew that Matteo had reasons for doing what he did, and it wasn’t completely out of malice. But that was a truth he needed to tell the woman he had raised as his daughter. Not Janice.
“I guess you’re right.” LB said. “Maybe he’ll finally tell me what Mom did that was so bad he had to vote her out. And me! I didn’t even do anything. Except have my mom’s back.”
Janice fought hard to keep her lips sealed. She wanted to tell LB everything.
She wanted to tell her what drove Matteo to madness. But she couldn’t. The innocence she saw in LB’s eyes was just too fragile to add more weight.
So if the bridge had to be repaired, Matteo had to be the one to do it.
“That’s one question you could ask,” Janice said. “Make a list and check it twice. Don’t let him leave this world without telling you the one thousand percent truth.
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