Page 92 of Best In Class
CHAPTER 24
Luna
I’m floating.
For once, everything is working. The hospital project is ahead of schedule. Tommy has stopped being a sexist pain in my ass—well,mostly.
The team is clicking.
Savannah Lace is thriving.
And Dom…God, Dom.
He’s back in my life in the best possible way.
Not just the boy I used to love, but the man he’s become—steady, thoughtful, good.
That first date…the picnic! Oh, I’ll think about it on my deathbed. Not for the romance, but for the love. The ease of it. Like we’d finally found our way back to the same page.
I wake up smiling. Every day!
He hasn’t spent the night since our second date, but we’ve gotten to second and third base a few times. Once in his car.
We’re sexually frustrated! No question about it. But there’s a strange kind of freedom in it. As much as we want to give in, there’s something old-fashioned about this, like he’s courting me, and I’m courting him right back.
Dom texts me every morning, and even today—when I’d usually be in a piss-poor mood from dealing with my father—I’m smiling.
The sun is out.
I ate breakfast with Miss Abigail.
Dom said he loves me in a text message.
So, there’s a skip in my step when I walk into the Steele board meeting, a responsibility I take seriously, even though I wish I didn’t have it.
I show up to make it clear that I stand with my brother—and just as clearly, not with my father. Since the old weasel still has a seat on the board, I’m here to help steer the company’s strategy alongside Lev, and to make sure Daddy Dearest doesn’t screw it all up.
Our father almost ruined our legacy until Lev and I poured a significant portion of our trust funds into the business. The only saving grace is that Dad is now just a figurehead—he holds ten percent of the shares, and no real power.
The rest is split between Lev, me, and a handful of uncles and cousins.
But together, Lev and I own more than fifty percent of Steele Corporation. We control it.
“You’ve got to do something about this place, Lev. It’s…cold.” I look around the boardroom, which is all glass and concrete, part Nordic minimalism (which I like) and Soviet Union austere architecture (which I don’t).
“I’ve been told my sister is a hotshot architect, maybe she’d like to help out?” Lev suggests sarcastically.
I raise both my hands, palms out, shaking my head. “No way! I’m not mixing family and business.”
The room gets colder when my father enters. He nods at me, and I return the gesture.
Lev still talks to him, and more importantly, he still spends time with our mother. I don’t. She left me a long time ago, and I feel absolutely no responsibility or obligation to be there for her as she withers away in a haze of Xanax and Ambien, washed down with pinot grigio and regret.
Jennifer Steele is a ghost of the woman she never really tried to be.
Now, I have a whole lot of sympathy for addicts, but our mother isn’t your garden-variety drug abuser. Oh no—she’s wealthy, so she gets prescriptions, not interventions. She’s medicated in marble bathrooms and wears her dysfunction like a silk robe.
She wanders through life as Mrs. Steele of the Mayflower Steeles.
