Every piece had fallen exactly in the place
she had wanted. Every single one of them represented something she had been
looking to achieve for a long time and now, she was finally able to reach every
single goal she had ever wanted to attain. She was merely hours away from all
of it and the only thing she could do was looking at her laptop and then at the
city from her balcony and then again to the screen, where everything should
appear at the right time.
She had decided to be alone for that moment. The
idea had never been to share this monumental achievement with anyone else, but
to celebrate it alone in a very personal way. She had a bottle of her favorite champagne
at hand, her most comfortable and loved clothes on and she was in the most
private place she could ever be able to get to: her own home. Everything was
just as she wanted and she had insisted on disappearing for that night,
avoiding people constantly in order to have a few hours all to herself.
It’s not like she was going to party hard
until the next day came. She was not as young as she was when everything had
started and, even if she felt younger, she had never been one to do that sort
of thing. She had achieved her goals because she had been so focused, taking
care of every single thing from the moment she had decided she would stop being
the person she was during her youth and start her transformation into the woman
she really wanted to be. It would take time but it would all be very much worth
it.
And it was. The sole feeling of being there,
in that beautiful apartment, nestled in the mountains, with such an amazing
view of her preferred city in the world, could not be topped by anything. She
had everything she had always wanted: not only objects such as clothes and jewelry
or furniture and the proper décor, but also things that no one could never buy
with money. Things that only experience and intelligence could teach a person
their worth and the real position that every single thing and person had to
have around them.
She had been patient and very controlling of
it all, and it was worth it. Only minutes away from the awaited time, she poured
some of the champagne into a tall glass and opened a box of fresh strawberries that
she had picked up herself from a local farmers market. The smell was sweet and
luscious, the perfect thing to go with the night she was having. She felt as if
tears would start coming down her face in any minute, but she had also learned
how to prepare for that: just open her eyes wider, smile and let the waves of
good energy enter her body. When the clock on her laptop struck the hour, a
shower of pyrotechnics covered the city.
Champagne disappeared in a moment. She poured
herself another glass and then another one after that. She saw the bright
lights over the city and felt as she had never felt before. It was then tears
begun pouring down her face and she didn’t bother to wipe them out or do
anything about them. She wanted to cry and scream and to whatever she wanted
because, when time had come, she became who she had always wanted to be and it
was something that had never been guaranteed, so it was an understandable
reaction.
She remembered how, in her first years in the
company she now ran, many people had tried to make her feel as if she didn’t
belong there. They made comments very often, about her parents and her
siblings, about their house and her clothes and a truth they claimed to be irreplaceable:
that no girl from a background like the one she had would ever be able to achieve
anything in such a competitive world. Everyone was against her and she had to
take it all with patience and care, always thinking about the future.
Every time they slammed her with horrible
words, she would deflect them with indifference and, with time, she learned to outwit
them at every turn, making them feel that the girl they had seen coming into
their company was not the same they were standing in front of years later. She
became much more certain of her choices and even dared to share her past life
with no regrets whatsoever. Contrary to her enemies’ beliefs, she gained a
strong following because of that choice. People regarded her as a true beacon of
light to look up to.
Power could be gained easily, or so she
thought, if she followed her well thought plan from the beginning. That had
started years before, when she had decided to save for school doing horrible
and menial jobs. But she got to the point where she could study and also work,
and she did. By the time her bosses understood she could not be so easily “taken
care of”, she was almost untouchable because of the support of the people that
worked under her. They knew that if she left, they would leave after her and
sink the company in the blink of an eye.
That power grew exponentially until she made
it to the top ranking of the company. She made it to the board of directors
before she turned forty years old and, by then, most of her competition had
either died out or moved on to other endeavors. She ultimately took over completely
and then, it was impossible to pretend she hadn’t achieved something that
seemed impossible. The former owner was still there, but she had become the
face of the company they had owned for so many years and there was no way they
could live without her. And she knew it very well, even if her plan still had
some stages to be accomplished.
The night of New Year’s Eve, the one when she
celebrated with champagne on the balcony of her elegant home, she fifty-six
years old. She had effectively ended her plans, the ones she had designed from
the age of fifteen. She had executed every single stage of the whole thing and she
celebrated the fact that she had won. No one in the planet could argue with her
that, after so many years, she had been the one to come on top and not him. Not
Anthony Klein Volker, the man that was supposed to own all of it once his
father died.
Anthony was her prime target and the one she
really wanted to get with all of her scheming and plotting. Of course, Lavinia
and Arthur, Anthony’s siblings, could not be left out of it all. And not his mother
Clara either, or his father Jonathan. None of them were going to be left alone until
she got what she wanted and, what she really wanted more than anything in the
world, was to have every single thing that belonged to them: every property,
all the money, their precious company, their transports and even their pets.
She wanted it all.
And although most people loved her for being who
she was and became, some hated her. Most of them sided with the Klein Volker’s
because they had business with them or because they knew the truth and were the
kind of people that hated when someone brings out the shit that has stained the
carpet and is making everyone ask themselves why there’s such an awful smell in
the room. Of course, they knew, she could clearly see that in their eyes when
they tried to scare her out of making one of her bold moves.
But she moved. She moved because Anthony had
been the one that had assaulted her one night, after he had seen her in one the
company’s open picnics for children in need. The oldest of the Klein Volker’s
raped her and his father Jonathan, instead of vomiting when he saw what his son
had done, he rewarded him with objects and ordered the girl to vanish, forcing
her into a life of prostitution, a life she would never be able to leave. They thought
she was weak and that she could be punished into compliance, shutting her mouth
forever.
And she did, for a while. She did work as a prostitute
and saved money that way. Then she got another job and then another and she
started school and education became her best weapon against everything that had
ever happened to him. When they saw him, they didn’t recognize her at first.
But, after a while, they did. But it was too
late to say or do anything. She had them right where she wanted them and she
claimed revenge in a myriad of ways, in every single one of them because they
all knew what had happened and had all collaborated in her destruction. Yet, fortune
favors the bold.
