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“No.” Everyone jumps at my interruption. I even startled myself.
There’s a beat of silence while everyone looks at me.
“Excuse me?” Stan does not look pleased.
Am I really going to do this? I glance at Liz, who smiles encouragingly. Sigh. I guess I am.
“Look,” I say. “If you want to increase sales, you don’t take away the people making them.” Stan opens his mouth, but I just keep going. “Thomas may have had a point when he said family-run, stand-alone luxury retailers are a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean we can’t bring it into the future. It doesn’t mean we have to sell.”
Stan sneers. “Please. And you know all of this from your porn site?”
Okay, so that app I developed? It could be considered porn. It’s basically the equivalent of Hot or Not, that asshole app that rates a girl’s appearance on a scale from one to ten—but for dick pics.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, now women the world over can turn the tables on those assholes and upload all those unwanted dick pics to my app and rate them on a scale from one to ten.
It’s pretty fucking ingenious, if I do say so myself. But yeah, you could also say it’s porn.
Liz pipes up, “You mean his multimillion-dollar social media application?”
My sister is awesome.
Stan rolls his eyes while my mom widens hers at my sister in warning. The app I created is worth millions. And while it’s true it was my creation, after the whole girlfriend/partner dirty deed, I walked away with a fraction of what I was owed. Honestly, money isn’t that important to me. True, I recognize that I can say that because I was lucky enough that my early investments helped me buy an apartment outright in Manhattan and I have enough in savings that I really don’t have to work right now. Which I thought would be cool, but it so isn’t. The idle life is not for me.
But I’m not wealth-obsessed like my father.
A young woman in a catering uniform comes in to clear our plates, breaking my train of thought. Yes, our family lunch has been professionally catered by my parents’ personal chef. A personal chef who has three underlings who serve meals in Stan’s five-hundred-square-foot dining room dripping in crystal and gilt.
And they wonder why the business isn’t financially stable. Insert internal eye roll here.
“Lizzy,” my mother murmurs before taking another sip.
Chastised once again, Liz looks down and tucks her hair behind her ears. My mom and my sister have a pretty good relationship. Mom is old school and from a generation where women defer to their husbands. And though Liz has more backbone than that, she craves our mother’s approval. Maybe it’s a mother–daughter thing. Even so, Liz still reaches over and squeezes my hand for encouragement.
I take a deep breath and prepare for battle. “Say what you want about my app, but you can’t say it wasn’t lucrative. I knew what I was doing.”
“Was?” Stan asks, gearing up for a put-down. “Couldn’t stick with it, could you, boy? Got run out from your own business? That sounds about right.”
I want to smack Stan in the face, but that would probably lessen my credibility. Liz opens her mouth to speak up, but I shake my head at her. I don’t need her putting her foot in it with our parents. And Stan doesn’t need to know that I’d sold because my ex-business partner couldn’t keep his snake in his trousers and my ex is a certifiable serpent charmer.
“That’s a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black now, isn’t it?”
He blusters, and I do get a bit of satisfaction from that.
“Listen. I just finished selling off my app, and I’ve been thinking about my next venture. Moore’s could be it.”
“Could be? Could be?” Stan thunders. “We should all just stake our futures and the billion-dollar offer on the table because this could be your next venture?”
Sigh. “Okay, wrong choice of words. Moore’s is where I want to be and also where I’m needed. Which is more than golden boy Thomas can say.”
Stan is really working those nostril muscles with all the flaring he’s doing.
“Let’s vote.” I gesture to the door Thomas has recently stormed out of. “You already have a vote to sell. My vote is to allow me to take over, increase our bottom line, and bring Moore’s into the twenty-first century.”
Liz glances at our mother. Mom shakes her head slightly, making my stomach clench. I knew it was a long shot, Mom going against the old man, but I didn’t think she’d disapprove of Liz standing by me.
“Two votes for Chase,” my sister says, not meeting our mother’s eyes.
Yep, love my sister.
