Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 70488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“You’re exaggerating.” My mother sighed.
“I’m not,” I disagreed vehemently. “And I also think that you need to be careful about how you treat her. She’s liked by everyone. You hurt her in any way, or wrong her, everyone’s going to know that, too.”
Okay, so maybe I had no clue what everyone would do. But I know what I would do if my sister had been mistreated, and there wasn’t any way in the world that I would let it go. I’d burn the world down for my sister.
“What do you suggest I do?” She sounded exasperated. “Let her work there and not do anything?”
I rolled my eyes so hard that my head ached.
“I suggest you let her do the job you originally hired her for,” I told her. “Let her work the front counter and stock shelves if it’s not too exerting. Let her do anything inside that she can do, including the medications. But don’t have her out there running the forklift or lifting heavy boxes.”
“Well, if she doesn’t, who will?”
“Hire someone,” I suggested. “A man that can handle that.”
“That’s sexist. Women can do anything a man can do.”
“I mean, they can do some of it, sure,” I agreed. “But you have these ladies out there in the warehouse trying to lift weights even some men have trouble with. Trust me when I say, she can’t do that. Nor should she have to.”
“I can’t hire anyone,” she grumbled. “No one wants to work at The Mercantile.”
Romina snorted.
Candice covered her mouth with her hand to keep the laughter from spilling out.
Maybe I shouldn’t have placed this phone call on speaker. If my mom found out the entire family was listening, she’d be pissed.
Not that I cared.
I did what I wanted.
She should know better.
This was our usual pizza night.
“Well, there’s a reason for that, I’m sure.” I sighed. “Treat your employees better, and maybe your retention rate wouldn’t be so bad.”
My mother grumbled. “Will you run the forklift if she can’t?”
“No,” I said. “I’m on site because you begged and pleaded to have my butchery on the same property as you. But I’m not there for anything to do with The Mercantile. You know that I want nothing to do with it.”
“Why?” she asked.
She always asked this.
And I always gave her the same answer.
“Because I was forced to do enough child labor when I was a kid that the place literally gives me hives.”
Silence.
My mother did one of two things when she tried to manipulate you.
She talked her ass off, trying to push you into a corner until you did what she wanted. And if that didn’t work, she would go silent to make you feel bad for some bullshit, made-up or imaginary, affront that you inadvertently said or did to her.
She was exhausting, and I’d been dealing with it for my entire life.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for my dad, I’d have left this stupid town so my mother wasn’t so damn close.
She wasn’t a good mom, and I couldn’t pretend anymore.
Hence my refusal to work at The Mercantile.
My brothers and sister weren’t at that point yet, but one day they would be.
And for Harvey, that was probably closer than ever.
Mom hated Romina.
Despised her, actually.
Mom hated that Romina’s family was caring and loving and put on huge spreads every single holiday, taking away her child without meaning to.
The moment that Romina and Harvey married, my mother would lose her shit.
“Okay, good talk,” I said and hung up when she continued to stay silent.
Romina and Candice both burst out laughing when I hung up on her petty, childish antics.
“I wish Harvey had half your balls when it came to your mother,” Romina groaned.
I snorted. “Harvey has been keeping the peace for too long. He has no clue how to stand up to her, even if he wants to.”
“It’s partially Hux’s fault anyway,” Candice said. “He’s always purposefully pissing her off to keep the peace between everyone else and Vera. He’s conditioned Harvey, Heidi, and Hampton to shut their mouths.”
“True,” Hampton said unapologetically. “He can get away with things that we can’t, though. If we tried to talk to her like he just did.” Hampton gestured at me with his half slice of pizza. “Then we’d have our heads torn off. She’d go to Dad and complain, and Dad would be forced to stand up for her. Then everything would go downhill.”
“Why is it, do you think, that you can get away with what the others can’t?”
Just as Candice asked that, the back door closed and Bells entered.
He walked right up to Heidi and dropped a kiss to her upturned mouth before answering Candice’s question.
“Because Hux has a devil-may-care attitude.” Bells sat down in the only empty spot between Candice and Romina and grabbed a slice of pizza. “He doesn’t care who he pisses off, what the consequences are, and who gets caught in the crossfire. You could all burn and he’d call it ‘acceptable cannon fodder’ and move about with his life.”