Not that I cared about any of that at the time. She knew all the cool places to hang out at her family’s exclusive resort. We were inseparable preteens, united against the adults by the end of day one.
When I found out she was leaving for a camp on the Big Island the next day, I had a complete, and epic, meltdown. I didn’t want to spend my summer with boring grownups.
Mother said no, but Sybil came to my rescue. Together, we convinced my father to let me go. He said yes. Mother fell in line like the dutiful wife she was.
Sybil and I have been besties ever since.
“You sure you can’t come with me?” Sybil asks for the tenth time. “It’d be so much more fun.”
“You know I can’t.” I glance at my watch.
“I wish you could cancel on your mother, just once. She never lets you have any fun. You’re practically a prisoner here.”
Sybil’s not wrong about that.
“I’ve learned how to keep the peace. I give her this and she leaves me alone.”
“Alone to do what? You’re not allowed to date like a normal person. You barely go out at all.”
“She just wants what’s best for me.”
“She keeps you locked in an ivory tower.”
“Come on, just because I live here doesn’t mean …”
“Live, work, and eat.” Sybil’s brow arches. “Hey, just worried about you. You haven’t dated anyone since we left Cornell, and now that your uncle has his goons following you 24/7, you’ll never meet a man on your own.”
“MD is challenging at the best of times …”
“Most times? She’s downright brutal and cruel.” Sybil doesn’t pull her punches, but things between her and my mother definitely hit arctic cold several years ago.
“You really should have it out with her. You’re a grown woman. CEO of the Belvedere. You run a multi-million-dollar company, but your mommy refuses to let you date? Do you hear the words coming out of my mouth?”
If the decision had been left up to my mother all those years ago, she never would’ve let me hang out with Sybil. She would’ve forbade me from going off-island to a no-name horse camp filled with average kids from average families.
My mother’s nose is stuck high in the sky. Growing up beneath that prejudice made life complicated, to say the least.
“I hear you just fine.” I blow out an exasperated breath. “Let me deal with my mother. You need to hurry up before she catches you, or you’ll find your spa day transformed into a luncheon of judgment.”
“Okay. Fine.” Sybil lifts her hands in defeat. “I’m leaving without you, but I’m going to text every minute.”
“Please don’t. You know how MD hates the obnoxiousness of cell phones.”
“Which is why …” Sybil wraps me in another hug and whispers in my ear, “I’ll only text you every ten minutes. Is she staying for the banquet?”
“She didn’t say, but I assume so. It’s our most popular fundraiser of the year. She’d hate to miss the pageantry.”
“I just wish you could come and go as you please. You know, some people actually leave the hotel. Instead of lunch downstairs, why don’t you take her someplace in the French Quarter? You know, knock her off her game? Level the playing field? Why not pretend you’ve got a secret boyfriend you’ve been keeping from her for months. Now that would be scandalous.”
“Scandalous and deadly.” I can’t help but laugh. “There’s no way you’ll get her to walk those streets. If there’s not a red carpet rolled out to the curb, it’s beneath her station.”
“I know.” Sybil gives me a look. “I wish she wasn’t so hard on you.”
“I wish she was more like your mom.”
Sybil’s mother is the most amazing person on earth. Warm and welcoming, she’s the definition of Hawaiian hospitality.
When she saw the friendship between Sybil and me blooming, she did everything she could to encourage it, even when that meant sending her daughter halfway across the globe to spend every summer with me in the Hamptons. They even enrolled Sybil in the ultra-elite Prescott Academy, a boarding school for children of wealthy families, so we could go to high school together.
Sybil’s mother recognized the value of a lifetime friendship. In many ways, Sybil’s mother is more my mother than my own.
I hate admitting that, but it’s true.
Sybil’s phone chirps. “Okay, I gotta go or I will miss my appointment. Give your mother my love.”
“I will.” We hug one last time.
“Bye-ee!” She waves, bouncing with excitement.
“I’ll see you tonight.” I blow Sybil a kiss.
A smile fills her face as she spins around and leaves my office with a bounce in her step.
As for my office, a private set of stairs leads up one floor to the spacious living quarters my uncle commissioned for me after my graduation from Cornell.
Uncle Marco calls it a graduation gift. It took several months, and Sybil mentioning it, before I realized I live in a gilded cage. If I want to head outside, a highly skilled team of security professionals always accompanies me. Another gift from my uncle, they never get in my way, exactly, but they do report everything I do directly to my uncle.
Not that I haven’t slipped out from under their protection from time to time. Sybil is my bestie, after all. She figured out a way to free me from my unwanted shadows.
But I’m not complaining, and I’m not fighting it. The Belvedere is my legacy, passed down to me by my father. I live, eat, sleep, and work all within the walls and halls of the hotel casino built upon some of the priciest land in New Orleans.
After four years at the prestigious hotel school at Cornell University, I graduated with honors and stepped directly into the role of Chief Executive Officer at the Belvedere. I maintain my position with a controlling interest in company stock and a seat on the board of directors. That’s the only reason my uncle hasn’t kicked me out.
He can’t.
It’s also topic number one of the weekly luncheons I endure with MD.
As for Uncle Marco, he’s old-fashioned, unlike my father. Marco grew up in my father’s shadow. The younger brother to the Rossi empire, friction heated the air between brothers. Marco made no secret he coveted his brother’s position as head of the Rossi family, but he stood back, obedient to tradition.
But then, my father died.
Marco stepped up and fulfilled his obligations to the family. He did so in many ways, none nearly as shocking as when he married my mother. But that was the promise he made to my father. At least, that’s what he claims was said between them.
No one really knows. It’s his word against a dead man.
In addition to other Rossi holdings, he wants control of the Belvedere, but the trust my father set up gives controlling interest to me.
Marco wants to take that from me; says my place is in the home, raising children. Did I mention traditional?
If my suspicions are correct, and they are when it comes to my mother, that’s exactly what she wants to discuss.
Once a week, precisely at noon, we meet for a mother-daughter luncheon. It’s a battle of wills, and I dread it all week long.