What Dreams Are Made Of – Episode 2
#EPISODE_2
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If looks could have killed, Nikloi Swaroski would have been a dead man right then. Chrissy felt disgusted by the man standing in front of her. He had kissed her only to avoid meeting another woman. She felt used by him. The man was an insult to all women, she thought.
She wanted to hit him hard on his face and wipe off that arrogance. Instead she just answered, “Oh don’t worry. That kiss was hardly worth remembering. I wouldn’t waste my time on it.”
If she felt there was a flicker of emotion on his face, it was gone before she could blink. She wasn’t even sure if she saw something. He turned around, took a seat at the head of the table and said, “So, why are you here?”
Now he is asking! She hated to talk to him after what had just happened but knew she didn’t really have any choice.
“I came here to talk about my shop,” she answered but didn’t add, and my life .
“What shop?” He snapped.
Chrissy could feel her blood boil in her veins, but she needed him to listen to her. She controlled her feelings and with lot of restrain said,
“My antiques shop is at the Regiment Estate, where your luxury hotel is being constructed. Your company has bought the shopping complex as it is situated next to the hotel site. I have been told to vacate the shop since the whole complex is being removed. If you remember, I had met you at the site last month, but you didn’t wait to hear me. So, I asked your office for a meeting at your office and was given an appointment for the afternoon today. ”
She said it in one breath, stressing on the word afternoon, to emphasize how long she had been waiting for him. She also kept the construction site plans on the table in front of him to see. Those plans showed the proximity between her existing shop-her sole source of earning a living and his future luxury hotel–a place where people with all money in the world could squander it away.
It wasn’t fair, she thought. She had been working her ass off for her shop, not to be told one day by a rich snob that it can no longer exist. She would never let it happen, she vowed silently again.
“There is nothing to discuss. The shop has to go,” he said as a matter of fact, without even looking at the plans on his table.
“You can’t do that. I have been paying rent for that shop for a full year. I have all the papers,” she struggled to keep her voice calm.
“I can. The complex your shop is in, is my property now. I plan to raze it down to the ground and develop that space into a lavish green park. It would provide far better view to the guests at my hotel, than to look at people buying their groceries,” he said arrogantly.
He looked the complete money-minded, ruthless businessman that he was known around. Chrissy didn’t know what to say or how to tell the materialistic man that she needed that shop. If the shop was lost, she would have nowhere to go, no one to seek help from. Her whole life and that of her younger sister, Alice, along with their mother depended upon the existence of that shop.
The thought of her younger sister made her heart squeeze. She felt a terrible fear of what would happen to Alice if they were to lose their source of living. No, she couldn’t let that happen. She had to make him see her proposal. And make him accept it.
She drew a large breath to fill her lungs with the much-needed air to make up for the energy in her body that was dropping with every passing second. Slowly, she started, “Mr Swaroski, I understand you have well thought of plans for your luxury hotel, but if you would just listen to my proposal, we might have a solution to our problem.”
He raised his eyebrow and she quickly corrected, “I mean, my problem.”
She pulled out another set of site plans. These were focusing more on the commercial complex. She went closer to his table and laid out the working sheet in front of him.
“My shop, while it is inside the complex, is not in the main building. It is actually on the backside of the compound, quite on the other side of your proposed hotel.”
His face gave
no information about what was going on in his mind and whether he was even listening to what she was saying.
She wetted her lips, drew another breath and continued, “So, keeping in mind your plans of better views for the guests, you can still do it by removing the main building but leaving the shop as it is. It would not even take one tenth of the
overall space, right at the other extreme end and you could continue with your grand plans of a lavish park or whatever you desire.”
She stopped when she realized she might have over done it, slowly raising her eye to look at him. He was staring at her face keenly, but again without any emotions. She was getting worried sick in her heart to get a response from him, but he just kept staring.
This was much more difficult than she thought. She was still half bent on the table, waiting for him to give her a sign. Seeing him not making any move, she straightened up from the table. Fidgeting with her fingers, she prodded,
“So?”
He continued staring at her face. Slowly his eyes moved across to her fidgeting fingers and then back to her face. But still no response. Her whole body was tense with the pressure of getting this through. Her feet, in the slightly heeled shoes she had chosen for this meeting, were sick of standing all this time. All she wanted to do right now was to lie down and go to sleep. But of course, she couldn’t do that there.
Finally, when Chrissy felt she could no longer continue with the silence and was about to scream to get some response from him, he said,
“Listen girl-”
“I have a name”, Chrissy snapped.
“Listen, Ms I-have-a-name, do not interrupt me again,” he snapped back. Continuing, he asked, “Have you ever been to a luxury hotel? Do you know what kind of people visit luxury hotels?”
Chrissy was slightly taken aback by the sudden question. She stared at him not knowing how to answer that. Considering her silence as her answer, he continued, “Hmmm, I thought so. Well, Ms I-have-a-name, you would come up with that absurd suggestion because of your limited or should I say, lack of any knowledge about the high society.”
She winced at his words. It was true that she had no exposure to the high society but that didn’t mean he had to be insulting. And the way he was distorting her name gave her further reason to hate the man. Regardless of what she was going through, he continued to destroy every aspect of her suggestion to save her shop.
“My guests are not interested in your shop. They come to my hotel to either enjoy the luxuries of life or to create more luxuries for themselves. They want to meet like-minded people who have similar tastes in life. They don’t want to be hassled with things that do not add to the multitude of their merriment.” With each of his word she could feel her breath leaving her body.
“And I will not allow anyone to come anywhere close to ruining the image of my hotel and what it has to offer to its affluent guests,” he added seriously. “That little shop of yours is going with the rest of the complex as planned.”
Chrissy was speechless. She felt tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. But she couldn’t break down. She wouldn’t let him see her cry. She willed her tears back and tried again,
“But Mr Swaroski, you haven’t seen my shop. I can assure you it won’t be a hindrance to your plans at all. I can-”
He cut her half way, “You heard what I had to say. Now you can leave.”
“But I… you- ”
“I am not a man to repeat my words. You better leave now so that I can focus on important work,” he said, implying she or whatever she had to say was hardly important.
His last words left Chrissy devastated. Despite herself, she stumbled a step and had to grab the chair in front of her to keep her standing. If he noticed her faltering state, he barely showed it. By the time she steadied herself, he had left the room. With her last option rejected, Chrissy felt her world closing onto her. She didn’t know how long she stood all alone in the conference room before finally turning to leave. All hopes had deserted her. With drooping shoulders, she
finally came out of the conference room. She hardly noticed her surroundings this time. Neither did she notice a pair of eyes following her till the time she stepped into the lift at the end of that floor.
As the elevator doors closed, she thought with utter fear and worry, God, what am I going to do now? What she didn’t know was that someone else had similar thoughts like hers though for an entirely different reason.
To_be_Continued
