BEAUTIFUL
LITTLE FOOL by KK Hendin
Eighty
seven billion dollars.
One
dead New York business mogul.
No
heirs.
No
wives.
No
relatives.
Eighty
seven billion dollars.
Not
hers yet.
He
doesn’t deserve them.
He
doesn’t know what to do with them.
She
does.
She
always has.
Eighty
seven billion dollars.
He’s
overwhelmed.
She’s
prepared.
That
will should have had her name.
Not
his.
Eighty
seven billion dollars.
His
looks are a bonus.
Her
looks are her weapon.
He’s
fighting a losing battle against his heart.
He
doesn’t know it yet.
Eighty
seven billion dollars.
She
gets everything she wants.
He’s
what she wants.
Love
has nothing to do with it.
To
get to where you’re going, sometimes you need to step on a few
people to get there.
Good
thing her heels are sharp.
It was raining on the day of
Harold’s funeral. Everything was overcast, and just gloomy enough to drop a
layer of grey on the city. “Appropriate weather,” said one sober news anchor
the morning of the funeral, “to mourn the death of one of the biggest men of
New York.”
It was appropriate, and it
worked wonders for the mood, but it did nothing good for Cedar’s hair. She had
her makeup artist come over early in the morning, and helped her with a face
that said “I’m mourning the loss of a person very dear to me, but I look
fabulous while doing it”. Her outfit was going to be reported in every major
newspaper in the country, because that’s who she was. And so she dressed
appropriately. And had memorized the eulogy she was going to give, which was
mostly lies. But nobody really cared. The funeral wasn’t actually a place for
people to mourn the death of Harold Feingold. The funeral was a place for
people to reassure themselves of their importance and their place in society.
Not just anyone was invited to Harold Feingold’s funeral, because not everyone
was worthy. The journalists had a separate corded area to watch and observe but
to never forget for even a second that they were never going to be good enough
to actually be invited to anything like this. Cedar had made sure only the
reporters she approved of were coming to the funeral, and the rest of the
paparazzi were located behind a line of the best security guards money could
get.
And
even though nobody attending the funeral would ever admit to it, going to
Harold Feingold’s funeral was the same as going to a showing at the Gallery. It
wasn’t for the reason they said they were going, and even if it was something
they normally wouldn’t have ever done, they were more than happy to go. Get
dressed in an outfit that people wouldn’t forget, mingle with the right people,
and glory in where you were in life.
If
you had to buy an extraordinarily expensive piece of art or cry a few tears,
well, that was the price of admission for these kinds of things.
The casket was there when Cedar
made her way into the church, followed by the insistent flashes of the
paparazzi, silently clamoring for the best angle of her. Cedar Reynolds was a
commodity, and even the paparazzi knew that. So, she wasn’t an actress or a
singer, or anything else like that, and even though she wasn’t a Rockefeller or
Astor or Thames, she was Cedar Reynolds, and everything she touched turned to
gold. They all knew she wasn’t to be trifled with, and none of them had the
guts to even try. They knew what happened to those who did, and none of them
wanted to go down that road.
KK
Hendin’s real life ambition is to become a pink fluffy unicorn who
dances with rainbows. But the schooling for that is all sorts of
complicated, so until that gets sorted out, she’ll just write.
Preferably things with angst and love. And things that require
chocolate. She’s the author of the NA contemporaries HEART BREATHS
and ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG.
THIS
MUCH SPACE is the second book in her new series, TWELVE BEATS IN A
BAR.
KK
spends way too much time on Twitter (where she can be found as
@kkhendin), and rambles on occasion over at
www.kkhendinwrites.blogspot.com.
AUTHOR
LINKS:
Twitter
- https://twitter.com/kkhendin
Facebook
- https://www.facebook.com/kk.hendin
