This is my twist on a Christmas Story! Enjoy
Chapter One: Ungrateful
This… was not the reaction she was expecting.. In fact, she thought her father would be impressed that she'd done this all without his assistance. Instead, she stood there like a seven year old child being scolded for taking candy from the maid. Then again, she had taken candy from their maid when she was seven and her father ripped into her then too but it was nothing like now.
"...ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?" Her father's voice boomed. "How could you be this careless?"
Shifting, she wasn't sure what about this was careless. "I… thought it would be a good idea to have it?"
The look that crossed her father's face was one she'd seen her whole life. Disbelief. "Mercedes…" He sighed, pressing the bridge of his nose. "You bought a twenty acre ranch and didn't think to tell me first?"
"Thirty." She corrected, softly.
The veins on his neck began to bulge as he tried to wrap his mind around all the information that had been dropped on him. "How much?"
Shrugging, she pulled out her phone to see how much it'd cost to purchase it. She scrolled her statements knowing she wasn't going to find it easily because it had been two years since she actually bought the place. "I don't remember."
"YOU- go get Marie."
Mercedes' eyes grew wide. Marie was their family accountant and her older sister, she was the responsible one of them and she would be able to tell their dad exactly how much it cost to buy the ranch and when she purchased it.
"Dadddy…" She whined. "Marie is just going to-"
Her father raised his hand and shot her a warning look. "Do as I say."
"Fine." She muttered, stomping out of his office and down the long hallway to her sister's.
Her father, Joe Jones had struck gold when started his own home building business when he was just eighteen years old. His parents, humble folks, had a small inheritance from his mother's side and decided to take a chance on their son's dream. He was given fifty-seven thousand dollars and over the course of thirty years he'd turned his business into a mult-billion dollar company.
His business went from having three employees to well over a few thousand. The only break Joe took was when Avery Nelson's family walked into his office looking to get a few add-ons to their current home. He had his head deep into his business to ever entertain dating but when he saw Avery for the first time, time seemed to stop. He took her parents on as clients even though they didn't specialize in add-ons for the sole purpose of seeing her.
Avery Nelson was stunning and that was putting it lightly. She was charismatic, witty and very hard to obtain. He'd asked her out fifteen times before she finally agreed to a date and after said date it took him ten more times to get a second one. He was, after all, a very persistent person and he knew she would be a huge part of his future. And for a brief time she was that and then some. She'd kept a secret from him, the secret that caused callus around his heart. She was on borrowed time, not like the rest of the world though, her clock had a specific time and only she knew it.
She allowed him to dream about forever but forever was only ten years. Ten short years that were filled with countless happy memories but February third came around every year and every year he felt his heart shrink more and more. He knew something was off when she started writing letters but never mailing them, watching the person you love everyday for ten years you learn their habits.
She wasn't one to sit and write a letter and she hated having her picture taken but started wanting every moment documented. He'd asked if there was anything wrong and just like the stubborn woman that she was, she would say no. Every single time.
He shook his head, pushing the memories away. "Avery, this child is too much like you." He said aloud.
Mercedes entered her sister's office, grinning mischievously when she saw that she was currently on the phone. She slowly started touching things on the shelves in the office and moving them around while her sister shot her mean looks before she finally mouth 'stop'. Mercedes snickered, moving to her desk and started rearranging all the papers she had laid out.
Marie St. Martin, formerly known as Marie Jones, was three years older than Mercedes and far more advanced in the world than she would ever be. Marie was and is the smartest person in the Jones family and no she wasn't exaggerating, Marie graduated high school at thirteen and college at sixteen. She got accepted to every ivy league college and had every scholarship known to man awarded to her. She was the golden child.
Mercedes was… not. She was spoiled and lacked the proper knowledge needed to fully understand how buying a thirty acre ranch with employees and ranch hands was not a good deal. She wasn't dumb in the slightest, she was impulsive and her father knew that this ranch was something she did on a whim.
"Can you stop touching my stuff?" Marie asked, after hanging up the phone.
Mercedes rolled her eyes. "Nope. What is this anyway?" She held up a stack of files labeled MDJI.
"Nothing, now put it down. What do you want? Shouldn't you be out shopping or getting a facial or whatever it is that you do besides work."
"Hey! I work, I work a lot…" Mercedes spat back frowning. "Daddy wants you to look and see how much it cost me to buy that ranch I bought."
Marie snapped her head at her sister before sighing. "Please tell me you didn't buy that damn thing? After I explicitly told you not to do it before doing some research first."
Marie watched her little sister and she floated around the room before shrugging. "I couldn't have cost that much right?"
Sighing, Marie turned to her computer and opened up the file she had labeled for her sister. It took her to all of her banking statements and surprising enough, she hadn't spent much that week. Scanning through she found the purchase from the sale and groaned, she looked at it several times before looking at her sister and shaking her head.
"One point eight million, Mercedes?"
Mercedes blushed and looked away. "I know…. I'm sorry, Marie. It was just so pretty and I wanted it so bad… I didn't think about the cost."
Marie sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of her nose before shaking her head at her younger sister. The fact that Mercedes had been able to buy a ranch without researching or running it by anyone first was astounding, even for someone as impulsive as she was.
"Well, you have to learn to think these things through before you make decisions like this… We have accountants on staff for a reason, you need to use them from now on." She said sternly before turning back to the computer and typing away. "Now, let's see what kind of fees are attached to this purchase…"
Mercedes watched as Marie clicked around, taking notes and making calculations in another window while she worked out what taxes were due on the purchase price and any other costs that may be associated with it. After a few minutes she stopped typing and turned back towards her sister with an aggravated look on her face.
"It looks like there is a ten percent tax due on the purchase price plus an additional two percent for 'rushing fees' which means that your total cost is closer to two million dollars than one point eight… You really should have done more research before making this purchase!"
"It was a wise decision!" Mercedes exclaimed, her voice rising higher and louder as she spoke. "I understand daddy's business just as well as you do and I know that a rush fee isn't the best but if I hadn't acted on it, the ranch would've been sold to the highest bidder in an auction. The value of property would have plummeted and no one could have barraged us with a suitable offer for resale. You don't maintain the monopoly on knowledge here!"
Her sister looked at her in disbelief. "You have all that knowledge and do nothing with it," Marie said, rolling her eyes. "The property you bought was already sliced down to the smallest units possible. They played you." She turned her screen around and showed Mercedes the value per square foot of an average one-bedroom apartment unit, then compared it to the cost of the unit Mercedes purchased. "They got an extra million off of you."
Marie stood, letting out a heavy breath while running her hand over her stomach. She was eight months pregnant with twins and nearing her time to take maternity leave, that being said, everyone knew she would wait until her water broke to actually take said break.
Mercedes watched her sister walk around her desk, looking at her stomach then back at her. "You should sit back down."
Marie walked past her. "Doctors said I'm fine and that this pregnancy is fine."
Mercedes reluctantly followed, watching her sister's slow and cautious steps. This was Marie's third pregnancy and the first one to make it this far, which was a blessing considering she wasn't trying to get pregnant this time around. After suffering two miscarriages, she had shut down any and all conversations about trying again. Their father always said, in God's timing but Mercedes couldn't understand why God would take two perfectly good babies away from her sister.
Each time her husband had to choose between saving her sister or their baby and each time he chose Marie. Marie was so furious at him but he always told her that he couldn't do life without her and somehow this time everything was different. She cried for a month straight when she found out because of her fear of losing another child but when they went in for her first ultrasound, they found out she was carrying twins.
Jordan, Marie's husband, cried when he heard the news. Mercedes didn't know how she felt about the news but she was happy that her sister was finally getting everything she wanted. Marie deserved everything and then some but Mercedes wished her big sister felt the same about her.
Marie entered the room, her shoulders tense and face drawn. She slammed her folder on the desk and pointed to the numbers she had scrawled across the page. "It's gonna be 1.12 difference. That's gonna set the account back at least a quarter which is manageable but if we don't separate the accounts, this'll keep happening."
Their father nodded as he typed away on his computer, not looking up until Marie had finished talking. He addressed both of them with a serious expression, "Thank you for your input Marie. I think I know what to do here."
"Daddy, please… I know I've messed up before, but this time it's different, I swear!" Joe slammed his fist on the table and his chair ground to a halt under him.
"I've heard that from you too many times before. I've given you chance after chance, but this time my patience has finally run out. You have no sense of responsibility, do you?"
She desperately clung onto her last hope. "But daddy, I'll pay you back with my trust fund! Mommy-" Both her father and sister shot her daggers with their eyes, silencing her plea.
"Avery left that for you to build a life with, not-'' Joe stopped trying to find his words.
Marie looked at her sister with big eyes. "I think what daddy wanted to say is that, she wanted you to do more with that money then spend it on frivolous things."
"Mercedes, you have one week to get your affairs in order." Their father said, shocking them both. "You are officially cut off."
Mercedes blinked, trying to comprehend what was happening. "Wait… what?"
"One week to get everything in order before your move to this…" Joe looked back at the file. "Evans Ranch. Because that is where you will be living until your debt is paid."
"You can't be serious…" Mercedes said, looking at her father then her sister, pleading with her eyes to help but Marie just looked down. They both knew when their father made a decision it was final and there was no way out of it.
Joe walked closer to his daughter. "Oh I am very serious and to help you understand how serious I am, you no longer own that ranch. Effective tomorrow we will be gifting it back to its original owners. Now, we all know you understand that means the money you spent is gone."
Marie shifted in her seat. Their father had never gifted that much to anyone, the potential profits a resale of that land would've set multiple generations up for wealth. Not that they weren't already in that situation but it would've aided even more.
"F-for how long?" Mercedes asked softly.
"Until I see fit or you pay back every single dime." Joe replied sternly.
Mercedes opened her mouth to say something but her father just shook his head. "One week." He shivered at her father's words, knowing the immense wealth that could have been gained if they had sold even a portion of the land.
Mercedes' voice shook as she asked the question she knew wouldn't be answered favourably. "F-for how long?"
"Until I see fit or you pay back every single dime," Joe said sternly. He stopped Mercedes before she could say anything else, "One week."
I hope y'all like this!