Ava is a quiet, fiery and impassioned twenty-one-year-old, paralysed with fear at the thought of her impending adulthood. She dreams of travelling the world and acting in breath-taking plays all over the globe. But she is finishing university soon a...
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She was absolutely mesmerising on the stage, everyone's eyes were on her from beginning to end. When Donna's voice came on melded with a sweeter more youthful tone that sounded like a younger version of Ava's voice everyone was even more drawn in to the entire performance. and there she was again. Moving fluidly all over the stage, her red flames flowed as fluidly as her body and she ended the dance with grace, as she had all week long.
Even though Ronald had been at every single performance that week, he was still as enchanted with his daughter's amazing talent. Of course, the pragmatist in him had made sure that a DNA test was done, secretly of course. He knew that Donna would have never cheated on him, however, he had also thought that she would never lie to him much less hide an entire child from him and look how wrong he was.
The entire week had been amazing when it came to getting to know his daughter, she was talented and extremely intelligent young lady. She was funny and extremely temperamental, in a way that reminded him of himself. He wished he'd been a part of her childhood and all he wanted was to be a part of her life right now.
Ava was the perfect combination of Donna and himself. Her passion for acting and the arts reminded him of her mother, however the young lady who was a budding entrepreneur was all him. She was better than him in fact, because hearing her hopes and visions for a future multi-faceted entertainment empire. Just yesterday, she had shown him her long term and short term life plan, with all the different variations mixed up in there, she was everything he had ever wanted in a child.
Ronald had set up a meeting with his lawyers for next week to add Ava into his will and to set up a trust fund for her. He would have to keep everything under wraps of course, until his private investigators got him some answers about Araceli's antics. He owned all of Diedra's shares in the company her father had left her after he had died in a horrible accident when she was younger. But his current business dealings were complicated.
His family had been in the oil business for close to a century and even before that, he came from old money and somewhere along the line there may have even been a marriage to a member of British aristocracy. Perhaps if he'd been anything other than an only child he could have enjoyed the wealth and privilege his money provided him. However the amount of pressure and strings that came attached with being the Mannings' Oil heir had been immense.
Diedra's father and Araceli's father had been intense business rivals. When Araceli had married the much older Mexican Oil tycoon, they had merged their companies to form the biggest Oil company in south America.
Diego Carrizales and Pedro Calvacanti were formidable business partners and his family's company had suffered as a result.
Araceli's brother's teenage son had inherited seventy percent of that company and he was the sole heir to his mother's family's shipping company. Which despite Greece's current economic status, was still worth a couple of billions dollars.
The boy was a multi-billionaire and this was excluding the other relatively smaller companies he had inherited from his father. But Devin's father and brother were dead and so Araceli, being his aunt was currently in control of all his shares and companies. Except for the ones on his mother's side which were held in trust until his twentieth birthday.
His marriage to Diedra had merged the Carrizales stake in the Oil industry with his own, helping his company grow stronger. Without it, Mannings' Oil would have crumbled and now it was stronger than ever.
Araceli had foresight and adored her grandchildren, she knew the future was them and so she had used Devin's controlling interest in Calvacanti Oil to merge it permanently with Mannings' Oil. Now it was all under the Mannings' name all thirty-eight billion dollars of it and he owned almost forty percent.
Bringing Ava back into his world was never going to be anything less than messy. Even if it turned out Araceli wasn't a murdering psychopath, she was still a psychopath who would do everything in her power to make sure her grandchildren were the sole heirs to Mannings' Oil. Heaven help Devin if he tried to stand in the way of that. The boy was in desperate need for a family and Ronald had tried on many occassions. Failing each and every time.
Perhaps he would invite him over for Christmas.
Kim's plan was a brilliant one because the most important people in his life were his children. Ron Junior was generally great, if not a bit arrogant and self-entitled but Araceli...
Heaven help him with that one! He should have never allowed Diedra to name his child that, in fact he often called her Donae when she was younger, hoping it would catch on but it never did. He adored her, but he couldn't always ignore the mean streak she hid behind her charismatic and charming smile.
It was his own fault though, he spoiled them and was hardly present in their lives growing up. The spoiling had affected Ari especially, because he had hoped that she would have taken after her second namesake; Donna. So he had showered her with too much love.
Diedra was never a terrible person, no worse than he himself had been when he'd been younger. Her only crime had been asking her husband to love her.
She had been pregnant when Donna left him and he had been very distraught and distracted the first year of Ronald Alejandro's life. A fact he regretted very dearly. However he had committed to his wife and baby Araceli Donae had been born a year after Ron. Whenever Araceli senior wasn't involved, his family was generally fine. A bit dysfunctional, but fine all the same.
As his attention moved towards the performance, his thoughts drifted back to Ava. He wanted so desperately to bring her into his world. He just hoped he didn't damage her in the process.
'The Greeks Weep' was extremely exclusive and he had sent out some feelers about whether there was some wiggle room in the age requirement; there wasn't. They had even reduced it to nineteen years, they wanted kids sixteen to nineteen years old.
Ava wanted to get to know her siblings, however doing that as Ava Mannings would not help her with that at all. She stood a better chance as the daughter of a deceased business partner.
He wished things weren't this complicated that by pretending to be someone else until he sorted out his personal life, she could get everything she wanted. A chance to know her siblings and to follow her dreams.
Judging from this performance, she would definitely get into the workshop. Under false pretenses, maybe, but so fucking what. The day his billions couldn't buy his children's happiness to some extent is the day when he'd stop being Ronald Michael Mannings.
Hello, I have been so sick, I'm sorry. I have chronic migraines and school is so exhausting. But guess what?? Next chapter we're FINALLY gonna be in America:) And things are gonna get interesting.
Last chapter was weird for me in regards to Kimmy-cub, mostly cause I was feeling depressed and the story was moving too slow for me so I kinda made a big writing faux-pas and stretched her character to get me to the point in the story I needed it to get to.
Kim has a lot of things that motivate her and that make her who she is and what she does. Growing up with no parents is not easy and her and Ava understand each other.
But hey, I've already started the next chapter and no regrets.
