CHAPTER TWO: Words Speak Louder Then Actions

Even with Artie's voice in the far distance and my daydreaming session left me wondering why I was having the odd feelings, I was dying in the meeting. I just wanted it to be over. I didn't care what Suzie Q at Loserville was doing and who was pictured on their target. I flipped my day planner to a empty page and I started making notes. Actually the notes seem to flow from someone else hand and not my own. I started making a list of items in my life. The list started with my loft. My home that I had lived in for the past eighteen years. Then I placed a dollar sign with a question mark next to it. I then listed my car, stocks and other investments with a note to contact Charlie, my CPA. Why? What in the world was I doing? Better yet, what I was planning?

Before I knew it I had a pretty impressive list of all things that were important to me in my world. Even though I was nervous about the list and the direction I might be going, I knew that there was a very good explanation for all of this. I was just waiting for the mail room guy to bring a secret letter that had all of the answers. I continued glancing at the meeting room door as if he was going to actually come through it surrounded by a golden ray of light as he handed me the letter with all the answers. My daydreams might be getting a little over done.

Suddenly Artie's voice was getting louder. Then my name. How long had Artie been calling my name? I could feel the look of uncertainty on my face as I looked at him. I shook my head and apologised for not paying attention. A light gasp could be heard from each and every person sitting in the room. Apologizing was not something I did, let alone in a room full of witnesses. I just did something that I had not done since I was seventeen and I totalled my parents car trying to beat the clock before the big hand struck midnight.

I was racing home from my best friends Allison, where we a little to wrapped up with our boyfriends and I lost track of time. I floated through a stop sign as a car with the right of way t-boned me and my parents vintage 1957 seafoam green Thunderbird. A simple phone call to my parents before I left my friends house would prevented the last time I would ever say sorry for anything that happened in my life.

The gasps echoed in my head as I politely asked Artie to repeat what he had asked of me? "Artie, forgive me, I was thinking about the Anderson account and I must have fallen into a void. What did you say?" Artie raised an eyebrow and sat there as if slightly stunned and then said, "Grace, we need to call a meeting with Briggs and Kelley and see if they are going to sign our revised contract or if we need to apply more heat". I wrote Briggs and Kelley in my day planner and circled it several times. "I will take care of it as soon as I get back to my office", I assured them.

I looked up and could feel the uncomfortable feeling exerting from the room. What...did...I...just do? What was happening? Who shifted the planets and knocked them out of line?

Whispers were coming from a couple of them at the end of the table. Feeling as if I had stabbed the person next to me, I grabbed my items and excused myself from the meeting. I made a mad dash down the hall and into the washroom. I didn't even take the time to go to the executive washroom. I found an empty stall and hurried in and slammed the door behind me. I dropped my planner and other items to the floor and sat down on the toilet. With my head hanging, I placed my elbows on my knees and cradled my head in my hands. Again, I asked myself what was going on? Why the list? What was the plan and why was I even making it? At this point, the meeting was over and I need to get to my loft and try to figure out what was turning my world upside down before it was to late.

CHAPTER ONE: Meetings are like a secret fight club...

I look at my watch and it is 2:42 pm as I am sitting in a board meeting at the office. Let me give the visual of what it is like sitting in a board meeting. Most have sat in on some kind of meeting before and know how they operate. Our meetings can sometimes be referred to as a gladiator event of epic proportions. There are sometimes peasants being fed to the lions and weaker souls having to battle for their lives in the arena. The sounds of laughter from my colleagues would be the sounds of the crowds that fill the cold stone Colosseum to watch someone be devoured by a man-eating lion. Yes, that is a pretty close description of what ninety-five percent of our meetings are like. Ahhhhhh, the corporate world of lust and greed. I use to love a good meeting and the feel of walking out from behind closed doors as the office minions coward behind their cubical walls wondering...wondering who was going to be the next one to battle for their job and who would take one more step up the company ladder.

Sometimes we would have meetings just to strike the fear of our authority through the work place in order to keep everyone in check.

I knew what my reputation was to those that leveled below me and I honestly did not care. I worked long and hard to grow a tough exterior and I was not going to let the ones that did not like me bring me down. It only made me stronger, colder and more heartless.

As I sat in the board meeting realizing that the hands on my watch were ticking backwards I looked around the massive table. The sounds of Artie Kreger voice became softer until it was no more. Artie Kreger had worked for the firm for ten years and was a prime example of a man sleeping his way to the top. Artie started with the firm while still studying fashion. Our firm works with both the fashion and entertainment industry. We take small what are considered "mom & pop" businesses and grow them. We take them from nothing and make them something. We are known on the streets to be hardcore with a 'don't get in our way' attitudes.

Artie was brought on board to be one of our insider moles. He was to be nothing more then a source that penetrated to mix and mingle with our enemies. The moles would work to get the dirt on them and then we would make their world very unpleasant. But, before you knew it, Artie was attending meetings, going to events that only executives attended. Then there were the parties and the all on the arm of one of the firms CEO's. Artie was not stupid. As a matter of fact, he used what we had taught him to his advantage and now was co-directing our marketing department under the guidance of moi.

When I first found out that Artie was transferring again and this time to my department, lets say I was not the happiest of campers. However, over the years we have built a alliance. An alliance that might even mean world domination. OK, maybe not to the extremes of world domination, but we could definitely take on the City in way that could rewrite history. Artie and I masterminded some of the firms greatest take-overs all in the company of tasty Thai and scandalous Shiraz. We would map out the map our teams objective and then using our stealth like ninja moves, we would have them signing on the dotted line before they knew what happened.

The Marketing Team was designed and developed with only being the leader in the city. Losing was not and has never been an option in my department. Being second means you are not number one and that means you do not work for me. Heartless? Sometimes. Ruthless? Yes. Like it on top? Always. Let them see you cry? Never! At least that how I had felt. something was changing and I am not sure what and I was not certain why.

Introduction

The city skyline seems to embrace her people like a mother holding her baby. Cradling the babe to protect and shelter it from all things evil. Now why couldn't that be the how we all felt about living in the city? The concrete jungles of the world. Instead, it can be a very misleading lifestyle living in the mecca of hustle and bustle of a city that never sleeps. Forgiving and protective it is not.

I am Grace Musse, a corporate femme fatale that calls New York City home. Not only do I call the "City" home, but this is where I work, socialize and saturate myself in its dirty chicness. I use to believe that you weren't somebody unless you live, sleeped and breathed the city. Well, at least until now. I am living the dream of many back home that never made it out. Not only do I hold female prestige in the firm I call my money tree, but I am single, live in a dramatic loft in Soho in which I purchased before lofts were the "it" place to reside. Now we have the celebrities and solicalites that will need to drop their platinum pennies on a loft half the size where I was able to shop with the old fashion copper ones. I drench myself in all things trendy, friends that share the same common interests of art, nightlife, theatre, mingling with the who's who, and believe in the rule of always leading the hunt and never being the prey.

Lately, I find myself drifting off into what some call a "daydream". Another world in ones mind where you get to play make-believe with your life. I think that instead of being called a daydream in my imaginary world, it should be called a "what if?". I have been wonder more often about my life and the "what if's" that I have been collecting. I think that we all go through this at sometime over the years, but, mine seems to almost bring my daydreaming to reality. I feel like I could close my eyes and reach out and touch the thoughts I have been hording in my head. As if swimming in my own pool of dreams and lately the temperature has been near perfect.

I was born Grace Emily Musse on October 13, 1969 to Caroline and George Musse in a small farm community in Michigan. Once know for the acres and acres of farmland, antique shops, hometown family living and week long Red Cedar Jubilee. Now, it is just a sleepy farm community that is perched between Lansing and Detroit. We lived just outside the metropolis of Williamston on Linn Road where my family owned a small farm. Growing up was pretty typical and consisted of waking before the sun, summers filled with all the glorious scents of a farm on a steamy eighty degree day and dreams of getting far away from the country. It is not that I hated my life growing up, I just knew I wanted more. My room was covered with pages from Cosmo and Elle and that is what I dreamed about all my life. Not coffee tables covered in the Farmers Almanac or watching reruns of hunting and fishing shows. Funny how I feel as if life is on a train turnstile, you know the rotating one track that assist a train or cable car to shift direction. That is how my life has felt to me and the feeling seems to be growing stronger now then ever.

Now that you know a little about me I am going to take you on journey. My journey of what happens when one day you wake and realize that the life you have worked so hard to build might not be the life you really wanted to create in the first place. So if you are ready, please sit back, fasten you seat belt and keep arms, hands and legs inside the car at all time, because this is going to be one hell of a ride!