Once Upon a City (#OnceUponNow Top 25)

✶Chapter 1✶

    Once upon a time in New York there was a beautiful girl named Cindy. Cindy had the most elegant, luscious golden locks that any girl would die to have. She was not only beautiful on the outside with her piercing blue eyes, porcelain skin, and rosy cheeks, but that beauty also travelled inward until it touched her very soul.

As all good tales begin, there was more than meets the eye to this young woman. You see, on the surface Cindy was a very cheerful, bubbly girl. However, on the inside Cindy was a very broken soul that was looking for a ray of hope. After the tragic death of her mother, she was sent to live with her stepmother who happened to be one of the most powerful women in all of the United States. Ilene Riverford was the owner of Rivco, one of the most powerful magazine companies in the entire country. With an unlimited amount of money and resources, Ilene's power branched into all aspects of American culture. Fashion trends, pop culture, and politics, the list went on and on and pushed its way into every nook and cranny of the American dream. However, underneath all of the beauty, riches, and fame, Ilene Riverford was nothing more than a rotten soul looking to make others miserable. That was the single objective that our evil queen seemed to be the best at.

"Good morning mother," Cindy replied, approaching Ilene with her daily morning coffee. As its heat seeped through the paper cup, Cindy's hand was burning from its excruciating warmth.

"Please tell me you got the lowfat latte," Ilene replied, sassily waving her hand through her curled, brunette locks.

"Of course I did. I always do," Cindy replied, doing her best to plaster a smile on her face. She was not most enthused with how her step-mother had a tendency to think of her as an incompetent fool.

    As Cindy prepared to put the burning hot cup of coffee down on her desk, Ilene's phone rang which made Cindy scowl as she continued to hold it. Putting out a finger to tell Cindy to stay put, Ilene answered the phone call.

    "They what? Who dare bring a pet into my office?"

    Squabbles from the other end of the call could be heard and the more they spoke, the more Ilene's perfectly arched eyebrows would squeeze together. Taking this as a sign of stress, Cindy didn't dare go near her stepmother's desk to place the coffee down. Flashing back to the last time she put the burning hot coffee cup on her desk, she reminisced of how Ilene had scolded and hollered at her for being disrespectful and invasive of her personal space. So here Cindy was holding the steaming cup of hot coffee and hoping that Ilene would please hurry up and hang up the phone.

    "Oh, don't worry! It will get cleaned up! But you better kick them out! There's clearly a sign in the front that says 'No pets allowed'. No wonder why people don't get far nowadays. They can't even read a sign that was clearly in their sight range!"

    Furiously slamming the phone down, flames danced in Ilene's eyes. Cindy did her best to not provoke anger from her stepmother, so she made sure she spoke in the sweetest voice possible.

    "Mother, may I have permission to approach your desk?"

    "Yes, and please give me that coffee. I need a pick me up already, this early in the morning. Oh and speaking of pick me ups, it looks like a cute little puppy left a mess downstairs. Go clean it up," said Ilene as she shooed Cindy away.

    Nodding, Cindy replied, "Yes, mother." As composed as she was on the outside, Cindy was boiling with anger on the inside. Her stepmother had always thought of her as some sort of assistant that wasn't worth more than a paycheck of a few hundred dollars every two weeks. She had been working at Riverco for about two years and had never even gotten the chance to write an article in the magazine! Her stepmother had known that she had a deep passion for writing, so why would she act like Cindy was invisible? Feeling discouraged, Cindy tried to push back her feelings for the well-being of the company, but sometimes she just couldn't help but wish that she got a little more acknowledgment for all that she did.