Crimson Footprints by Shewanda Pugh Read Free Book Online Page A

snow.”
    Deena lowered her gaze. It
was always the same. She was Gloria Hammond’s daughter. White as
snow, don’t you know.
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    Tak’s condo was a high rise
on Ocean Drive, center stage on South Beach. “The Jewel on the
Beach” was what they called the property, and from what he could
gather, they took the claim literally. His loft, a three bedroom on
the twentieth floor, had been purchased by his father at the
vision-blurring price of 2.5 million. With it came private ocean
access, a spa and fitness center and 24-hour white glove service.
He was still trying to figure out what that one meant. Still, his
place was a tattered old tent compared to the Mediterranean
masterpiece his parents called home.
    The Jewel was a
thirty-story, sleek and lofty post-modern design envisioned by an
M.I.T. professor who was once his father’s classmate. Tak
remembered visiting the property as a potential buyer with his
father and watching him scrutinize fixtures, pull out measuring
tape and harass the real estate agent for blueprints. When he asked
him just what he was doing, his father frowned with that
all-too-common sneer of impatience and said, “Michael Cook was a B
student. Any work by him needs to be double checked.”
    When Tak graduated from
UCLA, there’d been no discussion about him remaining in Cali. His
father simply told him that he was to pick a condo somewhere in
South Florida and that would serve as his graduation gift. Had he
been a different sort of father, Tak would’ve taken the gesture as
an indication that his father wanted him near. But since he was
Daichi, Tanaka he figured it simply never occurred to him to ask
his son’s opinion about where he might want to live.
    Still, the condo was beyond
generous, and Tak couldn’t help but be excited about it. And though
it was expensive, he could afford the property tax on it. Thanks to
his father, he’d never had to prescribe to the struggling artist
routine. A trust fund of upwards of twenty million released to him
the day he graduated from college had ensured that Tak would never
have to lift brush to canvas should he not desire to. But he
enjoyed work and enjoyed earning his own income.
    No one, it seemed, knew how
much his father was worth. He kept his wife, children, everyone,
save the IRS and a lone accountant, swathed in ignorance. For
years, Tak ran a guestimate, tallying projects and expected payouts
in the hopes of figuring out his father’s elusive worth. But when
he gained access to his trust fund and found that it alone more
than what he’d figured his father was worth, he knew that math
wasn’t his field.
    After graduation, Tak
educated himself on market trends, invested his money aggressively
and kept up the frugal spending habits he’d developed in college.
The result was a net worth that swelled from twenty to twenty five
million, and more importantly, the sense that he shared
responsibility for his fate and success.
    His first artistic triumph
came as an undergraduate at UCLA after winning a citywide
collegiate competition. The grand prize was an art gallery showing
with major press. From it, he was able to segue a short-lived fame
into a full-fledged gallery deal, first in Miami, and then
eventually in Manhattan.
    He should’ve considered
himself successful. Last year, he’d been commissioned to do an oil
painting for the Miami Museum of Art and the earnings for it alone
were stellar. Better still, his gallery showings were always well
attended and always profitable. But his scale for weighing success
was tilted and broken—after all, he was the son of Daichi Tanaka.
Short of morphing into Picasso, Van Gogh, or his father, his
version of success was all but unattainable.
     
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    Deena arrived at her
grandmother’s house in time for breakfast. There were grits on the
stove alongside sausage links, eggs, bacon and flapjacks. Coffee
brewed in the percolator while orange