cherished affliction

What I Am Trying To Say Is...

An all black Escalade pulled up to the busy New York City curbside.

It was sleek and mysterious even with the beautiful white snow falling around it and in it sat what the employees of the headquarters of Jauregui Jewelers were just calling, "Her".

All it took was one diligent doorman to alert the unsuspecting men and women on the inside and soon they were all scrambling as the door to the SUV opened and Lauren Jauregui exited the truck, all classic black suit and trench coat clinging perfectly to her body. Her racen hair was curled softly around her defined cheekbones and her sharp eyes narrowed behind dark aviators as she spat into her phone.

She had always been intimidating, yet well respected, and full of an aura that bled superiority. However, since their short thanksgiving break ended and she returned to work, Lauren ultimately returned to an office of colleagues that had voted to speed up the advertisement and creation of the collection of diamonds that she had carefully been studying and considering for the last couple of months, preaching about the lack of new pieces being offered from the company recently, and effectively leaving her no choice but to agree. Since that, the atmosphere around the work place could be described as...

Terrifying.

Two weeks into December, and there had been teams assigned to the project, headed by people Lauren hadn't even been able to properly sit down and meet with, because of the speed with which her fellow board members were requesting things be finished.

However, no rush could prevent Lauren's perfectionist personality from taking the reigns over everything. Lauren made sure every single thing was looked over, paperwork, numbers, charts, graphs. She carefully studied every aspect of the collection, and made sure to go behind every single person that had anything to do with the project.

Any mistakes were reprimanded quickly and corrected as soon as Lauren could get her hands on the person that made them, and she had assured that if the collection was to be created and released this fast, it would be created and released her way.

Needless to say, every single person around could feel the stress and tension radiating off of Lauren . The office workers had witnessed many, many public outbursts from the woman, either tearing an incompetent employee down and making sure that they understood that every move they made was being watched and needed to be perfect or perhaps invested in intense phone conversations in which Lauren made sure every accountant knew that if one number was out of place, they would be fired before they could pull out a calculator.

Lauren was adamant that each person who worked for her understood that this was her brand, her name, her bloodline and not one thing could be out place.

"Because that's not how the fuck I do business," She'd say.

Her red pumps clicked rhythmically against the floor, her legs moving quickly as she stalked passed the men and women eagerly rushing out of her way, averting their gazes from her perfection no matter how much they were drawn to it. She clutched a stack of papers between her fingers tightly, and jabbed at the elevator button to take her up.

There had been gossip (when Lauren wasn't there of course) that part of her foul mood had to do with the particular season that they were in. Long-time employees had recounted that there had been an unnofficial tradition of Lauren's mood changing around Christmas time, thanks to the anniversary of Clara Jauregui's death being a mere four days before Christmas.

Lauren had never quite been able to deal with the Christmas holidays the same way after that, and tended to become closed off, vicious, and especially unapologetic around that time. Considering that was only a week or so away, her attitude had been anticipated by some of the employees with more tenure.