“You’re wrong,” I say under my breath, just so I can go back to being as hard and cold as him. “I want her name. After all these years that you told me Sara was my mother, I, least of all, deserve to have a semblance of the fucking truth.”
He rolls his eyes dramatically, and to my surprise, rips off a check and flips it over. I watch him scribble on the paper and then he slides it to me. “I’m not the bad guy here,” he says. “I’m just protecting you from feeling more pain. That’s it.”
I stare at the check.
Emily Moore.
“Did you love her?” Not, where is she? Or, why did she give me up? I have to ask the stupidest, meaningless question there is—because my father doesn’t believe in love.
“For all of fifteen minutes, sure,” he says dryly. “Now you have what you want, can we move on from all this bullshit?” He wants to go back to the way things were, but I’m not even sure that’s possible.
“I need something else,” I tell him as I pocket the check. “And it requires discretion.”
He laughs wryly and gets up to refill his glass. “Why am I not surprised? What the fuck did you do this time?”
I ignore the slight. “It’s not entirely about me. It involves Lily.”
He sits back down, hand cupping a full glass of scotch. I try not to focus on it too much. “I golf with Greg and have lunch with him every other day, so is this the type of discretion that requires me to lie to her father?”
Oh, yeah. “It will ruin the Calloways.”
My father straightens up, his features hardening. He actually looks a little like Ryke. “What the fuck is going on?”
“You have to promise, and I want it in writing.”
He gives me a look. “Don’t be a little shit.”
I glare. “I’m not being a little shit. You say you’ve done all of this…” I motion around me. “…the lying about my brother and my real fucking mother, because you were trying to protect me. Then understand that I’m trying to protect the girl I love. And I’d do anything to accomplish it. So if you don’t fucking sign something that says you won’t open your goddamn mouth, then I’m gone.” I stand up, my chest rising and falling with sudden anger.
“Sit the fuck down.”
I don’t.
“Sit,” my father sneers. “I’ll go get a piece of paper. I don’t think I can write a contract on the back of a check.”
I sink to my chair and watch my father leave the patio, muttering curse words under his breath. But I’ve won. This time.
***
He ends up typing it on his laptop. After an hour we have a contract written and signed, not allowing him to directly or indirectly tell the Calloways anything. If he does, he forfeits Hale Co. to Ryke. At first we had agreed that I would acquire the company, but he looked a little too pleased about the idea of me inheriting his business. Now stress-lines crease his lips at the very thought that his kid—who despises him—could obtain his legacy. At least I know he loves me more, but really, that’s not a very high achievement.
My father has a newly topped glass of scotch, and we’re sitting on the patio again. His contract in his office, mine on the table.
“Now, what’s so serious that I can’t even tell my best friend?” he asks.
“When I got back from rehab, I received a text from an unknown number,” I tell him. “He said he hated me and he basically threatened to expose Lily’s secret out of revenge. So I don’t think he’s blackmailing us. He’s not asking for money, but he did mention it once. He said he could get paid a lot from the tabloids if he told Lily’s secret.” The words pour forth before I have time to stop and evaluate each one. I’m scared, and if my father didn’t see it before, he does now. I feel like a little kid blubbering about a bully at school.
“Slow the fuck down,” he says sternly. “We’ll take this piece by piece.”
I repeat everything again, being vague about Lily’s involvement and even going into more detail about the unknown number and how Connor’s PI traced it to a disposable phone.
My father listens rather well, and by the time I finish I can see him reeling over the piece of the puzzle that I’ve purposefully avoided.
“Unless Lily is the ring leader of a drug cartel, I highly doubt it’s anything to land Fizzle in a financial crisis. Really, tabloids have better things to do than gossip about heirs and heiresses. Look at you going to rehab, you didn’t even make it in The Enquirer.”