He stomped closer and, for one beat of my heart, I thought my dad was going to hit me. He never had before, but there was something different on his face as he came over. The unhinged, wild look in his eye as his hand twitched at his side.
He seemed to change his mind, stopping a foot from me. “You think you should listen to Jake over me? That his opinion is more important than mine? I want you to listen for once in your fucking life. I don’t give a fuck who is a good person and who isn’t. If they pay us, I don’t care. They pay for our lifestyle. For you to sit around here with everything you want, to watch your stupid shows and color on your tablet. You will not talk back to them. You will not care about their business outside of work, and if you think I will give you my company just for you to ruin it because you think you are better than them, when you have never had to deal with the world, you are wrong. You aresupposed to inherit this business, Regan. You can’t be a little girl anymore, and I don’t need a little art girl either. I need a cut throat daughter who understands the world isn’t perfect and beautiful. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “I understand. It won’t happen again,” I said. I understood what he was saying. “I can’t sit around doing nothing, and if I want to run a business, I have to keep my own thoughts out of it.”
His shoulders sagged as he took a deep breath. “This,” he said. “This is the daughter I want to give my company to. I’m glad you understand. I know you are smart, Regan, but you have to use those smarts in the right way. We aren’t here to be the judge of people’s lives. We are here to get paid to protect them or their property. These aren’t little home alarms, this is high-level, dangerous work for men that can be dangerous. They aren’t people whose buttons you should push. It’s not something a quiet, shy girl can run if she wants to sit in the corner and judge people. Do you understand, Regan?” he asked, the words a little too condescending, as though I wouldn’t be able to comprehend how important all of this was.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I get it. I thought I was doing the right thing. It won’t happen again.”
“Good. Until I clean this mess up, I want you to stay home and not cause more problems. Are you able to handle that?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to pull my shoulders back, but the weight of it all made me slump. I tried to do something good, and it made him more pissed off than I had ever seen him.
“Good. I’ll be gone for a few days. Stay here and don’t cause trouble, and we will be fine.”
“Will you let me help with the business more, so I don’t make any more mistakes?”
He grimaced, pulling out his phone as he headed towards the door. “Let’s see how things go for a bit, and we will talk about it when I get back. Alright?”
“Yeah, alright,” I said, a little more defeated. I understood I had messed up, but to be told that I had to keep waiting really sucked. “Love you,” I said, halfheartedly.
He stopped, looking back at me with his eyebrows furrowed. “Love you, too. Have a good weekend.”
He left in seconds, and I was surprised when anger boiled up. One more week of sitting around. One more week of being told to be good and then I might be thrown a bone. If he wanted a cut throat daughter who could handle a business, would she really sit around here quietly?
I pulled out my phone, already calling Harper to come over. There was no way I would sit around doing nothing this week.
The next morning, I paced my room, the heavy weight of my curiosity making it hard to think straight. Harper sat cross-legged on my bed, watching me pace with her eyebrows up. She had stayed up most of the night with me, listening to me rant. The ranting went from me nearly in tears about making my dad upset when he was sick to me nearly yelling that I wanted more. Harper dealt with it all until we sat and made an actual plan.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked for the third time. “I mean, it’s your dad’s office.”
I stopped pacing and turned to her. “I have to. If he isn’t going to let me in and show him I can handle things, I’m going to have to do it myself. His doctor’s appointments are becoming more frequent, he now has a rage issue, apparently, because I have never seen him as mad at me as he was last night, or whenhe had that phone call last week, and on top of all of that, he still won’t give me a sliver of information about his company. What if he’s being secretive about the appointments because he’s getting worse? What if he passes away and I know nothing?”
“And figuring all that out starts by breaking into his office?”
“Do you have a better idea? I’ve been waiting around, hoping he would notice, but apparently, I’m failing him. I have to take some sort of initiative.”
Harper gave a sharp nod and stood up. “Alright, then, let’s do this.”
We headed down the hall, the house feeling eerily quiet even though it was always this way. My heart pounded in my chest as we reached the door to my dad’s office. I reached up, punching in the code as Harper turned the key.
He didn’t know I had the key to the door, but one day I had found the spare in his hiding spot. The beautiful antique-looking key was too hard to resist keeping. I didn’t even know what it was for until I saw his identical one a few years ago.
The lock clicked, and I swung the door open.
The office was dimly lit, the heavy curtains drawn to block out the afternoon sun. We slipped inside, closing the door quietly behind us. I glanced around, taking in the imposing desk, the walls lined with bookshelves, and the faint smell of polished wood and leather. I had been in here so many times in my life, but never without my dad in there with me.
“Where do we start?” Harper asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
I pointed to the large oak desk in the center of the room. “There. He keeps everything important in his desk.”
Harper started rifling through the drawers on one side while I tackled the other. My hands shook as I sifted through papers, trying to stay quiet and efficient.
“What exactly are we looking for?” Harper asked, glancing over at me.
“Anything that seems out of place,” I replied, my voice tense. “Something that might explain why he’s so secretive about the company? Papers from doctor’s appointments? Anything.”
After a few minutes of searching, I pulled open the bottom drawer on my side and found a small locked compartment. My heart skipped a beat. “I think I found something.”
