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“We don’t have to get into that,” Alexei said quickly. “Let’s just enjoy this feast — and meditate quietly on all those things we’ve decided to be thankful for.”
“No, this is going to happen,” Maxim said. “You know it has to happen, Gerald.”
“You’re still the same snot-nosed brat I knew,” my dad said. “All you’ve added is money. Not class.”
“Enough.” I was only dimly aware of the tears brimming in my eyes because of how blurry everything was. I could barely make out Maxim and my dad pushing their plates away, leaning across the table to confront each other. “I can’t do this. Especially now.”
“This was years in the making, and has nothing to do with you,” Maxim snapped, his voice harsh. “Gerald Miracle had it fucking coming.”
“You are just as arrogant now as you were back then,” my dad sneered. “And undeserving of what you have. Now you’re just better funded.”
“Stop!” I was surprised that I’d shrieked the word, tears spilling over and searing hot trails down my cheeks. “I’m begging you both. Please stop.”
“It was a mistake to come here,” Alexei said, looking at his brother gravely. “I misjudged this situation, Maxim. This wasn’t right.”
“Tough shit,” Maxim growled. “We’re here now, and we’re going to do this.”
“Do what, brother?” Alexei asked, spreading his hands. “How much longer are you going to live in the past?”
“Please.” I tugged on the sleeve of Maxim’s sweater. “I don’t understand what’s happening. Why you and my dad are acting like this. You know each other? You … you don’t like each other?”
Maxim smiled coldly. Sharply. Like a wolf scenting prey. “Your father sabotaged me when I was first trying to get a foothold in the telecommunications business. He said he’d help me and he did the exact opposite. For a time, he even ruined me, I’ll admit. Ruined my trust of people, anyway.”
“And you’ve done very well for yourself since then,” my dad said. “I tried to warn you — tried to warn the world of you. That you were just a predator. Insatiable. That you’d try to snap up everything within your reach. That you weren’t to be trusted.”
“You were wrong about me, old man,” Maxim announced. “I am good. I have done good. And now your daughter and I are in love, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.”
“Don’t tell me these things,” my dad said. “You’re a successful man. Why do you have to drag my daughter into it?”
Maxim’s smile would cut me if I looked too closely at it. “She stumbled into it. It doesn’t matter how it happened. But she’s mine now.”
“She is not!” my dad shouted, shoving himself away from the table and standing. “She is my daughter. You have no power over her!”
“Dad, please,” I said. “Please.”
“You have no power over her,” Maxim said. “She’s a grown woman. She can do whatever she wants. I may have chosen her for this internship, but the things she did afterward — those were all her. All us.”
My dad and Maxim started going at it in earnest, haranguing each other about past wrongs and future threats and everything under the sun. I let the words wash over me, aware that I’d been trying to halt this fight unsuccessfully for far too long. The turkey was growing cold. Becca looked quietly desperate, and Alexei looked wrecked. My world was coming apart, and still all I could think of was how to keep these two people from hurting each other even more than they already had.
Ever the good hostess.
So I said the only thing I could think of to derail the man I loved and my dad from their showdown.
“I’m pregnant.”
Fifteen
Maxim
Everything seemed to slow down.
The entire situation was pretty fucking surreal to begin with. I’d known I was taking a risk in coming to this whole Thanksgiving thing in general, but I hadn’t realized just how sideways everything could go.
Back when I first met Ruth Miracle and realized I could use her to get to her father, I’d accepted the fact that doing so could make her hate me. Then, I hadn’t cared. I would’ve done anything and used anybody to get what I wanted: revenge on the man who had almost derailed my dreams.
As time passed, I’d grown less focused on my vendetta against Gerald Miracle and more attuned to the fact that there was something there with Ruth. Something not even I could deny.
And then she invited me to this infernal fucking holiday, and I knew it was a chance to meet with her father. To tell Gerald all he had done to me over the years. The fire that I kept lit for him inside of my heart, eager to confront him someday.
