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“Looks like you didn’t get your wish,” Lila said.
“I’d hoped it wouldn’t end up like that. Not with her. She’s the love of my life, Lila. My soul mate. My best friend. My shining star.”
Lila shifted uncomfortably. “She’ll always be that, Father. She’ll settle down once her temper’s spent. You’ve always been a couple. You’ll be a couple again.”
“I don’t think that will happen this time.” He squeezed her hand tightly, her bruised knuckles sore and aching in his grip. “Promise me, Lila girl. Promise me, no matter what, you will reconcile with your mother.”
“With her? After what she’s done?”
He let go and scratched his beard. “You’ve always lived in the gray of the law, but when it comes to relationships, you’ve always been so very black and white. Once crossed, you can never just let things go. Your mother is the reverse. She’ll forgive all manner of things if it’s her family, even if that means letting a man like Senator Dubois get injured in the process. Damn the black. Damn the white.”
“All to teach her eldest daughter a lesson? Meanwhile, Jewel prances around in—”
“Prances? If you think your sister has gone unpunished, then you don’t know your mother very well. Losing Senator Dubois and resuming the prime role is the tip of the iceberg for Jewel Randolph. Bea kept her child out of the auction house, but you can hardly blame a mother for that. Despite her bluster, your mother has always had her family’s best interests at heart. She did what she thought was right.”
“She would have let me dangle at the end of a rope.”
“No, she wouldn’t have.” He sighed, raking his scalp. “Lila, she didn’t have a mother, not after her fourteenth birthday. She never had a model of how to behave with you and Jewel. She only had aunts trying to steal the chairwomanship, trying to murder you and her to get it. That’s all she’s known, how to stand with her fists to keep the family from falling apart. She’s been making this all up as she goes along—”
“With rather generous help from psychologists—”
“Because she’s worried. She’s always been so damn worried that things would turn out exactly like this. You were never an easy child for her to manage. Always so stubborn and headstrong. She’s doing the best she can. You don’t make it easy for her.”
“I didn’t know my job was to make things easy.”
“Damn it, Lila, you’re a grown woman, not a child. Cut her some slack,” he said. “I want you to promise me that you will not let this discord come between you forever. Have a break from her if you need it, but return to her as a daughter even if it’s not as a member of the Randolph family or as its prime. I can’t bear to see you both apart.”
“That’s not what you told me a month ago.”
“Perhaps I’ve had a change of heart. Retirement will do that to a man.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I guess I’ll have to accept that as enough.” He grasped her hand once more, and her injured knuckles called out in agony before he let them go.
“I’m sorry you lost your place on the council, Father.”
“Don’t be. It seems so childish now, wasting my entire life on that
one goal.”
“It wasn’t childish, and your life hasn’t been wasted.”
“Perhaps it only feels that way.” He fiddled with the silver tray before him. “I wanted to spend this evening with you, Lila. You were always my favorite, even though I knew I shouldn’t have had one. Out of all the people I’ve ever known, you’ve always been the most like me and the one who challenged me the most. Odd that those two people should be one and the same. Perhaps it was by genetics or design. Perhaps it’s just a lucky accident, but I feel so honored to call myself your father, so happy that you’ve turned out like you have, so hopeful that I’ve had a least a small hand in it, and so sorry that I almost ruined your reputation.”
“Father—”
“Your mother was right. The committee was right. I should never have had to put you in that position. Mr. Shaw’s replacement has been tasked with improving upon his technical department. Perhaps in the next few years we’ll be able to resolve these situations ourselves.”
Lila bit her lip, not sure what to say. “Well, you’re my favorite father,” she said as she pulled off the lid of her silver platter.
In the plate before her sat a pile of pancakes. Sausage and bacon and eggs and everything else she liked crowded around it, everything she hadn’t gotten to eat in the last few days due to her gunshot.
Even Sangre.
Luckily, a glass of milk sat beside it.
“Breakfast for dinner? Gods, we used to eat like this whenever I came over to visit.” She laughed.
