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were so many other options. You didn’t have to give people
bad food. Dad, you made them sick. You hurt people. You hurt
Claire most of all. You ruined her career.”
Her dad slapped his hand onto the countertop. Haley’s heart
pounded, but not with fear. That was basically an open
admission of the truth.
“Why?” Her voice was broken, but also hard. “How? How
could you have done that? To her? She was your friend. She
had every right to do what she did this time. To take me.”
“No!” Her dad’s eyes filled with horror, and she finally
realized the toll this whole thing had taken on him. “She had
no right to demand you. You did nothing wrong.”
“But I’m an extension of you.” She couldn’t stop thinking
about that. All last night. All this morning. It brought her so
much misery that this was the situation they’d found
themselves in. That there was no apparent way out of it. Tears
pooled in Haley’s eyes, but she’d had enough of crying. “You
need to tell her that you’re sorry and you need to mean it. You
need to fix this. You’ve let eleven years go by.”
“She had everything!” her dad hissed. “Old family money.
Something to fall back on. I had nothing. I had to claw my
way up from the gutter.”
Haley was temporarily struck silent, but that didn’t last
long. “But you built it together!” She was stunned by the fury
in her dad’s eyes. “It wasn’t just yours to take. You’ve built an
empire, and when it all came crashing down, she was there to
save you.”
“It wasn’t to save me! It was to humiliate me. She wanted
me to know that after all this time, she was always the one in
control. It wasn’t just revenge. She wants me to know that for
