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"I've got you, buddy. I've got you. "At almost two inches taller than him, I feel like I'm a child again, and I'm crying after Mom left again. And even though his pain was always worse, he was always there for me, letting me sleep in his bed, while he told me silly stories until I fell asleep and forgot about the pain... until next time.
But this time, there won’t be a next time.
I pined for five years, not knowing what could've been.
Now I'm nothing but shell, she’s taken it all. And I know, I won't ever find anything like what I had with her again,
forty
Kiara
"Would you like a drink, Miss Kiara?"
I shake my head.
"She'll have some water, and some orange juice too, please."
“Of course, sir. And for you?"
“Scotch.”
She lays the drinks on the table in front of me in the double residence suite that Nathan has on the plane.
"Drink your water,” he says.
For the tenth time since we've gotten on the plane, he has tried to tell me what to do, and for the tenth time, I have no intention of listening to him. He got us booked on the first flight back to Hong Kong on a commercial line because he hadn't managed to get our own private jet flown to London to pick me up.
I pull the window shade down, and pull an eyes mask over my face, tucking the blanket under my chin as I try to block out the world.
But the dark only provides me a blank canvas on which to replay the last seventy-two hours over and over and over. Dad taking his last breath, telling Nathan the truth about my paternity, running away to London, Kylian finding me, and giving an incredible symbolic gift, and then Nathan coming to swing a sledge hammer into it all, as I stood and watched the house of cards tumbling down around me.
When Nathan showed me the video, I thought I was going to be sick. The offer, the handshake, the passing of a phone number.
The realization that that's how he found me that night at Ananya’s apartment. He'd been basically given the secret code on how to find me, it wasn't coincidence, it wasn't fate, it wasn't all these years of yearning manifesting a meeting. It was my family meddling in my life. And this time, not about money, not about business, my heart.
Nathan might’ve dropped a bombshell about Kylian, but he'd told on himself as well. How can I even be sure it wasn't Nathan's idea? He's Dennis Yin's son after all. He's every bit as ruthless as his father. And with bigger stakes. He's always felt like he had something to prove.
"Do you want something to eat? They're taking orders now." His voice interrupts my thoughts about him, and it does nothing but annoy me. I ignore him, pretending to be asleep.
"I know you're not sleeping. You used to do that all the time, and then I'd find you up watching TV in the library. You'd think you’d be better at it now that you're twenty-six years old."
I shut him out and resume my thoughts, wondering how I'm ever going to be able to recover from this. And how I'm ever going to discover who I really am, without the interference of well-meaning but controlling men in my life.
I don’t speak to him once on the whole trip.
What is there to say?
But he talks, he tells me his work plans, about some girl he went to school with who tracked him down, about a coffee shop opening on his apartment block. Talking just talk, when all I want is silence.
I go home with him. I don't want to go back there, but where else can I go? I can't move back in with Kylian, and I can’t go back to my apartment.
There is only the place where my mother and father lived.
Lived.
"Do you have any plans for Dad's funeral yet?" I speak to him for the first time since we left London.
He blinks, like he's not sure if he imagined me speaking or not and then clears his throat. "Um, just some preliminaries, based on the plans he wrote up himself."
