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“I did care!” he roars. “She wouldn’t let me have custody of you. Could I have fought her? Taken her from you? I could have, but I didn’t. If that makes me an asshole of a father, then so be it. I’ll live with it. Can she say the same?”
He’s also a gaslighter. He didn’t fight my mom for custody because I didn’t fit into his plans. And he blames her forhischeating?
I shake my head as I fight back the tears. “You never wanted me,” I whisper. “I was just the thorn in your side. The daughter you hid away because I didn’t fit the mold for what you wanted. An heir. I’ve always been an embarrassment to you and I’ve no idea why you hate me so much, why I’ve always got to live up to this ideal of impressing you and making you notice me. All I ever wanted was your attention, Dad. To know that you cared about me. And I never got that. I never wanted your money or any of this, I just wanted your time.”
His face twists in disgust. “How can you impress me when you can’t even get your shit together?” he snarls. “Time is money, Luna. You, of all people, know that life isn’t a romance book. Life is hard, and if you want to push your life failures on me for being a bad father, then do it. It won’t make me change my mind on this. You have a choice to make, and I certainly hope that you reconsider. What else have you honestly got to offer a well-bred man if not for your name?”
My mouth opens as I gape at him. “You really are a first-class asshole,” I say. Words just won’t form even though I want to scream at him. But I have to know one thing. “I can only imagine what well-bred prodigy you had lined up for me.”
He glares at me and says, “Brian will be most disappointed.”
My eyes go wide. “Brian?”
“Don’t look so shocked. I am his mentor, after all, and he’s going to be my new CEO. He’s a good fit for you, Luna. You’d do well to give him another chance. On his arm, there isn’t a person in this town who won’t look up to you.”
I screw up my nose. “You’re sick,” I tell him. “He cheated on me…with my best friend!”
He waves it off, along with his annoyance. “We all make mistakes, but he’s always held a candle for you. Even after you tipped coffee all over him in his office in front of clients.” He gives me a look. “You certainly didn’t get your raging temper from me.”
“Really? I don’t get it from Mom,” I snark back. My temper isalwaysfrom his side. There isn’t a mean bone in my mom’s body. “All this time, I thought somehow you were redeemable. That you were just cold in the middle and over time you’d thaw out, but now I understand that you’re not just cold, you’re rotten. To the very core. I wouldn’t marry Brian fucking Miller if he was the last man on earth or you offered me a million dollars!”
“How about two million?” he counters.
I step back as if he’s slapped me.
He’s willing to sell me to Brian—the man I hate most in the world aside from Gary—for a king’s ransom?
What a fucking piece of shit.
I’d rather eat dog’s balls than do that.
“Two million dollars?” I stammer.
He smirks, cracking his neck. “Hard to resist, isn't it, daughter dear? You’d also have a beautiful home, cars, more money than you ever dreamed of, and you’d receive five hundred thousand dollars for each child you produce.”
I think I’m going to be sick.
He’s paying me to be the “perfect” daughter?
“I have to go,” I say, wafting my arm to the door.
“I’ll need your decision soon, Luna,” he yells after me.
“Go to hell!” I yell back at him, slamming the door as I sink down onto the front steps and sob.
I hate him.
I fucking hate him.
The things he said about my mom.
The things he said about me.
And now Brian is the son he never had? What in the actual fuck?
This can’t be happening.
I pull out my phone and text Payden that I’m coming over. Then I book an Uber.
