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She waves her arm and I follow her toward the back of the restaurant. The chairs are white and sleek with the same silver legs that the table have. The tables are glass with a circular brushed silver plate sitting in the middle where there’s glasses sitting on top of it, waiting for patrons to drink out of.
When I get to the table—at the back and to the left, close to the bar but far enough away that he won’t be noticed—I cringe at the sight of him already nursing a glass of whiskey, my heart beating in my chest at seeing him for the first time in almost a decade.
“Father.” I grimace, nodding in greeting to him.
He returns the gesture and it shows how much distance there is between us. I could never be this way with Clay, I’d wrap my arms around him and hold him, showing him how much I love him; no matter what age he is.
“Tristan,” he acknowledges, not bothering to stand up as his cloudy brown eyes flit back down to his glass.
He’s aged so much since he’s been in prison; he’s a shadow of the man that I grew up with.
The bags under his eyes tell me that he’s not been sleeping, and the stubble lining his cheeks has him looking ungroomed, so much so that he doesn’t look like he cares about himself anymore. I should care what he’s doing to himself, but I can’t bring myself to, not after everything he’s said and done.
Undoing the button of my suit jacket, I pull my chair out and sit down, looking up at the waitress as she sidles up to the table.
“Can I get you a drink, sir?”
“Water, please,” I answer, picking up my menu and scanning over it.
“I’ll have another whiskey... on the rocks,” he slurs.
Jesus, how many has he had already?
I don’t ask, it’s no use, he’ll only ignore me or tell me to mind my own business. I get that he’s only been out of prison a week, but this shouldn’t be his priority. Hell, who am I kidding? Whiskey and business have always been his top priority.
“So, I hear that you’ve rustled up quite the storm in the market since I’ve been gone.”
I lift my eyes to his, seeing his eyelids at half-mast. How can he already be drunk when it’s not even 1 p.m. yet?
“I’ve also heard that you’ve had the idea for stores.” I don’t answer him, choosing to ignore where this is going. “You’re going ahead with them, huh?”
“That’s none of your business,” I grind out, thanking the waitress as she places a glass bottle of water on the table, turning over the water glass and pouring it.
“I’ll tell you what you should do,” he says, ignoring me, leaning forward and almost knocking the glasses off the table. “You should open up twenty stores to begin with, then after six months, open up another twenty.”
I close my eyes, placing my fingers against my temples to try and stop the raging headache that is starting to form from the anger swirling around in my head. “I won’t be opening that many stores,” I tell him, feeling exasperated as I turn toward the waitress and order the seafood pasta.
“What?” I cringe at his surly voice and clench my jaw to stop myself from saying anything. “You need to start as you mean to go on, open as many as you can.”
“No,” I growl. “Most sales are online now, opening that many stores won’t serve any other purpose than to lose us money. I may as well give the money away if I opened—”
“I never should have signed the company over to you,” he barks out, his eyes full of fire as he leans back in his chair and gulps down the rest of his whiskey before holding his glass up in the air for another.
“Well it’s not like you had much choice, is it?” I spit out, leaning forward. “Had you not have been a criminal and embezzled all of that money, you’d still have the company and you’d still be able to dictate what should and shouldn’t happen to it.” He opens his mouth to say something but I cut him off. “You have no idea the turmoil that you caused.” I stare at him, my eyes narrowed. “It’s your own fault.”
“You never fucking listen, not back then and not now.” He slumps down in his seat, the drinks he’s been guzzling clearly starting to have a profound effect on him.
My nostrils flare and my hands clench into fists at his words. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I lean forward. “All I ever did was listen to you!” I thunder.
I stare at the shell of the man in front of me as my mind flits back to the last time he told me what I had to do.
“You’re going to marry her.”
My eyes widen at his words as they roll around in my head repeatedly.
“What?” I ask, sure that I heard him wrong.
He huffs and leans back in his chair, the green leather creaking as he does. “Natalia... you’re going to marry her. I need her father on board with this business deal, and this is a sure way of making it happen.”
