Chapter 45 Pane
Pane
These halls are cold to me now. Once, what feels like a lifetime ago, I would’ve swept through the grand entrance of a hotel and been electrified by the buzz of life—from the chatter at the front desk to the couples gracing the restaurant tables, to the teenagers charging devices by the grand fireplace.
All of it used to feel so real, so full. This was the center of existence for me.
But now it just seems so empty.
Without Rowe, everything is empty. As much as I’ve thrown myself into work and tried to ignore the pain, I’m hollowed out inside. Food tastes like cardboard. Experiences that should make me happy wind up leaving me emptier.
This is not what I expected being CEO would feel like.
And I’ve tried. Oh, I’ve tried. I give it all my heart every day, but everything just seems . . . barren.
There’s nothing left inside me now. Nothing that feels or wants to feel. Running a business means going through the motions. So that’s what I’m doing. Keeping things profitable. Working hard. Rising early and, at night, burning the midnight oil.
I’m doing exactly what’s expected of me.
“You’re late.” Stone shoots a look at the watch on my wrist. “I thought you’d forgotten.”
I flip the Rolex to gaze at its face. It was one of the first things I retrieved when I arrived at the hotel. My clothes, my watch, my phone.
None of it matters anymore.
“Didn’t forget,” I say. “Let’s eat.”
As the ma?tre d’ walks us to a table, my gaze skims the restaurant. The tablecloths are crisp. The waitstaff looks sharp in dark shirts and slacks. The diners smile over glasses of sparkling water.
Everything looks perfect.
It is. I should take pride in that. But I do not.
Stone glances at me from over his shoulder. “I’ve invited someone to join us.”
“Who? Please don’t tell me you’re setting me up.”
He chuckles. “There’s no one on earth who I hate enough that I’d force them to spend time with you.”
I scowl.
“See? Exactly. Case in point. You’re barely fit company for yourself, much less anyone else. And here I thought winning the Maddox Group would make you happy. You’re more miserable than ever.”
“I’m not miserable,” I murmur.
“Keep telling yourself that.”
We’re led to a table in the very back. As the ma?tre d’ shows us our seats and steps away, he reveals a man who’s already been seated.
He wears a brown jacket over a camel-colored cashmere turtleneck. Even though I haven’t seen him in years, I would recognize my father anywhere.
“What’s this?” I grind out.
Stone pats the air, trying to calm me down and gently remind me that we’re not allowed to make a scene. Or I’m not. My brother can do whatever he damn well pleases.
“Pane, allow me to introduce—”
I shoot him a look that could burn the hair off the top of his head. “It may have been years, but I know Frank.”
My father studies me quietly while I stand beside my chair, frozen. Stone pulls it out for me. “For God’s sake. Just sit down.”
My entire body is stiff from the shock of this. Every limb feels heavy as I lumber into the chair and sit across from my dad.
He watches me with eyes full of questions. I drag my gaze away, refusing to look at him.
Stone’s phone rings. He slides it from his pocket and gives the screen a nonchalant glance. “I’ve got to take this. You two get started. Order me a water and the rib eye.”
“Wait.” But it’s too late. My brother’s already gone, slipping into the crowd of waiters as they approach their tables.
How convenient. Perfect that Stone would receive an important call and have no choice but to abandon me with our father.
I scoff. This is unbelievable.
My dad watches me like I’m a tiger just escaped from its cage. That’s how I feel. Like my skin’s too tight to contain me, like I’m on the prowl, searching out anything smaller and weaker, something I can sink my teeth into and destroy.
How could Stone have done this?
As much as I’d love to walk away, in the corner of my vision, waitstaff convenes, slyly looking over their shoulders at me and whispering to one another.
Great. I’m on display.
Someone’s probably getting video of this. Capturing the newest CEO on the verge of a complete meltdown.
Making a scene is not the right choice here.
“Look, I don’t know why Stone set this up, but there’s no point in it. I have nothing to say to you.”
He folds his hands on the table, and I take a moment to study him.
He looks the same as he did when we were children, except his hair is now white.
It’s also thinner, and his jaw is weaker.
He has that same quiet confidence that I remember, and when he smiles slightly, all those times when he declared the platitude of the day, the cliché of the hour, flood back to me, and I remember how much I loved him.
And how quickly he destroyed our family.
I don’t know why I’m here. I adjust in my seat, leaning forward and smiling so that none of the waitstaff or managers sense that anything’s wrong.
“I’ll stay for fifteen minutes, but there’s nothing you can say that will change anything.
You left us, walked out on our lives, and not once, in all these years, have you tried to reach out to me.
But here you are, now that Stone and I have established ourselves within the company.
What do you want? Money? Have you spent everything our mother gave you? ”
He frowns. “Your mother never gave me money.”
A laugh explodes from my throat. “Oh, that’s rich.” I repeat his words with so much bitterness that a sour flavor bleeds across my tongue.
“It’s true.”
The waiter arrives and I order Stone’s rib eye, as well as a water and salad for myself, wanting to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible.
“Look, Pane,” my father says when the waiter’s gone, “I know what you think of me.”
Fury burns a hole in the bottom of my stomach. “How could you possibly know what I think?”
“Because I know what I would think if my dad had abandoned me like I did to you.”
“At least you admit that you abandoned us,” I growl.
He folds his hands and stares down at them. “Your mother made me.”
When he doesn’t move, I say, “What are you talking about?”
He opens his mouth, but pauses, seeming to weigh his words.
“I never wanted to leave, but your mother had this idea that I was a threat to the family business. So she divorced me, got a restraining order, and threatened that if I ever came within an inch of either you or your brother, she’d have me arrested and thrown in prison for the rest of my life. ”
I freeze. “What?”
He’s still staring at his hands. “Your mother wanted children to keep the family legacy, but she never wanted a husband to share it with. Why do you think she never took my last name and you didn’t, either?”
He takes a sip of water. “Sylvia was cold, sure. I knew that. It was how her father had treated her. But I thought that when she had children, things would change, that she’d soften somehow.
But she didn’t. She saw me as a threat, as competition for your love and affection.
I had no choice, Pane. When I tried to fight her, her lawyers always won.
She had millions to throw around. I got nothing, and I wanted nothing from her except you and your brother. ”
There’s so much that rings like truth in what he’s saying. It sounds like my mother perfectly. For God’s sake, she had Stone and I compete against one another for the company. Was she purposefully attempting to drive a wedge between the two of us?
I study my father’s features, but all I see is honesty and regret in his face. “Why now? Why are you reaching out to us now?”
He sighs, his shoulders sagging. “I ran into your brother on the street a few months ago. He immediately recognized me, and about punched me in the face.” He chuckles.
“I asked him to talk to me for five minutes, to let me explain. We went into a coffee shop—and I tell you what, I’ve never spoken so fast in five minutes in all my life. ”
He smiles. “I told him what I told you. That she kept you from me, on purpose. I wanted to be in your lives, but your mother saw to it—because of her jealousy, because of her need to control—that I wasn’t allowed anywhere near either of you.
” He tears a hunk of bread from a loaf in the center of the table.
“I hear the second guy got it worse than me.”
Natalie’s father also has nothing to do with her. My mother is controlling, but this?
This . . . the cogs of time in my mind whirl backward to the moment she told me I could either be with Ilana or I could be a Maddox.
They spin again, stopping more recently, when I was told that Stone and I were going to compete.
She said our numbers were similar, but was that true?
As far as I knew, I had a lead over my brother—a good solid lead when it came to managing a well-oiled, profit-pumping hotel.
The position should’ve been mine by default.
But no, Mom had to play her little game. Her little games that have cost me time, happiness—
My gaze locks on to my dad’s. “If you’d never run into Stone, then—”
He nods, and says what I expect: “Then I would’ve let her continue to poison your minds against me.
I knew that’s what Sylvia had done. Me coming to either of you wouldn’t have changed how you felt.
You would’ve believed that I left you of my own free will.
That’s what Stone thought. Your brother believed that until he gave me a shot.
” He shakes his head as emotion floods his eyes.
“If there’s one thing that I regret—and there are many—I regret that I didn’t fight harder, that I didn’t let myself be ruined trying to make the two of you see that I loved you, that you were my moon and stars.
Every morning and every night, I think about you both.
You’re the first people on my mind in the morning and the last when I say my prayers at night.
” He shakes his head. “Don’t let the precious ones get away, I’ve realized.
Don’t let someone else dictate your own happiness, because often what people want is for their own misery to be mirrored in the eyes of others.
They don’t want people to strive and succeed.
They want the population to be sad and lonely, as heartless as they are.
Because that’s what makes them happy, not the joy of others. ”
It’s those words, the very last ones that he says, that hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer, cracking and splintering the ice that’s grown up around my heart these past few weeks.
The worst part? I let it. I embraced it, allowed it to mold me into someone who thought only about work, and who lived by the mantra that I didn’t deserve love.
What a lie. I deserve love as much as anyone, and I deserve a mother who isn’t selfish and scheming.
I rise. “Thank you for this.”
My dad stands, too, looking confused. “Did I say something wrong? If you don’t want to see me again, I understand.”
In one quick movement, I move around the table and embrace him. My father is surprised, unsure what to do at first, but then his arms slowly encircle me, and he whispers, “My son.”