Chapter 35 #2
Lowering her voice, she says, “He wants you in the conference room.” The warning in her tone is captured, but the concern wrangling her expression is what incites fear.
She’s usually in the meetings, so that means he had her stay just to lead me to the slaughter. Not that Jennifer would do anything to hurt me. She’s just doing as she’s told. But no matter how I look at this demand from him, it doesn’t look good for me. On top of it, he wants witnesses.
Just breathe, Liv.
“Thank you.” I walk back down the hall and drop my purse off in my office, thinking I need to have my hands free. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m getting in a fistfight or anything. I feel more lithe and ready to go, though.
When I push through the conference room door, my eyes land on my dad. Chip is perched to his right, where I usually sit, looking proud as a peacock. The weight of stares falls on me when my dad says, “Stand there, Olivia.”
The door swings closed, and by the looks of it, there’s nowhere for me to go anyway. It just bugs me that standing here equals obedience. I shift a few feet to the left. I’d shift farther, but then I’d be standing in front of others.
The room is silent until my father stands. “What happens when someone breaks the rules?” Quiet murmuring rumbles through the room. His eyes return to me. “Olivia?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Bancroft. What happens to them because I’ve never seen anything happen to anyone other than me.”
“Explain.”
Why are we even playing this game? I’m his daughter, his only child, and he’s willing to throw away the last shred of a relationship we have left? For what? To impress his employees with his domineering show of force? Narcissism?
I’ve spent my entire life trying to please him. He’s not going to change. But I will. “You didn’t promote me because I broke up with Chipper for cheating on me.” I glance at Chip, whose smile tightens into a line.
“I broke up with you,” he snaps.
“Technically, you begged me to take you back, and when I said I needed time away from you to think, you told me you didn’t want to see me anymore.
” I eye him, not giving an inch. “I was a fool for even considering that maybe there was a possibility we could work out. I’m not that naive anymore.
We were never good. We were terrible together.
All of it. Just terrible. And you know how I know? ”
I look around the room at the jaws gaping open, the pride in the women’s eyes, and then my father, who looks . . . neutral. No emotion at all.
My gaze pivots to land in friendly territory. Leanna.
As Noah’s assistant, she’s become a friend to him. I know we have kept our personal lives private, but her boundless support of Noah has helped him so much. So if I trusted one person in this office, it’s her.
“I’ve found love. Real love. Soul deep, it hurts to be apart, love.”
Leanna’s face glows with her smile reaching her eyes. She knows.
With the room stunned in silence, I look back at Chip to say, “I’m not telling you this to get a dig in or to hurt you.
I’m telling you because I deserved happiness when you gave me none.
I deserved honesty when you chose to be deceitful.
I deserved my dad to believe me instead of taking your side.
You marketed yourself perfectly and got all the accolades, including my father’s love.
But I won in the end because I found true love.
” I take a breath and tell my father, “When my life was falling apart, you made a new employee handbook and added a policy that I’ve now violated.
But you know what? I don’t care. I’m tired of living my life in shame that you cast upon me.
I should have never hidden what matters most to me to keep your reputation from being stained. I have a son.”
An audible gasp fills the room, but I don’t let it stop me. There’s no stopping me now, anyway. It’s too late, so I might as well walk out of here, placing the disgrace square on his shoulders where it should have been all along.
It had become so easy to separate my professional life from my personal life.
So shame never followed me anywhere. It wasn’t something I felt over having a one-night stand or having a kid on my own.
So I guess he tried to place it on me, but it didn’t stick after all. It just took me a while to realize it.
Since I’ve been dying to share the news since before he was born, I continue, “My son is seventeen months old and is the light of my life. He’s my heart, and for you to deny your grandson the love he’s owed unconditionally makes you the bad guy.” I shrug. “I guess you always were, though.”
“What a speech,” my father says, sarcasm dripping from his words. “You’ve made our lives a spectacle, humiliating yourself and me. You’ve attacked others while pretending to be the victim. So tell me, Ms. Bancroft, as you sully my surname in the mud, what do you want from me?”
Want? Wanted is more like it.
I have a mom who fought this demon to be in my life, a man who has shown me the definition of fatherhood and is a true partner to me.
And Max. I have a son whose sunshine cleared away the clouds of damage that my own father had inflicted.
So I don’t want anything from him anymore, especially not his approval. “Nothing,” I reply.
I take a breath knowing that’s not all I want to say.
This is it . . .
“I quit.”