DIANA
My heart is pounding as I watch Rafe and his friends shove Dad offstage, while the security team surrounds the celebrities on stage.
I try to regain control of the crowd, but we’ve lost their attention, and my focus is completely divided. I can’t concentrate.
It’s then that Melanie appears. “Go,” she whispers, conveying urgency while maintaining a facade of calm. “I’ll take over.”
I nearly collapse on her, I’m so grateful. Covering my microphone, I say, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea he’d show up.”
She jerks her head a little in the direction they went. “Go,” she hisses, “And take your private life off the stage with you.”
She seems more empathetic than annoyed, and I nod my thanks, then turn to the audience and crack a quick joke to lessen the tension and get them comfortable again. I remove my microphone and rush in the direction they took Dad.
But as soon as I turn into the backstage corridor, I wish I’d stayed on stage.
“You want her back now?” Dad yells. “Is it because she’s making money now and again?”
I want to pummel my fists into his furious face.
“This has nothing to do with money,” Rafe replies, calm but with a rumbling fury in his tone. “This is your daughter you’re talking about.”
Dad pushes up against Rafe, getting in his personal space. “Yeah. My daughter. Did you touch her?”
Behind me, footsteps clatter up the corridor. Lizzie and Charlie, both breathless, arrive just in time to hear Dad yell again, “Did you touch my daughter?”
The fact that Dad seems to be fighting for my honour, or whatever it is he thinks he’s doing, is crazy. But even so, I can’t look at my friend.
“Dad! Oh, my God. Stop. Please.” Sylvie’s clutching at our father’s arm, trying to pull him away from Rafe, but she can’t move him.
I try to grab Dad too, but he shoves me off, and I trip backwards a few steps.
“Touch her again, and I will fucking kill you,” Rafe growls, his hands fisted at his sides, his face red, eyes aflame with rage.
He’s terrifying like this. Far scarier than Dad could ever be; he’s so much bigger, stronger. So much more forceful. I have no doubt he could swipe Dad once with the back of his hand and knock him stone cold dead.
“Please—” I whimper.
“Bet you’d like that,” Dad spits, addressing Rafe. “If I were dead, then you could take her for free.”
Behind me, Lizzie gasps, and Charlie curses.
“What do I get?” Dad continues. “My daughter shacks up with you, and what do I get out of it? You know she screwed me out of millions when she refused to marry Seb Hawkston? Fucking millions. Maybe you should pay it back.”
A potent silence fills the hallway. Rafe’s jaw is razor sharp, and a loathing I’ve never seen on him distorts his mouth and lights his eyes. Very slowly, he says, “You want me to pay you?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to pay you for your daughter?” Rafe asks again, low, and more threatening than anything I’ve ever heard.
Dad shifts his chin, his gaze sliding to me for a second, then back to Rafe. “You touched her, didn’t you?”
“Wait a fucking second—” Henry says, stepping into the fray like he thinks he can break it up with reasonable discussion, but Rafe bars his path with an outstretched arm, and Julian holds him back, stepping in front of him so he’s standing beside Rafe.
“Yes,” Rafe says, and his delivery is so calm, it sends shivers skating over my skin, raising every hair on my body. “I touched her.”
I cower where I’m standing in the middle of the corridor.
At least we aren’t in public anymore, but as small as our little group is, with Lizzie here, it’s the worst possible crowd.
She gasps again, and in my peripheral vision, I see her slump as if her legs have given out, but Charlie keeps her up, Henry rushing to her other side.
Julian, still standing beside Rafe, bares his teeth like a guard dog.
“I touched her,” Rafe continues brazenly, like he doesn’t give a fuck about anyone listening. “But I won’t pay you for it, because I couldn't afford it. If you don’t realise that your daughter is priceless, then you deserve to lose everything you have.”
“I fucking knew it,” Dad splutters. “I knew you fucked her. I could tell by the way you looked at—”
In a flurry of motion, a shifting of suits and broad backs and limber bodies, a fist flies into Dad’s face, smashing against his nose, blood splattering over his shirt, spraying the floor.
Sylvie, who until now has been hovering near Dad, darts out of the way, pressing herself against the wall, arms raised over her head like she’s surrendering. Dad crouches on the floor, spitting blood into his cupped hand.
At first, I think it’s Rafe who hit him, but he’s exactly as he was a moment ago, still upright, still perfectly composed.
It’s Julian who’s cradling his hand against his chest.
“You better be head-over-fucking-heels in love with her,” Julian says to Rafe, grimacing. “Because I think I just broke my hand.”
“You idiot,” Henry says to Julian, stepping towards him.
No one moves as Henry attends to Julian, despite the fact that my father is the one leaking blood. I’m pleasantly surprised to find I do not give a fuck. He could be bleeding out, and I’d kick him to squeeze more out.
“I told you I didn’t want to see you again,” I say to Dad. “I meant it. I fucking meant it. How dare you come here and ruin this event for me? How dare you?”
Dad grunts.
Sylvie sinks to her knees and presses a tissue from her pocket to his nose to soak up the blood.
Lizzie’s struggling in Charlie’s arms, and he releases her. “Dad,” she shrieks, slamming her hands against her cheeks, tugging the skin down. “How could you? Oh, my God, how could you?”
At the sound of her distress, I forget about my father.
Rafe opens his mouth to speak, but Lizzie turns to me, her eyes welling with tears. “Is it true?”
The affirmative clogs up my throat, refusing to budge, but she must see it in my eyes or read it in my expression because she lets out a pitiful squeak as though I’ve just told her all the sordid details.
She blinks rapidly, staving off the tears that shimmer in her eyes. I make a move towards her, but she steps back, holding out her hand to ward me off, then she runs for the exit before any of us can say anything else.
Without so much as a glance in my direction, Rafe goes after her. It’s only right that he should—it’s exactly what I’d want him to do—but my heart sinks nonetheless, and that little flame of hope, tentatively burning in my chest, snuffs right out, because now I’ve lost them both.