Chapter 24 Her Father’s House
L ena went home because some confrontations were too painful for office walls.
Also because her father had stopped answering her calls.
Which was new.
Her father had many flaws, most of them wrapped in discipline, concern, and a Westbridge Tennis pullover. But he answered her calls. Always. Even during practice. Even during matches, if she called twice. Even after fights, when his voice came tight and disappointed through the speaker.
Tonight, he had sent her to voicemail three times.
So Lena drove to the house.
Not the house.
Home.
She still called it that in her head, even though she had not lived there full-time since freshman year and her bedroom had become part guest room, part storage space, part museum exhibit titled Formerly Obedient Daughter, Preserved in Pastels.
The Hart house sat ten minutes from campus on a quiet street lined with old oaks and expensive silence. It was a white two-story with navy shutters, a deep front porch, and flower beds her father paid someone to maintain because her mother was no longer there to bully roses into blooming.
Lena parked in the driveway and sat for a moment with both hands on the steering wheel.
The house looked warm from the outside.
Kitchen lights glowing.
Porch lamp on.
Curtains half-drawn.
The kind of house people passed and imagined family dinners, holiday photos, a father who knew how to ask how your day was without turning the answer into a lesson.
Lena knew better.
Warmth could be staged.
So could family.
Her phone sat in her lap, the last anonymous message still open.
Tell your boyfriend good luck tomorrow. He’ll need it when the last clip drops.
Your boyfriend.
As if the world had not spent the last forty-eight hours tearing apart whether Nico had ever been hers.
As if she had not stood behind a fence last night watching him turn away because no contact was apparently a sport they were both losing.
As if tomorrow’s hearing might not decide whether his season ended before the championship even began.
Lena locked her phone and got out of the car.
The porch boards creaked beneath her sneakers.
She still knew which one groaned loudest. Second from the left. Her mother used to call it the tattletale board because it announced every late-night snack, every teenage sneak-out, every return from a date Lena had sworn was not a date.
Lena stepped over it without thinking.
Then stopped.
The old habit hit her harder than it should have.
She was twenty-one years old, standing on her father’s porch, still avoiding the board that gave her away.
Something in her chest twisted.
“No more,” she whispered.
Then she stepped back.
Put her foot directly on the tattletale board.
It groaned beneath her.
Loud.
Ridiculous.
Satisfying.
Inside, a chair moved.
Good.
Let him know she was coming.
She knocked once, then opened the door because this was still home, even if home had become another place where she needed permission to breathe.
“Dad?”
“In the kitchen.”
His voice was calm.
Too calm.
That meant he had been expecting her.
The entryway smelled like lemon cleaner, old wood, and the faint trace of the coffee he drank too late at night and pretended did not keep him awake. The walls were lined with framed photos from a life built around courts.
Lena at eight, holding a racket too big for her arm.
Lena at twelve, between her parents, her mother’s hand on her shoulder.
Coach Hart with championship teams.
Coach Hart shaking hands with donors.
Coach Hart smiling beside players who had graduated, gone pro, disappeared, come back for alumni events with wives and babies and stories that all made Westbridge sound like a family.
Lena paused in front of one photo.
Her mother in a white sundress, laughing with her head tilted back, tennis racket in one hand and bare feet in the grass.
Ainsley Hart had looked terrible on a tennis court.
Truly terrible.
Her swing was all enthusiasm and no technique. She served like she was throwing flowers. She refused every correction Evan offered and called him Coach Serious until he laughed despite himself.
Lena had forgotten that sound.
Her father laughing like he had not yet learned grief could turn love into rules.
“Lena,” he called.
Right.
She walked into the kitchen.
Coach Hart stood at the counter, sleeves rolled up, a mug beside him, his phone facedown near the sink. He was not in Westbridge gear for once. Just a gray sweater and dark pants. Without the cap, without the whistle, without the court behind him, he looked older.
That hurt.
She did not want him to look older.
It made fighting him feel cruel.
Then she remembered Nico’s face when he walked out of the hallway.
Her spine straightened.
“You ignored my calls,” she said.
His jaw tightened. “I was thinking.”
“That must have been urgent.”
His eyes lifted.
A warning.
Usually, that look worked.
Tonight, it bounced off the part of her that had finally stepped on the tattletale board on purpose.
He picked up his mug. “You should not be involved in tomorrow’s hearing.”
Lena laughed once.
No humor.
“Hello to you too.”
“Lena.”
“No.” She set her bag on the kitchen chair. “You do not get to open with another order.”
His expression hardened. “This is not an order.”
“It sounded like one.”
“It was advice.”
“Your advice and your orders wear the same shoes.”
That landed.
She saw it.
Her father looked down at his mug, then set it aside carefully.
Too carefully.
“You’re angry,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You have every right to be.”
That stopped her.
She had been prepared for defense.
For disappointment.
For him to tell her she was emotional, compromised, too close, too tangled in Nico’s disaster to see clearly.
She had not prepared for agreement.
It made her throat tighten, which annoyed her.
“Good,” she said. “That saves time.”
His mouth moved faintly.
Not quite a smile.
It vanished before it arrived.
“What did you want to ask me?”
Lena pulled out a chair but did not sit.
Sitting felt too much like being summoned.
“I need to know what you know about the leak.”
His face closed.
There.
There it was.
She hated how fast he could become Coach Hart again.
“I know what Talia told the room.”
“No. I’m asking what you knew before that.”
His gaze sharpened. “Meaning?”
“Meaning someone sent the memo to Declan from an internal account. Someone inside Westbridge opened the door for him. Savannah was involved, or at least close to it. Declan is planning something tomorrow. And you—”
Her voice caught.
She swallowed.
“And you received an anonymous email before the memo went public.”
Silence filled the kitchen.
The refrigerator hummed.
Somewhere upstairs, the old heating system clicked like a house clearing its throat.
Her father did not ask how she knew.
That was answer enough.
Lena’s stomach sank.
“You did,” she whispered.
His eyes closed briefly.
When he opened them, he looked tired again.
Not guilty.
Not exactly.
But burdened.
That was worse.
“What did it say?” Lena asked.
He turned and walked to the small desk near the breakfast nook. The desk had once been her mother’s place for grocery lists, thank-you notes, birthday cards, and sticky reminders that said things like Evan, buy actual vegetables and Lena’s recital at 6. Don’t be emotionally constipated.
Now it held bills, alumni invitations, and stacks of Westbridge folders.
Her father opened a drawer and pulled out a printed sheet.
He handed it to her.
Lena took it slowly.
The email had no sender name.
No subject, except:
YOUR DAUGHTER IS NOT SAFE IN THIS STORY.
Her hands went cold.
The message was short.
Ask your PR team what they promised Nico Reyes. Ask your daughter why she keeps standing between him and consequences. The memo is only the beginning. If you care about Lena, get her away from him before everyone sees what he really is.
Lena read it twice.
Then a third time.
“What he really is,” she said softly.
Her father said nothing.
She looked up. “You got this before the memo leaked?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I did not know if it was credible.”
“Dad.”
“I forwarded it to Talia.”
“Talia never told me.”
“I asked her not to until we understood what we were dealing with.”
Lena stared at him.
There it was.
The familiar shape.
Adults in rooms deciding what she needed to know.
Her future discussed like weather.
Her heart handled like evidence.
Her choices managed before she could make them.
“You asked her not to tell me,” she repeated.
His jaw tightened. “I was trying to protect you.”
The sentence snapped something in her.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough for the room to tilt.
“Do you hear yourself?” she asked.
His eyes narrowed. “Lena.”
“No. Do you?” She held up the paper. “Someone sent a threat involving me, Nico, and a leaked memo, and your instinct was to decide I couldn’t handle knowing.”
“That is not what happened.”
“That is exactly what happened.”
“I needed more information.”
“So did I.”
“You were emotionally involved.”
“Yes!” The word burst out of her, loud enough to fill the kitchen. “Yes, I was emotionally involved. I am emotionally involved. That does not make me stupid.”
Her father went still.
Lena’s breathing was unsteady now, but she could not stop.
Maybe she did not want to.
“I know you think my feelings are the problem,” she said.
“But my feelings are not the reason someone leaked that memo. My feelings are not the reason Declan baited Nico. My feelings are not the reason the department treated him like a liability until the public decided to do the same thing louder.”
Her father’s voice lowered. “Your feelings are the reason you are standing in my kitchen defending a player who has hurt you.”
The words hit.
Because Nico had hurt her.
No use pretending otherwise.
But love—or whatever dangerous thing had taken root in her chest—was not blind to pain.
It was just refusing to let pain be the only evidence admitted.
“Yes,” she said. “He hurt me.”