Chapter 35 Reyna
REYNA
Dad holsters his gun under his suit jacket. “You shouldn’t be here.”
I blink, processing what he’s saying. He’s real.
“I shouldn’t be here? You’re meant to be dead.”
“He’s your sperm donor?” Maddox chimes, just as shocked.
The gun is back out of the holster and pointed straight at Maddox before he has the chance to step toward me. “Your father tried to kill my daughter. An eye for an eye,” my dad tells him.
I can’t bring myself to question why Dad’s got a gun or why he’s standing there.
He’s alive.
He shouldn’t be alive.
He died two years ago in a car accident.
Maddox holds his hands up. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but your daughter isn’t dead.”
“Why aren’t you dead?” I sound more disappointed than someone who just found out her father is alive should. “Mom died.”
His eyes soften, and I can almost see the same pain Mom felt for him when he died. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Sorry?
Fury hot and rapid rips through my veins. Mom’s dead, and he’s not. She’s fucking dead, and she’s not coming back. But him? He’s standing right in front of me, suited up and clean-shaven like her passing meant nothing to him. Like the death of my only real parent meant fucking nothing.
She tried to blame her moods on the chemo, but I knew it was because the love of her life was dead, and there was nothing I could do to fill the hole he left in her heart.
Tremors shake my fist. I can’t stand looking at him—breathing the same fucking air as him after everything he’s done.
“My mother died with a broken heart, and you weren’t fucking there,” I spit.
I lost the wrong parent.
His throat bobs. “I couldn’t—”
“I had to sit in the hospital room all alone and watch my mother die. And you weren’t there,” I repeat.
“I had to bury her the same way I had to bury you. Except that time, I was alone. And you. Weren’t.
There.” I choke back rage-filled tears. “I lost everything, and where were you? Huh? Where the fuck were you?” I scream.
The silence stretches as I wait for the answer. The room’s temperature is rising, blanketing my body with a cloying feeling that makes it hard to breathe through.
“It was for your safety.”
I gape at him, hardly believing my own ears.
“Safety? You think I gave a shit about safety when I lost everything I cared about? Mom’s last words to me were that I shouldn’t cry for her because she’ll finally be reunited with you.
” I sneer. “You without your work. Without secrets. Without anything getting in the way of your relationship. Mom died thinking that you’d be the first person she saw once she got to the other side, and you aren’t there. ”
Salty tears trickle into my mouth no matter how hard I try to stop them from flowing. I’m mourning for the woman who raised me and never got her happy ending.
If there was one thing she cared about more than anything, it was him.
She wanted that happily ever after with the family, the house, and the loving husband more than she wanted me.
I know because I heard her begging too. I heard her on the phone telling him that I’d be going to college soon, and she could move closer to him so they could see each other more.
Mom spent every single day of her life wishing she could be with him.
He was everything to her. I was the one who had to help her through her depression when he inevitably left. I was the child who distracted Mom whenever she was missing him.
I saw how much it hurt her when I said that I hated him, so I kept it inside and seethed behind closed doors.
I had to listen to all the lectures about why he’s the most amazing person in the world, and I was the one who dealt with her disappointment when she couldn’t convince me, and she’d say, You just don’t understand.
And still, he wasn’t there.
“Where. Were. You?” I scream.
I’m about to burst. Rounding on him, I shove him over and over, repeating the same three words until my throat is raw.
I don’t care that he has a gun pointed at Maddox.
I’m so riled up that I wouldn’t hesitate to stab my own father just to get rid of the tension winding around my heart so tight I fear it’ll stop beating.
“What? No answer? Of course, you don’t have an answer. You’re a coward. A fucking coward!” I hit him in the chest again like I might be able to take away the pain Mom would have felt when she died and realized that he lied to her as well.
“I had to,” he grunts when I shove him back hard enough to make him stumble.
“You didn’t have to do anything! You didn’t have to leave. You didn’t have to have a kid. You didn’t have to keep hurting us by coming back. You didn’t have to pretend to die just to escape your responsibility.” I can barely see him through the tears as he puts his gun away. “Say something!”
“He was here,” Maddox answers when the man who helped create me doesn’t.
I stare up at my father, waiting for him to confirm or deny it.
“Why?” I croak, stepping away from my father and closer to Maddox.
He answers again. “Because he’s the grand magistrate. The supreme leader of the Order.”
My stomach bottoms out. He’s…
A maniacal laugh bubbles out of me. It keeps rolling out, becoming increasingly hysterical until I’m close to hyperventilating. My mother died alone because he chose power over us. My father would rather run a fucking secret society than show up for his family more than once a year.
“I may not have been present, but I have always been involved. If anyone knew about you or your mother, they would have killed you,” Dad says calmly and evenly like it might stop me from losing it completely.
“Then why did you have a baby?” I yell.
I know the answer already. Because Mom wanted one. She wanted her perfect family. I’ve just never been able to figure out whether it was because she wanted to become a mother or because she wanted to keep a part of him.
She loved me. She did. But her love for me was never enough for her.
“So what?” I throw my arms up. “You asked Maddox’s dad to kill me? Get rid of me so no one can hang me over your head?”
Dad’s face contorts with measured fury. “Roland will pay for what he’s done.”
“Then what, Richard—is that even your name? Richard Talbot? Did you know that I was looking for you?”
His eyes flick away. That’s all I need to know. “James Richard Shepherd.”
My head turns to the side like I’ve just been slapped.
Find Shepherd.
That’s what Mom said as she was dying.
It wasn’t the ramblings of a dying woman. She was coming clean about my father’s last name.
This whole time he knew I was searching for him, and he was never planning on making himself known. Seeing him right now is an accident. If he had his way, he’d be happy for me to live out the rest of my life as an orphan.
“Talbot was your grandmother’s maiden name,” James provides.
“Did Mom know?” My question comes out in a hoarse whisper. I’m not sure if I want to know the answer.
He nods. “Almost everything.”
This is why he and Mom didn’t want me to move to New York. They were worried I’d run into the man who I called Dad. I squeeze my eyes shut. My entire life was built on secrets, and everything is tumbling down like a house of cards.
“Two years ago, I buried a man named Richard Talbot.” My voice shakes, and I force myself to look him in the eyes. “I was told he was my father. But I’ve never had one.”
It’s his turn to look like he’s been struck. “None of this was ever my intention. Out of everything I’ve told you, believe this.”
Another tear slips free. I’ve never felt so vulnerable. “I don’t know you.” How could a man who claims he loves me do this to his daughter?
“You do,” he insists, holding a hand out to reach for me. “I’m your father.”
I step back. “One day out of the year. Even then, you were only a father because of a piece of paper and Mom’s devotion to you.”
I wanted him to be around so badly when I was younger. As I grew older, I think I wanted the idea of a father more than I wanted him. It’s why I thought searching for his memory would give me the father I thought was missing.
“I always looked out for you and your mother. I wish I could have done more, but everything I did, I did to keep you safe. Mora understood this,” he continues on the same spiel.
“Safe isn’t enough. It wasn’t for me, and it never was for Mom.
” The house I grew up in always felt like something was missing.
In truth, I think it was the part of Mom that my father took with him.
“Keeping us safe is just an excuse you tell yourself to make you feel better at night when you’re lying awake thinking about how you abandoned your family. ”
“Reyna—”
“No, I’m not finished.” I quickly swipe the tears off my face.
“Do you know how many times I begged Mom to ask you to come visit more often? How many times I cried, wondering if it was because you had another family or you were ashamed of me? Or that you were dead, and we didn’t know it?
Or because you hated me? I held my mother’s hand, looked into her dying eyes, and promised her everything would be fine because you were waiting for her.
I never wanted to be a liar but you made me one. ”
I inhale a shuddered breath when I notice my dad’s eyes mist over. Maddox creeps closer to me, making his presence known by brushing his fingers on my forearm before dropping his hand.
“Let me make it up to you.” There’s the most subtle hint of desperation in his gaze that doesn’t match his steady voice.
“You died. Two years ago.”
“Reyna.” His composure fractures into something raw.
I cross my arms, hugging myself. “There’s nothing a dead man can do for me.”
“Reyna, please.”
“No.”