Chapter 41
Quill
Papa’s Legacy
Where Are You Two Going
Mr. Kamera
“Unless you want to face unjustified criminal charges that could ruin your career?”
The only man who could break me with mere words entered the hallway, causing Lucas to immediately back away.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, a knot tightened in my stomach, and I pressed my palms against the cool wall behind me, even though his gaze was fixed on Lucas, not on me.
For the past two days, I had tried to avoid him, skipping all of his classes, looking over my shoulder everywhere I went, unable to shake the feeling that I was being watched on campus.
Of course, I had expected him to find out that I was still here. And that he wouldn't just let it happen without trying to gain control over the situation.
“She threatened me.”
Lucas looked like a frightened deer caught in the headlights.
Was he... afraid of my father?
“She did?”
Now Father looked at me with a calmness I had never seen before.
The blood froze in my veins. My senses sharpened to the extreme, prepared to not be prepared. And yet, always trying to calculate the incalculable.
“Since when do you let girls threaten you?”
There was mockery in his voice. And it only seemed to unsettle Lucas further.
My father slowly stepped into the hallway, toward him.
Lucas immediately clasped his hands behind his back, stood up straight, and looked at the floor.
What the...
“I've heard that your father's gold business is on the rise.”
Father stopped.
“Yes, sir.”
“And one day you'll be their corporate lawyer.”
Lucas managed to look him in the eye for a split second before staring back at the floor.
“I'll do my best.”
“I'm sure you will.”
My father smiled, but there was something superior about it.
“However, you seem to be forgetting that you can't afford to make any mistakes on such a path.” His smile disappeared. “I don't think anyone here wants your family lawyer to find out about your little slip-up and consult with your parents about alternatives.”
Lucas swallowed and pressed his lips together.
“So...” Father put a hand on his shoulder and turned his gaze to me. My heart skipped a beat. “Be so kind and let me settle the matter with Miss Veritas in private.”
Never before had I heard my heart beat so fast.
You're at Maplecrest. He can't hurt you here.
“Of course.” Lucas nodded to him. “Professor Richter.”
My father didn't bother to look at him again as Lucas hurriedly disappeared down the hallway, not without turning back to give me another withering look. But Lucas was like a frightened kitten next to this man, eager to show his claws as long as there was no larger predator around.
Then he was gone.
Father stood there. Motionless. And the fact that there was neither contempt nor anger in his expression pulled the rug out from under my feet. Because it meant that rage was boiling inside him. Rage that he couldn't let out here.
I wanted to just walk past him, but I didn't dare to take another step.
“In my office,” he demanded tonelessly.
Oh no. Definitely not.
I hastily shook my head, but he lunged at me so unexpectedly and grabbed me by the wrist that I forgot to breathe.
“You can't...” I blurted out in panic, but he was already dragging me around the corner and up the wide staircase of the main building.
I wanted to fight back, wanted to break free. But I had never managed to do that with him before.
What if he could escalate things here after all?
Before I knew it, he pushed me through an open double door, and I stumbled into a neatly arranged office with high-quality oak furniture and dark green curtains that matched my father's tie and vest.
I spun around and watched him close the door without locking it.
With wide eyes and a defensive posture, I watched him turn away, not even looking at me as he walked around his desk.
“Obviously I can.”
He was so unnaturally calm. So different...
He stopped at the window.
This was the office floor of the conservative professors. Not that the men on this floor minded men who abused women, but Father had to maintain his glorious image. The fact that he had dragged me up here and not to a basement – which surely existed here somewhere – confused me even more.
Secrets ans Lies
Atli ?rvarsson
“I'll never forget the day you were born.”
He didn't look at me, just stared out at the campus's large main park, painted in the shades of fall. And the mere thought of how often he must have watched me from here sent a shiver down my spine.
“You were a small, weak baby, almost didn't make it out of your mother alive.”
He had never told me anything about his past. Nothing about how he had grown up, no lessons he had learned from life, and certainly nothing about my childhood. I was sure he was repressing it, washing it down with his expensive whiskey.
“You cried a lot. Way too much.”
I couldn't help but stare at him motionless. Any movement could break him out of his trance, remind him how to behave around me.
“Every time your mother held you in her arms, she smiled as if you were something special.”
The knot in my stomach tightened further.
“I tried.”
A strange feeling mingled with all the confusion and tension.
“Every time you stared at me with your tear-filled doe eyes, when you wiggled around so helplessly... the first time you smiled at me.”
There had been a time when I had smiled at him. Silly, naive child that I had been...
“But I couldn't smile back because there was no reason to. Every time I looked at you, it was as if my fate was laughing at me. For this pathetic mistake.”
One would think I would be hardened to everything he said, but every time his words tore open old scars that would never fully heal.
“One night you cried so loudly and Josephine couldn’t calm you down.” He snorted. “No matter what she did. You just wouldn’t stop.”
His hesitation made my inner tension escalate.
“She ran away crying, locked herself in the bathroom, and left me alone with you.”
He shook his head.
“I didn't want to pick you up. Everything in me resisted it. I just wanted you to stop crying.”
The tension in his voice made me freeze inside. I wanted to know what happened next, and yet I didn't want him to continue talking. Why was I still here?
“That you stop ruining my life...”
My eyelids fluttered.
“I took a pillow from the bed and slowly came to you. My little helpless lost daughter.” I thought I saw the reflection of a smile in the windowpane, but it vanished immediately, along with any last hope for a happy ending to this horror story.
“A mistake that should never have happened.”
And yet this merciless universe had let it happen...
“You looked at me and stopped crying after a few seconds. I will never forget those curious eyes. Eyes full of trust. They made me weak.”
He had wanted to kill me.
Why hadn't he finished it? Why had he made us both suffer so much?
My eyes filled with water, but I blinked away the tears. He didn't deserve them.
“To this day, I wish I had been quicker and pressed that pillow over your face until your screams would have been silenced forever.”
Inner emptiness didn’t even come close to describing what I was sinking into at that moment. The fact that I hadn’t completely drowned in it yet was thanks to...
“A year later, I found Davian again.”
I swallowed, looked at the floor.
What did he mean by found again?
“He was the same age as you are now. But he was an intelligent young man with the right ambitions and more potential than any of my children would ever have.”
Did Tony know that he was a disappointment to his father because he chose to teach here instead of being a lawyer? Did Brittany know that no matter how hard she tried, she would never be enough for her father?
Why didn't they fight back? Why did they maintain an image that was nothing more than that? A visual illusion.
“All he needed was someone to take him by the hand and show him the way. And that's exactly what I did.”
He had done it because Davian was adaptable. More malleable than Joseph's idealistic son. Not a girl, like his politically-minded daughter.
“He never disappointed me, graduated with honors, was one of the most sought-after top lawyers in D.C. We had wanted to start a firm together... if Josephine hadn't made that one stupid little mistake.”
Mama had finally realized that he didn't belong in our lives.
But the court had put obstacles in her way because Joseph had been a respected lawyer.
She had pushed me to testify against him, and I had done so.
He had lost his job. His license. And so Mama had actually succeeded. She had taken away his custody.
I never would have believed that she would muster the strength to do it. That she would fight. For us. For me.
But how did the saying go? Before every downfall, an empire rears up one last time. The last hope was the greatest, the most intense. And then came the downfall.
The tear simply slipped from my eye. It was for Mama. My ink butterfly. Now waiting for me in Wonderland.
“Now we're here.” He snorted morosely. “And all we have left is the directorship of this university, if I can't convince him to go back to D.C. before he follows in my footsteps.”
In his footsteps...
He meant something to him.
The last thing I wanted to feel for Davian was envy. He had grown up as an orphan, spoke openly about not having many of the things other children had grown up with. But he had the one thing I never had. Never would have.
A dad.
“Davian is like a son to me,” my father confirmed, which should have been obvious to me all along. “I would lay the world at his feet, leave him and my daughter my house, my inheritance. One day, Maplecrest Law School.”
Had he ever yelled at Davian, ever slapped him?
“He should never have seen you.”
All emotion had drained from his voice.
He turned to me, and I forgot to breathe again.
The venom in his eyes was enough to wilt an entire garden of yellow daffodils.
“You poisoned me. With your mere existence.”