21. Sloane #3
"You've always wanted me to have the empire," I countered.
"That's never been the issue. The issue is what you'll demand I do with the company once I own it.
You'll hand me the keys, and then the control starts.
You'll want to shadow-advise me. You'll dictate that it's best to run this merger or that acquisition.
You'll force introductions to the right players, suggest the right partnerships, and gradually the daily decisions won't feel like mine anymore.
And then one morning you'll mention there's an appropriate man I should consider meeting, strictly for the good of the company, and we'll be right back in this cage. "
I stared him dead in the eyes. "I've watched you run this playbook my whole life."
He stayed silent.
"I don't want the company," I said. "I don't want a single piece of your legacy.
And if you want an heir to pass it to, you have plenty of time.
You can hunt down another proxy. But I'll offer you one thing before I leave.
I'm willing to give you another chance at being my father.
A real one, not the corporate version you've prioritized.
People deserve second chances. I got one recently, so I'm extending the same grace to you. "
He said nothing. His mouth pressed into a white line, and his gaze dropped to the desk.
"I'm offering you everything I built," he said at last, his voice tight. "And you're refusing it."
"Yes."
He fell silent again, his shoulders shifting in a heavy drop and reset.
"I'm glad you're willing to give me another chance," he noted stiffly.
"I'm happy to hear that. But I want to be honest with you right now.
I don't believe I did anything wrong. I was looking out for my child.
Every ruthless thing I did was to protect you and guarantee your future. That's what a devoted parent does."
The delusional version of events he'd been living inside for eight years.
The heroic narrative where he was the selfless provider, the architect, the devoted patriarch making hard choices for a naive child who couldn't comprehend the grand strategy yet.
I'd always known this was how he justified it. I'd known it for years.
"When you're ready to honestly acknowledge what you did," I said calmly, "the threats, the control, all the years of it, when you're ready to call it what it was and offer a real apology for it, you can call my cell. Until then, I'll be waiting."
I stood and grabbed my purse.
"Take care of yourself, Dad," I said quietly. "I mean it."
I turned and walked out.
On my way down the corridor I glanced toward the far wing, the way I always had, half-expecting to catch my mother drifting between rooms like a ghost who'd given up haunting.
The hall stood empty. Wherever she was in that enormous house, she'd made her choice a long time ago, at a dinner table with her hand sliding out of mine, and I'd finally stopped standing in hallways waiting for her to unmake it.
I went down his stone steps, followed the manicured path, and stepped out onto the bustling street. My shoulders dropped and my chest expanded, the specific release of finally setting a crushing load down.
I'd carried so much anger toward my father for so long. The fear he'd instilled in me, the control he'd woven through my every decision, how he'd made himself the most terrifying thing in every room I'd ever stood in.
He was the reason I'd mailed a sapphire ring back to the only man I ever loved and watched my future walk away.
He was the reason I'd spent years convincing myself I had no other choice when I'd always had one.
I'd been his perfect victim in the most private, invisible way, the damage that doesn't bruise the skin because it's built into the architecture of a person's brain, and I'd carried that everywhere and called it my own personality.
After Xavier forgave me, I'd sat with the size of that grace and realized something.
If I deserved a second chance, then other flawed people did too, even my father.
He'd done devastating harm, he refused to see it yet, and he might never get there.
But I wasn't going to deadbolt the door.
I was going to leave it cracked and make him earn his way through it.
Conditional grace was all I had left for him.
And it was enough.
I let out a shuddering exhale, and the ordinary noise of the city rushed back in around me, loud and indifferent to the fact that I'd just done the hardest thing I'd done in eight years.
Xavier was somewhere across the city by now, facing his own family. I pictured him across a table from Violet and his parents, finally saying the things they'd swallowed for years, and I hoped he walked out feeling the way I did right now.
I almost called him. Then I decided the rest could wait until I could say it to his face. I flagged a cab, made one stop at my apartment for a duffel of clothes, and went to his house to be there when he got home.