“I want time with her.”
“Impossible,” came Jake’s gut response.
“She must know her heritage.”
“She’s the daughter of a viscount. What other heritage does she need?”
Kai knew nothing about Jake if he thought he wouldn’t fight. A deeper and more important truth lay at the heart of this matter. Mina washisdaughter. She was as much of him as any biological daughter ever could be. This man wouldn’t come between them. He wouldn’t destroy them.
“Iam Mina’s father,” Jake all but growled.
“By blood,” Kai countered, scrappy and persistent.
“Blood doesn’t matter.”
“In London?” Kai scoffed. “It matters.”
“London knows what it needs to know.”
“But does Mina?”
Sudden anger burst to the surface, an anger Jake could barely restrain. “You think you know what’s best for her? You think you’re her father? You understand nothing about being her father.”
Kai shifted forward, his eyes ablaze and intense. “But I want to. She needs a place where she can be Japanese, too, a place where she fits with ease,” he finished, delivering his knock-out punch with a swift assuredness that floored Jake.
As suddenly as the anger had flared, it faded. Jake’s next words fell from his lips like a burden that had become too heavy to bear. “Like a puzzle piece just the right shape.”
A glimmer of hope lit within Kai’s gaze. “Let her meet me. Is she aware of her true parentage?”
Jake nodded. “Society cannot discover the truth of her birth.”
Finally, he’d said the words he’d come here to say, and they felt empty and odd now that he’d spoken them aloud. Kai was no threat to Mina. He never had been.
“It won’t,” Kai said.
“You have dealings with Society,” Jake began.
“Society such as Lady Olivia Montfort?”
Every muscle in Jake’s body tensed. “Yes, such as Lady Olivia Montfort.”
Kai inclined his head. “Her knowledge of the situation is at your discretion.”
Like that, it was done. “I shall speak to Mina,” Jake said. “She makes the decision, not you or I.”
Kai nodded and gestured toward the door. “May I show you out?”
Jake followed Kai through a tight maze of hallways, simultaneously worn down and strangely relieved. Already, he could predict Mina’s decision, and it would be the right one. A part of her unreachable by him craved what Kai offered. He wouldn’t stand in the way of his daughter’s fulfillment and happiness. She wasn’t his possession to keep for himself.
Yet it was another part of the conversation, one not as tidily concluded, that nagged at him. He’d detected a specific knowledge within Kai’s eyes when the man had spoken of Olivia. It was clear that he’d intuited the true nature of their relationship.
A few days ago, such insight might have concerned Jake, but not now. Now he wanted it out in the open. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Another opportunity he’d missed last night.
Of course, he had only himself to blame. The moment he’d allowed Olivia to step through that rooftop door and out of his life without fighting for her, he’d made a mistake.
Ahead, Kai reached the front door and hesitated, his hand resting slack on the handle. His back to Jake, he asked, “I can trust you to tell her?”
“I’ve given my word.”
