I’ll never be able to forgive him, Minnie thinks darkly as she looks up at her reflection again, anger swimming in her gaze.Never.
Chapter 11
It is her father who wakes her from a troubled sleep, his large hand gently touching her cheek. “Minerva.”
Opening her bleary eyes, Minnie looks up at where he sits beside her at the edge of her bed. There’s a sad smile about his mouth, his eyes full of sorrow for her. He never wanted this misery for her, she knows. He likely didn’t intend to cause the breaking of her heart; he simply wanted the root cause of her pain far away from her.
He didn’t want his daughter involved with the man who played an integral part in the bank robbery years ago. What father in his right mind would? She can’t stay angry with him, not about this. “Hey, Daddy.” She sits up and allows him to hug her, the warm comfort of his embrace nearly bringing tears to her eyes.
“I see you’re not taking this too well.” He releases her, appraising her bloodshot gaze. “I feared as much.”
She sniffles, torn between her own grief and her feeling of being wronged by her father. “I wish you hadn’t done what you did. There was no reason for you to SWAT him. You should have just…spoken to me. Playing little power games earns you nothing, Daddy.”
“I overreacted.” He inhales slowly, exhaling even longer. “And I realize I acted rashly. That I caused you more harm, doing what I did. But, do you not see why I had such a terrible reaction? I know you don’t have a child of your own yet, but I can tell you how it was for me, as your father, that day. The pain was unlike anything I ever knew, knowing my daughter had been terrorized. The helplessness I felt, being unable to spare you such a thing. I would fight the world to keep you safe fromharm after that event. I would do things most might deem cruel or unsavory to shelter you, the way I couldn’t back then.”
Minnie looks at her lap and nods, resting her head on his shoulder for comfort. “Did you get what you wanted?” He wanted Gage gone, locked away. This had been an ugly effort. “I assume not. Gage isn’t what he was.”
Her father sucks in a sharp breath of distaste. “He is going to be cut loose. Captain Noweth says there’s nothing to hold him on. Gage Travers has been squeaky clean since he got out. Shows up to work on time and hasn’t missed a single damn day.” He looks down at her from the corner of his eye. “Straight and narrow, aside from the dubious engagement he has with his former hostage.”
Betrayal coils in her breast again, spiky and thorned.
“Are you going to see him again?”
Looking up at him, weary of the world, Minnie replies, “I have no choice, Daddy. I’m not going to ghost him-”
“What’s that new age word mean?”
“Vanish on him without a word. I’m not going to do that. A conversation has to be had. Ineedclosure.”I need to know how deep the lies go.
“Ah.” He nods in sage understanding. “Shame. I wish you would ghost him. That would put my heart at ease.”
Yeah, well, it wouldn’t put hers at ease. Minnie needs to know what Gage was thinking, continuing a full-time relationship with her, knowing exactly who she is. She lifts her chin. “I’m a better person than that.”
Her father squeezes her chin briefly with a fleeting smile, a tightness still around his eyes. “I know.”
You’re his favorite, Minerva. He won’t say it, her mother told her once.But I know. Parents aren’t supposed to have favorites, but it happens.
“I have to face him. To understand…all of it.” She looks down at her hands, looking at the lines in her palms. “I want to know if he knew who I was when he saw me in the library, to know if this has been a scheme to get revenge on me all along.” She blinks her eyes rapidly, wiping at them. “Or if he truly didn’t know until I told him myself.”
“You told him about that day?”
There’s no way around it when you get to know someone. “I did tell him. But…” And she fell asleep in his bed shortly after, and she isn’t telling her father that. She faintly recalls Gage seemed upset for her, but perhaps that had been faked? “But he didn’t tell me that he’d been involved. So, here we are. Months later. Me, in a serious relationship with one of the men who held me hostage during a bank robbery.”
It sounds like a dark thriller movie with a bad ending, honestly.
“I don’t see how you can trust a man who couldn’t admit to something so impactful,” Reginald says evenly, clearly trying to avoid sounding as if he is blaming her. “He should have told you the moment he knew.”
A large portion of Minnie agrees with him wholeheartedly. The other part has questions. “Maybe he has a reason for not telling me. It’s not as though he’s proud of his past.He’s not.He was ashamed to tell me he’d been in prison the day I first spoke to him.”
“He should be ashamed. He’s a criminal.”
“Wasa criminal,” Minnie retorts with exhaustion. Shaking her head miserably, Minnie replies, “I have to know the truth. I won’t ever have closure if I don’t see him again. Besides, he won’t understand why I’ve abandoned him if I never speak to him again. It wouldn’t…it wouldn’t feel right.”
“Fine.” Reginald stands and adjusts the collar of his finely pressed shirt. “Get your answers from the man when you areready. But then it needs to be over, Minerva.” His face is stern, unyielding. “You will end it with him. For your own sake.”
He leaves her to her thoughts as she sits on the edge of her childhood bed.
She blinks slowly, as if in a dream. End it?
