Dad stepped closer, not quite touching me but close enough that I could feel the weight of his regret. “I’ve made mistakes, Charlotte. Big ones. I didn’t mean to. I thought I was protecting this family, but I never stopped to consider how that might hurt you. I’m sorry.”
The apology, offered willingly and of his own accord, hit me harder than the one I’d planned on demanding. My eyes burned with the recognition that he was finally stepping up to the plate as a father in the wrong, my voice shaking with the magnitude of what that meant.
“I just needed you to see me.”
“I always saw you,” he said softly. “I just didn’t understand what I was looking at, my beautiful little girl.”
Something soft and comforting bloomed in my chest, not forgiveness—at least not entirely—but perhaps this was the beginning of it. A crack in the wall that would let a little light through from now on.
I nodded once, slowly. “Okay, Daddy. It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.”
Dad exhaled, almost sagging in relief. “Okay.”
He and I kept looking at each other, and for the first time since everything had exploded, I felt the world settle back into place. Not perfectly and it certainly hadn’t been painless but things felt like they made sense again.
Trent had handled everything else, but now, I’d finally confronted the one person who’d hurt me the most. I just needed to know one last thing. “Were you taunting Trent? Was that what all this with Gregory was about, just a test?”
“No, sweetheart.” Dad smiled softly, which surprised me, and shook his head. “I’ve known yourhusbandfor years. Since before you were old enough to really even know who he was. The boy has always been a hothead. That temper of his sits right under the skin.”
His smile deepened with something that looked oddly like fondness. “But seeing him break for you? Seeing him come apart because he thought someone was threatening what was his?” He pumped his eyebrows at me. “I heard about the elevator and the incident with the pigs.”
I slapped my hand over my face. “Oh my God.”
“That’s a man who would go to the deepest level of hell and fight his way out for a woman, and that’s always been what you deserved.”
He paused then, his expression shifting to something heavier. “In my mind, you’ve always been my princess. My only daughter. Gregory would have given you an actual title. If Trent was going to be the reason you didn’t have that, the boy damn sure had to prove that he would love you in a way no one else could.”
As I looked back at him, it was like I could see the old idea the moment he said it, the fantasy that had probably lived in his head since long before this modern version of our lives. A father wanting the world to bow for his little girl.
Except that fantasy was never mine. Not once.
“I didn’t want a title, Daddy,” I said softly. “I’ve never cared about any royal nonsense either. All I wanted was your attention. That would always have been enough for me.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them and they hung in the stillness of the room, small, fragile, and way too honest. Dad and I never talked like this, and he winced when I did it now, but suddenly, when his gaze dropped back to that picture of my mother on the desk, it all made perfect sense.
The distance. The coldness. The unreachable parts of him. I’d blamed myself for years, assuming I’d fallen out of his line of sight because I was the youngest. Because I was a girl. Because I hadn’t joined the company. I’d come up with a million different reasons why he might treat me the way he did.
Now, however, standing here, I suddenly understood how deep Mom’s death had carved into him. He’d never remarried. Never dated and never even entertained the idea of really moving on.
My mother had been it for him. Period.
“I’m sorry,” he finally murmured, the words ragged and rough. “I handled the Gregory business poorly. It was foolish of me. I should’ve listened to your brothers and your husband, for that matter.”
My chest squeezed so tight, I thought my ribs might break, but I didn’t yell, lecture, or launch into the speech I’d practiced in the car. I just stepped forward and hugged him, my poor father who’d lost the love of his life so, so young and had been left with seven children to care for.
At first, he went stiff, startled, but then slowly, he leaned into me. His arms came around me, hesitant but solid when he pulled me closer. For a few long minutes, we just held on to each other and it felt like something long overdue was realigning.
He cleared his throat after we eventually pulled apart and gestured toward the hallway. “Come. I have something for you in my study.”
I followed him there. He opened a drawer, pulled out a slim envelope, and handed it to me. “That’s the inheritance letter as well as your five percent share of Westwood & Sons.”
I blinked down at it. I didn’t need this. Trent had made that clear. We could build an entire life without a cent of Westwood money, but Dad had given me this not as a bargaining chip, not as a bribe, and not as leverage, but as acknowledgment that it was mine.
So I took it quietly, folded the envelope, and tucked it into my purse. As I lifted my head to say goodbye, something on the wall behind his desk caught my eye. One of the polaroids from our drunken Vegas wedding was pinned to it.
Instantly, I frowned. “What? Why?”
He gave a gruff shrug. “It’s a good picture.”
