Her father made a visible effort to bring himself under control. “I hardly locked her in a dungeon.”
“No,” she said, a strange sort of calm settling over her as she cut this cancer out. There was no room for anything but complete control. “But she was nineteen. You were thirty-two. You knew exactly how to emotionally browbeat her, didn’t you?”
He fiddled with the cuffs of his sleeves, straightening the suit. “You have no proof of any of this.”
“Maybe not. But you’d be surprised how ready the media would be to believe someone who has literally nothing to gain.” She paused. “I may also have a couple of Mei’s diaries. I haven’t read them yet. But how much do you want to bet they chronicle the life she had to live with you.” Her smile wasn’t pretty. “You could say a lot about Mei, but people respected the hell out of her.”
His face mottled with color. His next words were the equivalent of waving a white flag. “I should have let her get rid of you. If my father hadn’t been harassing me for an heir—”
“You didn’t want an heir. You wanted a brainless puppet.”
“Better a puppet than a slut.”
“Oooh.” Akira tilted her head and smiled. “Are we resorting to your pet names already? Frankly, Daddy, I’d rather be a slut for sex than a whore for fame.”
Quick as a flash, his hand wrapped around her upper arm. His grip was too hard, the fingers digging into her flesh. “You listen to me, you little…”
Blocking the pain, she glanced up at the unobtrusive camera in the corner of the elevator. “Careful, Daddy. Your cameras may not be in here, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t being watched. How would manhandling your daughter play to your viewers?”
He released her immediately and took three steps back, until he was plastered against the opposite wall. She looked at him, really looked.
He was old. Old and pathetic. He thought her business was at the center of her heart, so he had attacked it. Dumb. She loved her work, but if she lost it tomorrow, she would recover. Rebuild her empire.
The same couldn’t be said of Jacob.
No, her father would never be able to hurt her, ever. He couldn’t know what was in her heart because he had no idea how to have a heart.
Hiro breathed deep, his face mottled. “You’re an idiot. This is going to set your business plan back.”
It probably would, but she could manage that. Contrary to what so many people believed, she was no stranger to rolling up her sleeves. “So it gets set back.” She pushed the emergency button to resume the elevator operation.
“You think I don’t know how hard you’ve tried to prove yourself to me?”
“Yeah. I’m done with that. We’re done,” she said, her voice so cold and stiff her father made no response. “You never contact me again. Never look at me again.”
He was silent until they reached the ground floor. As the door opened, she heard his bitter words. “So self-righteous. You are no better than me. You can try for the rest of your life, but you’ll never be better than me.”
Her fingers slipped over her purse. “That’s where you’re wrong.” As she spoke, the truth washed over her, filling her with confidence. “Listen up, Pops. You got lucky today, but for future reference... I won’t strike first, but I will strike back. Hard. Probably best for you to keep that in mind.”
She dropped her sunglasses over her face. Her feet picked up speed, until she was running as fast as her heels would allow by the time she cleared the huge glass double doors and spilled onto the crowded sidewalk. Yes, she was better than that man.
And she deserved the best.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“What do you mean, he’s not here?”
Ben stared at Akira from inside the door to Jacob’s home. “Ah. I’m sorry. He’s not here right now.”
Akira closed her eyes. This was not a part of the script. Jacob was supposed to be home when she came to her senses, like a steadfast rock. Rocks didn’t roam.
“Well, where is he?” Her voice rose higher on the last syllable, despite her best effort to appear her normal, unflappable self.
To be fair, that was probably already a lost cause. She’d hopped on a plane from New York to San Francisco, rented a car since Harris was now investigating her driver, and driven straight here. Her hair was disheveled, falling out of the bun she’d hastily tucked it into, and her clothes had definitely been far more crisp at eight a.m. eastern time. She supposed she could have freshened up, but all she’d managed to do for the past however many hours was repeatedly call Jacob’s phone—which went straight to voicemail.
Ben cocked his head and studied her. “Do you want to come in for a minute?” he asked, not answering her extremely important question.
No. She didn’t want to come in. She wanted Jacob. “Is he at his cabin?”
