My head snapped up. “Why would anything you have, concern her?” I shot up from my seat. “You’ve never met—”
“Because it’s not from me. Read the goddamn contents,” he pushed. “I tried to give you this before, but you refused meetings with me. So, here I am, forcing you to read it. Seeing as Krisha is back in your life, this might answer a few questions.”
My irritation slipped just a notch. “You know about her?”
“There’s nothing I don’t know about you, Trent,” his voice lowered an octave and I almost believed the fatherly concern. I knew better.
I didn’t bother asking him to elaborate. My eyes on him, I reached for the manila, opened it and tipped the contents out onto the table The quicker I it the sooner I could tell him to get lost. Several documents fell out. I picked up a letter and scanned the first couple of lines. My muscles tensed, my grip tightening on the page. I looked up at him.
“Read all of it.” Joshua Princeton, my biological father and the man who’d cheated on my mother and fathered a child, lowered his tall frame into a chair, uninvited, and stared me straight in the eye. I might not know the man but the sudden sincerity in those gray eyes was genuine. Somehow, they reminded me of Drake’s eyes.
“Does Drake know you’ve been around?”
He nodded. “I met him a couple of weeks ago. Told him of my intention to give you this.” He pointed to the letter in my hand. “Drake asked me to postpone it for a bit, said you were going through some shit. That’s how I found out Krisha was back in the picture. Read.” He jerked his chin at the letter.
“Have you met your daughter?”
He shook his head. “She’s not ready to see me.”
I smirked. My sister had just discovered he was her father a few months ago. I didn’t blame her. She wasn’t likely to entertain him either because the man she called father, gave her a life worth living.
I continued reading. As the father of two kids, it took a lot to shock me. A couple more lines and the shiver running through my body shook me like the blast of an unexpected gut punch. I wasn’t sure I wanted to read more, but the very next line had the blood crystalizing in my veins. I was shaking so badly, the letter fell from my fingers. I dropped into my chair. Tugging the knot on my tie to loosen it, I stared at my father. Confusion, anger, irritation all snowballing into one gigantic ball of nausea. I was ready to hurl. “How?” I finally muttered after several deep swallows.
He stood. “I’m at this address if you want to talk.” He set a business card on the table and as he walked away, I caught sight of the company name.
I saw red. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” He turned at my shout. “You waltz in here almost twelve years after your shit, drop this fucking bomb, and now expect me to wait?” I held up the card. “How?” I bit out. I was in no mood for his shit.
And he probably knew it. Sighing heavily, he took a step toward me. “I was given a proxy by the old man and have been managing his affairs for the last nine odd years,” he explained.
I frowned, still not understanding how this man who’d never met my wife, or her family for that matter was running her father’s company. “You were given a proxy by who?”
“Mr. Singh.”Krisha’s father.
I blinked a couple of times. “How the fuck did that happen?”
“If you’re interested, it will take more than a few minutes to give you the full story. Coffee? Lunch?”
As much as I was against having any type of social interaction with him, my curiosity was a little more than piqued. I ignored the invite for the moment. “How do you know Krisha’s father? I’m sure you don’t need coffee to answer that,” I grimaced.
“I met Mr. Singh at your wedding.”
I was flummoxed. “You were at the wedding?”
He nodded. “I wasn’t invited but I came anyway.” He stared at me, his expression contemplative. “I sat at the back of the church so no one would see me. On my way out, I bumped into Mr. Singh. Somehow, we got talking and when I told him I was your father, he invited me to a drink after the reception. We became friends.” He shrugged.
“Well, fanfuckingtastic for you then,” I scoffed. “But seeing as I’ve lost touch with your benevolent side, which I’m inclined to think never existed in the first place, how the fuck am I to believe this shit?” I waved a hand over the spilled contents on my table. “If you’re here for forgiveness that’s probably never going to happen,” I barked. “So I’d start with the truth, right about now.”
He slipped his hands into his pockets. “Look, this isn’t what you think it is.” At my arched brow, he took a deep breath then continued, “clemency aside and this might be a bit late, but I’m sorry, genuinely sorry for your loss. You seemed so happy with her—”
“Don’t make a mockery of my love. Something you probably never understood, or you wouldn’t have...” I swallowed the acid sluicing my throat.
He stared at me for a moment, deliberation shadowing his taut features. “I might’ve fucked up as a father, but I tried to do right by watching over you, even if it was from the sidelines. I was at Krisha’s funeral. You never noticed because I made sure to stay out of sight. You’re a heck of a father, Trent, someone I could probably take a lesson from, but this,” he pointed to my table, “it’s all legal.”
The solemnity of his countenance made me question whether I was being too rash. “In what sense.”
“Time is imperative, otherwise his estate goes to the wrong people.”
I frowned. “The old man’s not dead why would—”
