How does it feel to be adequate?
He had used that word against me once.Thrown it in my face like garbage.The memory still burned.
But he had also carried me to bed last night.Held me while I slept.Told me about his mother with his voice breaking and his eyes raw with a vulnerability he had never shown anyone.
The ledger kept score of his sins.But the ledger did not account for the man who had emerged from behind the masks.The one who was terrified of becoming his father.The one who pulled back from the claiming bite because he loved me too much to risk hurting me.
Every touch was a performance.
Was it?Had any of it been performance?Or had the performance become real so gradually that I had not noticed the moment it stopped being a lie?
I did not have answers.Not yet.But the speech felt wrong in my mouth now, the words too sharp for a target I was no longer sure I wanted to hit.
Tomorrow was the gala.Whatever happened after, I needed to decide who I wanted to be when the music stopped.
The manor was quiet when I arrived that night.I found Raphael in his study, surrounded by files and photographs spread across his desk.Crime scene photos.Witness statements.The investigation that still had no solution.
“What did you learn?”He looked up as I walked in, reading my face the way he always seemed to.His nostrils flared slightly, scenting the stress on my skin.
I told him about Maya.The fourth-floor suites.The secrets my father had helped people keep and the leverage that created.
“Your father ran a blackmail operation.”Not a question.
“I think so.Maybe not actively, but he had the material.The knowledge.”I sank into the chair across from him, suddenly exhausted.“How did I not see it?”
“He did not want you to see it.”Raphael leaned back in his chair.“Men like your father build walls around the things they are ashamed of.Especially from the people whose respect they need.”
“Did you know?About the suites?”
He was quiet for a moment.When he spoke, his voice was careful.“Yes.”
The word landed like a stone.“You knew my father was running a blackmail operation and you never told me?”
“I knew before we met.It was one of the reasons I targeted him initially.”Tension corded his neck.“When I realized what you meant to me, I buried it.I could have exposed him.Destroyed his reputation, taken the hotel through scandal instead of debt.But that would have destroyed you too.”
I processed that.Another secret he had kept to protect me.
“You protected him to protect me.”
“I protected your image of him.”His voice was rough.“The father you loved, even if he did not deserve it.I did not want to be the one to take that from you.”
The weight of my father’s legacy settled over me like a dark cloud.The hotel I had loved, the man I had mourned, the complicated reality of who Richard Hughes had really been.
Raphael rose from his desk and crossed to where I sat.His hand found my shoulder, squeezed, and then he pulled me up and into his lap.I went without resistance, tucking my head against his chest, breathing in the familiar warmth of him.
“The investigation?”
“Nowhere.”His frustration vibrated through the word.
“You will find them,” I said again, because I did not know what else to say.
“I will.”His arms tightened around me.“I just need to figure out what I am missing.”
We sat there as the evening deepened outside the windows, wrapped in each other.My husband the wolf.My father the blackmailer.The hotel full of secrets I was only beginning to understand.The world had shifted beneath my feet, and I was still learning where the solid ground was.
Eventually, exhaustion caught up with me.The weight of everything I had learned, everything I had accepted, dragged at my limbs until I could barely keep my eyes open.
Raphael noticed before I did.He stood, lifting me with him as if I weighed nothing, and carried me up the stairs to the bedroom.
