He’s still staring at his hands. “Your mother wanted children to keep the family legacy, but she never wanted a husband to share it with. Why do you think she never took my last name and you didn’t, either?”
He takes a sip of water. “Sylvia was cold, sure. I knew that. It was how her father had treated her. But I thought that when shehad children, things would change, that she’d soften somehow. But she didn’t. She saw me as a threat, as competition for your love and affection. I had no choice, Pane. When I tried to fight her, her lawyers always won. She had millions to throw around. I got nothing, and I wanted nothing from her except you and your brother.”
There’s so much that rings like truth in what he’s saying. It sounds like my mother perfectly. For God’s sake, she had Stone and I compete against one another for the company. Was she purposefully attempting to drive a wedge between the two of us?
I study my father’s features, but all I see is honesty and regret in his face. “Why now? Why are you reaching out to us now?”
He sighs, his shoulders sagging. “I ran into your brother on the street a few months ago. He immediately recognized me, and about punched me in the face.” He chuckles. “I asked him to talk to me for five minutes, to let me explain. We went into a coffee shop—and I tell you what, I’ve never spoken so fast in five minutes in all my life.”
He smiles. “I told him what I told you. That she kept you from me, on purpose. I wanted to be in your lives, but your mother saw to it—because of her jealousy, because of her need to control—that I wasn’t allowed anywhere near either of you.” He tears a hunk of bread from a loaf in the center of the table. “I hear the second guy got it worse than me.”
Natalie’s father also has nothing to do with her. My mother is controlling, but this?
This... the cogs of time in my mind whirl backward to the moment she told me I could either be with Ilana or I could be a Maddox. They spin again, stopping more recently, when I was told that Stone and I were going to compete. She said our numbers were similar, but was that true? As far as I knew, I had a lead over my brother—a good solid lead when it came to managing a well-oiled, profit-pumping hotel.
The position should’ve been mine by default.
But no, Mom had to play her little game. Her little games that have cost me time, happiness—
My gaze locks on to my dad’s. “If you’d never run into Stone, then—”
He nods, and says what I expect: “Then I would’ve let her continue to poison your minds against me. I knew that’s what Sylvia had done. Me coming to either of you wouldn’t have changed how you felt. You would’ve believed that I left you of my own free will. That’s what Stone thought. Your brother believed that until he gave me a shot.” He shakes his head as emotion floods his eyes. “If there’s one thing that I regret—and there are many—I regret that I didn’t fight harder, that I didn’t let myself be ruined trying to make the two of you see that I loved you, that you were my moon and stars. Every morning and every night, I think about you both. You’re the first people on my mind in the morning and the last when I say my prayers at night.” He shakes his head. “Don’t let the precious ones get away, I’ve realized. Don’t let someone else dictate your own happiness, because often what people want is for their own misery to be mirrored in the eyes of others. They don’t want people to strive and succeed. They want the population to be sad and lonely, as heartless as they are. Because that’s what makes them happy, not the joy of others.”
It’s those words, the very last ones that he says, that hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer, cracking and splintering the ice that’s grown up around my heart these past few weeks.
The worst part? I let it. I embraced it, allowed it to mold me into someone who thought only about work, and who lived by the mantra that I didn’t deserve love.
What a lie. I deserve love as much as anyone, and I deserve a mother who isn’t selfish and scheming.
I rise. “Thank you for this.”
My dad stands, too, looking confused. “Did I say something wrong? If you don’t want to see me again, I understand.”
In one quick movement, I move around the table and embrace him. My father is surprised, unsure what to do at first, but then his arms slowly encircle me, and he whispers, “My son.”
