Page 146 of Broken Blades

Barbara Hale.

The woman merging her company with my father's. The woman who'd confronted me at the charity skate. The woman Wyatt had looked at with something cold and wounded in his eyes.

My father's voice dropped to a register I'd never heard before. Controlled fury wrapped in ice. "That was years ago."

My mother's response came fast and vicious. "You slept with her for two years."

The world stopped. Just stopped. Everything—sound, movement, breath—suspended in the space between heartbeats while my brain tried to catch up with what my ears had just processed.

My father.

Barbara.

An affair.

Two years.

I gripped the wall harder, nails digging into fabric while my stomach twisted itself into knots.

Everything Wyatt believed. Everything my father had denied. Everything he'd called a misunderstanding, a complication, ancient history that didn't matter.

All of it true.

And I'd defended my father. Stood between him and Wyatt and chosen the wrong side because I hadn't known there were sides to choose.

The hallway spun.

I couldn't breathe. My breath came fast. Too fast. Shallow gasps that didn't bring enough oxygen while my chest constricted around lungs that had forgotten how to function.

The voices continued inside the room but the words blurred into white noise. Static. Meaningless sound that couldn't penetrate the roaring in my ears.

My mind raced. Wyatt's revenge. Barbara's bitterness at the charity skate when she'd looked at him like he was a threat. My father's hatred. The way his jaw had tightened every time Wyatt's name came up. The merger. The carefully constructed narrative. The timing. The lies.

All of it. Every piece.

It connected. Snapped into focus with devastating clarity.

Wyatt didn't ruin his own marriage. My father did. My father had slept with Wyatt's wife. Destroyed his life. Watched him burn.

And then—when the scandal threatened to touch the merger, when Barbara's involvement risked exposure—my father had handed me over. Used me as a shield. Collateral to keep Wyatt quiet.

I pressed my hand against my mouth, trapping the sob that wanted to escape.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t know what to do.

Chapter 28

Wyatt

We lost.

Bad.

I could still hear the buzzer in my head—that final, damning sound that marked the end of a game we should have won. Three to one. Sloppy plays. Missed opportunities. My fault on the second goal when I'd been too slow rotating back.

The hotel room felt like a cage.

I paced from the window to the bathroom and back again, tie loosened around my neck, shirt half unbuttoned because I couldn't stand anything tight against my skin right now. The game still pounded through my veins—adrenaline with nowhere to go, rage at the loss mixing with something darker I didn't want to name.