Page 28 of Prince of Wrath

“It’s…” I sign, tears already forming. “It’s a long story. I’m not sure you have enough energy to handle it.” A tight groan rumbles from him, and a speck of dry humor touches his lips.

“You should…see…the other guy,” he jokes weakly. “Tell me, honey. I was so worried. I…” He swallows, exhausted by the effort. “Tell me.” I spend the next ten minutes explaining our new reality. Mara’s involvement with the Vodianovs. My relationship with Tristan. How everything escalated into my kidnapping and captivity. I spare him the details of what happened in that cell. Instead, I focus on what matters most. That I am safe now, at Tristan’s house. I tell him Tristan found doctors for me and that he helped arrange his transfer here so he would be safe too. The hardest part is telling him that his wife has been poisoning him. For the first time since I started explaining, Dad looks like he does not believe me.

“She wouldn’t…” he coughs, his face tightening with confusion and pain. “Mara is a good woman.” I look down because I cannot watch his world fall apart all at once. Then, piece by piece, I untie a decade of mistreatment. Mara and my half-sisters. The lists, chores, and constant cleaning. Lazy birdy thrown at me every morning. My room in the attic that was mine instead of a room on my sisters’ floor. The living areas I was not allowed to enter unless I was cleaning them. My clothes filled with holes. Mara cutting me off and shortening my studies this year, forcing me to clean offices at night to save enough money for next year. I untie the devil’s work thread by thread. And finally, I watch the truth settle over him. Despite his fatigue and his inability to move or fix any of it, I watch my father, wise and calm even through sickness, struggle against the fury setting into his jaw. His mouth trembles with contained rage.

“Please believe me,” I add, on the edge of collapse. “Please.” For a long moment, my father says nothing. His eyes remain on mine, searching between the truth and what he has known, questioning the crumbs of reality he was offered from the open door of his bedroom. Dealing with the downfall of the daughter he thought was studying, happy, living a full life. Perhaps he knew, deep down, that something was off. Perhaps he had known for years that I was always on my own, that I moved through his house like a guest no one had invited but everyone expected to serve. Maybe he needed to believe the woman beside him was caring for what he could no longer reach. I do not blame him. I know what it is to be physically isolated from the world. I know how quickly your sense of self begins to feed on hope, even the thinnest kind.

And now I am asking him to do the cruelest thing. To rethink the last decade of his life and see the rot beneath it. To look back at the woman who said until death do us part, the woman who may have loved him once, and understand that somewhere along the way, love became a tool in her hands. With a trembling sigh, his fingers curl inward, trying desperately to form a fist.

“Oh, Ella,” he whispers. The sound of my name in his mouth destroys what little composure I have left. “I believe you.” I close my eyes, but the relief does not come cleanly. It arrives tangled with grief and the terrible childish ache of having waited years to hear those words and only receiving them now, in a medical room, beside a bed my father cannot walk away from. Shame and guilt choke me as I cover my face with my palm. Let me hide, I beg the universe.

“Why…didn’t you tell me before?” I almost wish he hated me so that I could hate myself even more. Hesitantly, I reach out to his hand, his veins like blue threads running underneath his thin, translucent skin.

“Because you had already lost too much,” I sign. “I couldn’t. I needed to give you a reason to stay happy. With your sickness, and without being able to live normally, I couldn’t take away your joy. I couldn’t be that selfish.” His eyes close. “And because after a while, I think I started believing her. That I was ungrateful, lazy, stupid. I still…” I pause. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Being kind, humble, and brave like Mom taught me.” The room settles around us, pale and sterile, humming with machines like a background melody. Tristan was right. It is good here. Bigger than his room, with a view over a lush garden, a large TV, fresh daisies cut in a glass vase near him, and empty frames waiting for pictures of us. It feels like a home away from home, like a real person’s bedroom with additional medical appliances. And from what I saw when we entered, doctors and nurses are taking great care of him.

“I should have seen it,” he says.

“No.”

“I should have…protected you from all of this.”

“You were sick.”

“Perhaps, but even sick, I’m still your father, Ella.” There is nothing I can say to that without lying to one of us, so I let the silence fill the empty distance between us, mending our collective wound. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, they are wet. I cannot even remember the last time I saw him cry. It must have been when Mom passed away. Covering his eyes, elbow on the kitchen table, in a black suit, with a sigh that had nothing to do with being tired. Even eight-year-old me had understood that then.

“This…Tristan. Is he really taking care of you? Where is he?” I nod, wishing he could have seen for himself how Tristan rearranged his existence for me to fit inside it.

“He’s next door, waiting.”

“Tell him to come over.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not that young, Ella. I don’t think there’s much time to waste, given my state.”

“Dad.”

“Really. Let me see him, please.” I nod, though I do not know what I am agreeing to. My father wants to see the man who carried me out of hell. I wipe my cheeks with the heel of my hand, but it does nothing. My face is still wet. My throat still hurts. And the bandage on my shoulder keeps rasping against my light blue sweater. I feel like I am lying down in the snow, hoping for Tristan to find me, to not let the cold, cold winter take me away.

Stepping into the hallway, Tristan lifts his eyes from his phone, his stern dark gaze softening when he meets mine.

“Hey, everything’s okay?”

“Dad, he…he wants to meet you,” I sign. I have seen Tristan angry, calm, playful. But nervous? That’s a first. With a sharp nod, he follows me inside, and I do not push him away when his hand finds mine, linking us together. I tug his hand until we are next to the bed, standing between Dad and the machine measuring his heart.

“Sir,” Tristan says firmly, in a tone I am not used to hearing from him. “I’m Tristan Ashford. I’m pleased to meet you.” My father looks at him for a long time, and my heart squeezes at the sight of him. A father watching the man who now holds his daughter’s safety in his hands, unable to do the fatherly things I always read about in books. The intimidation tactics, the sharp-cut warning, the dismissive appraisal, the crushing handshake meant to test character. I watch as Dad swallows his pride and flexes, then unflexes, his hand by his side.

“He wants to shake your hand,” I sign to Tristan. Tristan carefully reaches for my father’s hand on the sheets, exchanging the traditional handshake I had thought about. Tristan’s face betrays nothing, and I am grateful. Proud, too. Proud that I have chosen someone who understands the value of respect and decency. Dignity is not a word most people think about when they are able-bodied, but when your dad is lying static in a bed twenty-four-seven, and even though you weigh half his weight, you are the one carrying him to a wheelchair and strapping his chest so he does not fall, you have to find the right balance. Because inside, he is still very much a man. A man who built businesses, created a life with my mom, and loved me no matter how destroyed he was. That’s the kind of man who deserves dignity and a real, solid handshake.

I want to sign to my dad that Tristan is everything I have ever dreamed of. That in the quiet hours of the night, I picture us at the altar of a church saying, I do. That when I did not have hope to keep me warm, I imagined his voice and all the encouraging words he would tell me to keep going, to not give up, because that’s the kind of man he is. A real partner and a friend. Instead, I stay frozen as I finally understand that something other than me is taking over the room. A silent standoff between my dad and Tristan.

“So,” Dad murmurs, his voice barely more than breath. “You’re the infamous Tristan who saved my daughter and brought me here.”

“I am.”

“And…is it–is it true? Did you truly sell millions and millions of dollars to find Ella? And truly put yourself at risk to save her?” Tristan nods once, dismissing the magnitude of his sacrifices.

“Why?” my dad asks.