by Katie Cross
“H-h-hello,” I said.
“Dagny.” He smiled wide. “Wonderful to see you again. I was in the area and wanted to stop by for just a moment. Do you mind if I come in?”
Warning bells clanged in my head. He gave me no reason to suspect he was anything but another stutterer coming to talk to someone who could understand, but my hair stood on edge anyway.
“I'd r-r-rather you n-n-not come in-nside,” I said.
He shrugged, and to my surprise, didn't seem bothered. “Wise. Very wise. Would you be willing to meet for drinks at the bar?”
“Wh-what does this c-c-concern?”
A smile flitted lightly over his lips. “A breach of contract, if you will. Or, shall I say, a non-disclosure agreement?”
My heart felt like a lead weight as I mutely followed him toward the hotel bar. I stepped just behind him to give myself a little space to catch back up with the feeling of his stare on my skin. The cat-and-mice way his eyes had studied me. The firmness of his jaw as he'd said the words.
Non-disclosure agreement.
How did he know?
A few people drifted past us and called out to Anthony, laughing as they disappeared into the awaiting sandy beach and palm trees. My palms felt clammy at my side, and a chill had crept through me like a cloud had moved over the sun, but it hadn't. The sky was as bright as ever. The only cloud here walked a few steps ahead of me and hummed lightly, as if he didn't have a care in the world.
He was taking me for a drink, after all. Maybe he didn't have a care in the world. Would a man that was truly worried about saving face take me out for a drink? He'd be seen with me this way.
Maybe someone would draw conclusions?
My mind recoiled. No, I wasn't making any sense now. Everything had happened too quickly, so now I tripped over my thoughts and my words. Less than a minute later, Anthony opened a door to the hotel and gestured me inside with a grand sweep of his hand. The warmth on his face had me firmly locked in confusion.
Did he know?
Was I missing something?
Back when I planned to confront him about the choice he'd made, I expected frustration, maybe vengeance. But this Anthony was a calm summer breeze. A monster with their prey in his hands, more likely. A pleasant monster, however.
Because who had control of the broken NDA?
He did.
We slipped through a hallway of wood with decorative netting and a cool blast of AC. A maid pushed a trolley past with a little smile as the hallway opened up into a ritzy bar. Dark paneling, gleaming wooden floors, and window drapes made from dried grasses left an edge of sophistication on the room. Anthony had to only raise two fingers to draw the bartender’s attention, and suddenly we sat in a booth near the back. No one else lingered indoors at this time of day, giving us the shadows place to ourselves. Anthony faced the doors while I looked out a window, my back to the room.
The place suddenly felt as small as a cubby hole.
I swallowed past my fear as I gazed across the booth without saying a word, and Anthony did the same on the other side. A waiter set down two ice waters.
“Nothing now.” Anthony waved him away with a gesture of his wrist. “Come back in ten, please. Notify my assistant we've arrived.”
“You've ar-r-r-rived?” I asked.
“I assumed you wouldn't be comfortable alone in the bungalow, and I try to avoid being in rooms with women that aren't my wife.”
The response, spoken with an undertone so blatant I could have swam in it, set me on edge.
Was I the lesson that spurred that decision?
Once the waiter faded away, our eyes locked. Some of my courage had returned into the minutes between then and now, when I realized this would not be a friendly, happy reunion. Despite his genial air, he sat like a coiled snake. Tension hung across his shoulders and arms. Likely, there wouldn't be pride or astonishment or even rage on his features once we established what we each knew. At best, I could hope for indifference. A father-daughter reunion of bland annoyance.
My heart gave a little tremble, but I forced courage into it. Not much remained, but just enough for now.
“Dagny Taylor,” he murmured. A pleasant expression remained on his face, but I could have sworn I saw a sense of shock beneath it all. Perhaps curiosity.
I nodded once, then endured his business-like scrutiny. As if confronting me for the first time, he studied my face. I could feel his eyes mark my nose, my ears, my neck. The perusal felt mostly benign, likely the same thing I did the other night. At one point in my life, I'd imagined our first meeting to be something like this. The search for touchpoints or physical similarities between us. I'd longed for a biological father that wanted to share something with me, even if it was mere physical traits.
“You look nothing like me.”
“I d-d-disagree,” I murmured.
One eyebrow tweaked up in a move I couldn't read at all. Was he startled? Or was the stutter simply a reminder that we did share something after all?
“There are so many questions that I have.” He leaned back, and I sensed a poker face at work. The man was one of the wealthiest in the country, which meant he was going to be better at this than me. Over all the years of hopes and dreams, I'd tied myself up into this outcome too much.
Meanwhile, I doubted he had thought of me at all during that time.
Wordless, I motioned for him to continue. He released a breathy laugh. “You've learned not to speak unless you have to, I presume?” He shook his head, as if he didn't really want an answer, but felt obligated to ask anyway. “I know that struggle well. All right then, ask I shall.”
His hands folded together in front of him. For a moment, the intensity of his gaze deepened, then abated.
“What is your favorite color?”
I blinked, entirely unprepared for so benign a question. Why are you here? or How did you find out? made far more sense. Even how much money do you want in exchange for your silence? wouldn't shock me.
But this?
“G-green.”
“Really?” He grinned. “Intriguing. And how is your mother doing?”
My nostrils flared, but someone had appeared that drew his attention away and he missed the tell. I took the opportunity of his distraction to square my shoulders and draw in a deep breath. One of my speech therapists said that just drawing my shoulders back could give me the courage I needed to open my mouth again.
Still, a sense of astonishment filled me. He was asking about my Mom?
A familiar-looking person appeared. A young girl, presumably his assistant, handed him a large, sealed envelope. Once he accepted it, she disappeared again. He slid a finger under the top and glanced to me.
“Your mother?” he asked in a gentle reminder. “I hope she's well.”
“F-f-fine.”
“Good. And do you like the mountains of Pineville as a home? You've been there for so long.”
“Y-yes.”
He nodded, then reached into the envelope and extracted a sheaf of papers. “I'm glad to hear it. You seem healthy, bright, and intelligent, which is what I wished for you. Now, I assume you have many questions.”
The papers spread out in front of him, but the words were too small to skim or catch quickly. I had a feeling he knew that. Maybe this was just a distraction—a preface. He made polite small talk now, but in his hands he held a bomb.
“C-can we s-s-stop the s-small talk?”
Anthony paused, hesitated, and let out a sigh that lowered his shoulders. “Of course. It's not small talk to me, as I've genuinely wondered about you from time to time, but I can see that it is for you. Let's get to the bottom of this, shall we? You hold some information about yourself that you shouldn't, technically, know.”
Although I didn't know much about this kind of back-and-forth, I at least knew that I didn't have to verbally admit anything. What if he recorded this? No, that didn't make sense either. He wouldn't want his own voice on the recording as he admitted an a
ffair and a secret love child, at any rate. I stared at him, my lips sealed.
He paused for just a second, as if to give me a chance to reply, then continued again.
“The information you learned about yourself has explosive potential. Not only would it dramatically affect my personal life, but the lives of those I love and have long been loyal to. Right down the employees that depend on my company to feed their children. It's a long tail of success, you see.”
A scoff slipped out of me, and I didn't try very hard to stop it.
He blinked. “I deserve that from you,” he said quietly, then put both hands down on the papers to stare at me again. This time, his expression was . . . softer. The kind of gaze a father might give a daughter. “When you bumped into me the other day before I made it back to the rehearsal dinner, I almost thought I'd seen a ghost. You look just like your mother did twenty-some-odd years ago.”
The edge inside me started to soften. Although I wanted to act indifferent and as if I didn't care, I couldn't help but cling to the wistfulness in his voice. Hadn't I dreamed of this moment my whole life? I’d tried to imagine what he'd say about the decision to leave me behind and ignore me my whole life. He left a big, fat question mark in the place of a father.
Now he handed the answers to me in a gentle tone. One that even seemed to have a hint of regret in it.
Was the regret for me?
“You weren't a ghost,” he continued, oblivious to the way my mind swam around from hope to despair. “You were just a spitting image of your mother.”
“You r-r-rememb-ber her?”
“I do.”
I frowned. So did he. “Perhaps not on purpose,” he amended, “and not with the best of feelings. What happened between the two of us wasn't her fault alone, and I don't blame her. But it certainly wasn't an action I can say I'm proud of now.”
The sincerity in his tone took me off guard. I couldn't help the way his words made me feel: unwanted and betrayed. He flicked the words off his tongue easily, as if he didn't care about what they really meant.
Was I the action he wasn't proud of? No. I was the result of it. His adultery led to an out-of-wedlock child. Breathing proof against his worthiness to such a lovely wife. Likely he regretted outcomes more than actions. I kept those thoughts close.
“Regardless.” He shook his head and rubbed a hand over his eyes, the first sign of humanity I'd really seen. “I saw you and wondered. You fit the age. You had a stutter. When you saw me, you looked as if you'd seen a ghost, too. You looked the way I felt. So I sent a message to my investigator and set him off to do his thing last night.”
The pieces clicked into place. So he had recognized me, then learned whatever he could. Although weird things happened every day, it seemed almost impossible that I just happened to come to the island where my biological father threw a massive wedding event for his daughter.
Not his only daughter, however.
Had fate thrown this together? Some great, cosmic force that rolled the dice when our lives decided lessons?
“And?” I whispered.
“And he confirmed you as . . . well.” Anthony cleared his throat, but his drawn gaze eased a little. Even he wouldn’t say the words, and that hurt. A diabolical insult to my existence. A reminder of who I would always be to him. “The confirmation was an odd feeling. I can't say I was surprised. As I mentioned, you look just like your mother. But I was . . . concerned.”
For the first time, I could see that my presence must feel like a threat to him. Did he think I came to unravel everything? To enact revenge or justice? Because he would have been right . . . at least initially. But now everything had changed again.
Perhaps he was being so pleasant now out of fear of reprisal. Even a hint of scandal at a time and place like this could unravel his daughter's most important day.
“I'm n-not here for t-trouble.”
He smiled, but clearly didn't trust me.
“No one ever is,” he said blandly, then tapped the papers below his hands. “Whether your mother told you about the situation, whether you found the NDA, or something else doesn't matter. It's clear you know what has happened between your mother and me? Do you deny this?”
My hesitation came because for the first time I realized that this whole trip was, in the heart of it, a basic assumption. Did I know that the NDA was Mom's? That they'd had a one-night stand? No. The idea was based on pieced-together ideas that I'd cobbled together out of tenacity and desperation.
The moment I'd seen him standing alone on the back porch, it's like I'd realized the truth. Anthony Dunkin, oil tycoon from Texas, really was my biological father. His arrival on my doorstep confirmed it.
Although the paperwork that existed had pointed that way without question, having him stand before me now made it undeniable in my heart. Something in that positive confirmation sent my soul into a spin, like doors slamming shut.
“I d-d-don't know for sure,” I said. “I’ve operated l-largely on an as-s-sumption.”
“How so?”
“I f-found the ND-DA. Sh-she doesn't know I kn-now.”
“Did you look for me?”
All my life, my heart whispered.
“Af-fter I saw it, I was c-curious. I G-googled you.”
He stared hard at me, gaze tapered, then nodded once. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Well, I’ve come to present you with a proposal of your own.”
“B-but—”
He held up a hand, and I stopped. “Please,” he said, “allow me to get through this explanation, and all your questions will be answered.”
Reluctantly, I nodded.
“Below me is a contract not unlike that I gave to your mother. It details what you cannot say. To make the explanation simple, there would be nothing you can say about my name, my business, or any relationship with anyone in my life. In other words, I do not exist to you.”
My throat thickened. With every word that he said, his voice became more firm. There was an odd, melodic sort of rhythm to his words as he slid away from Father of the Bride and into Oil Tycoon. Reality crystallized with every passing second.
This man wasn't my father and never would be. Not in all the ways that actually mattered.
Although thirsty for his attention and interest in me—even the morsels he'd tossed my way with humanizing questions—I'd exposed myself to a new world of pain. Just entertaining his presence set me back. He'd been kind at first. One could even call him interested. But his interest wasn't in me, our shared genes, or our history. His interest was in self-preservation.
Cruel, I thought as he spoke quickly and succinctly of the terms of a contract that prevented me from ever returning to any property that he might own, or speaking to any media or news outlet in terms that threw any suspicion on him, his business, or his family. He'd pretended to be a friend, had maybe even held some level of curiosity for me. But now he'd become an intense businessman focused only on the outcome.
He's not my father, I thought.
Cotton filled my mouth when I asked, “And w-w-what if I d-d-don't sign?”
He smiled a little, and I thought I saw a snake in it. “That is an option, but not one I'd recommend.”
“W-why?”
“Your admission here makes it abundantly clear that your mother broke the NDA. Perhaps unconsciously or passively, but it is broken. The repercussions are astronomical to her.” He gestured to the papers. “Built within this agreement is an assurance that your mother will receive no consequences for breaking our NDA, provided she continues to keep it. Since she allegedly doesn't know that you have seen it, then we will continue keeping her under the same illusion as before. Provided you agree with the final terms, let us get this signed.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a pen.
My chest filled with a cold breath as I stared at the metallic sheen of the pen that found itself into my fingers. Disbelief followed my shock, which seemed to just be catching up with me.
&nbs
p; What had I been thinking?
To come to this island in pursuit of a biological father that clearly wanted nothing to do with me. Only ghosts and broken dreams and lonely nights waited down the road of my parentage, and maybe I knew that when I started this journey. But I'd chased it anyway, because at least in the pain there were answers. The questions could be silenced, and all the other questions that had arisen could be dismissed as mere ghosts now.
The pen hovered over the paper as my mind continued to spin.
“W-what is the f-f-final c-condition?”
“You leave now.”
My head jerked up. “Now?”
He punctuated his response with another nod. “Now. I have a private plane that's waiting for you. It will take you back to your life in Pineville where you can resume with the monetary compensation outlined in these pages.”
My eyes grew. “B-but the wedd-ding. J-j-jayson.”
“Jayson.” He sighed. “Yes, Jayson.”
The silence hung there for a moment while I sorted through what he asked of me. It was more than just leaving him to his secrets. It was leaving Jayson here without explanation. Without one ever. The contract meant I couldn't tell him the sordid history that lay at my back, and he wouldn't be able to trust me ever again.
“I-I can't leave h-him without t-telling him g-g-goodbye and explaining,” I protested. “Th-that's not f-fair.”
“You're sure he's worth your mother's well being?”
“Y-yes,” I said without hesitation.
He scoffed.
“Y-you would f-f-force me into that ch-choice?”
His gaze returned to mine, and I almost thought I saw sorrow for a moment. “For the sake of everything I love and own,” he said quietly, “yes.”
My heart ached as if a cold hand had seized it. Maybe in different circumstances, I could have grown fond of Anthony. Could have enjoyed the idea of him living out such a privileged life with his wife and his daughter and the grandchildren she'd undoubtedly give him. But his superiority, selfishness, and utter disregard for his own choices made it impossible for me to respect him.
Mom, however, shouldn't have to pay the price.