Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 50828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 169(@300wpm)
In the car, I reach for her hand. “Have fun today?”
“Yeah. Even when I was a kid, Christmas wasn’t like that. My mom’s parents lived in Oregon, where she was from. I have an aunt, but I’ve only met her once, when she came to Mom’s funeral. My grandfather died when I was four. My grandma didn’t last too long after that. My dad’s parents had all but disowned him years before. Anyway, since I was an only child, it was always just the three of us for the holidays. For as long as I can remember, my parents fought—no matter what day it was. There wasn’t much happiness or Christmas cheer.”
“We’re definitely going to change that and embrace new traditions together—you, me, and our kids. Speaking of—” I stop the car with a scowl when I turn onto my street and see Julia’s familiar silver SUV in the driveway and Doug leaning against it, arms crossed like he’s pissed as hell.
He also looks like he’s aged ten years in the last two, when I last set eyes on him.
Beside me, Isabella gasps. “What is my dad doing here?”
He’s come to get in my face. He’s come to get payback for my retribution. I wanted this revenge so badly. I spent hours compulsively putting my master plan into place. I wanted to get a rise out of him, and I sent him a picture designed to boil his blood. Now I wish I hadn’t. I wish Doug would just go the fuck away.
How will Isabella handle his unexpected visit?
“Shit.” It’s definitely going to hit the fan.
Heaving a sigh, I pull in the driveway, my heart dropping to my stomach even as rage flashes through me. I haven’t been any sort of saint, but this asshole hasn’t paid attention to his daughter in a decade. What gives him the fucking right to think he can suddenly waltz back into her life and school me?
Sliding my car past my ex-wife’s and slinging it into the garage, I shove my Mercedes in park, cursing under my breath, and kick my door open. “Doug.”
He’s already coming at me, fists clenched. “You son of a bitch.”
I’m damn happy to meet him halfway. “You can say that after what you’ve done to Isabella? I should punch the fuck out of you.”
My wife hustles to my side and grabs my arm before I throw the first punch. “Nathan, don’t.”
“He’s ignored you. He’s hurt you.”
“She’s an adult. I let her live her life,” Doug argues, then peers at his daughter. “Why did you marry him?”
“Oh, yeah. Thirteen is so grown up.” I scoff. “You tool. She needed a father then, and you skipped out for money. Then you show up a decade later—after not paying for her last year of college, like you promised—and try to play daddy? Fuck you.”
Guilt flashes across Doug’s face before anger takes over. “Shit happened, and I dealt with it the best I could. Diana and I should never have gotten married. We were too young, and we wanted different things. But I never stopped loving my daughter. I just—”
“You had a fucking odd way of showing it.”
“I’ve been looking for you for a year,” Isabella cuts in. She doesn’t sound angry or even accusatory. She sounds hurt. “A whole year! You never once reached out to me, just like you didn’t when I was a teenager.”
I pin her asshole of a father with a glare. “Do you hear that? Do you hear what you did to her? You abandoned her when she was a kid and—”
“Because I had cancer!” He sighs. “A frontal lobe glioblastoma. I…thought I was going to die.”
Isabella gasps, hand pressed over her open mouth, obviously stunned and reeling.
I glare at him suspiciously. Is he lying for sympathy?
Doug doesn’t flinch or look away.
Oh, shit. Maybe he’s telling the truth.
The implications of that… Fuck, it changes everything.
“Once I found out my insurance company wouldn’t pay for a treatment the FDA hadn’t approved yet, I took the money from our business account and split. I’d found a doctor in Brazil who had a good success rate with curing this kind of aggressive cancer. I had to act fast. And I had to pay in cash. I almost didn’t make it.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” my wife demands.
That’s my question, too. We were business partners. I thought we were friends.
Doug sighs. “Diana told me a few weeks before I left that she wanted a divorce, so I couldn’t ask her to take care of me. If she didn’t want me anymore, I didn’t want her pity. And you were too young to handle a potentially terminal illness. I thought a clean break would be easier for you to process than slowly watching me die.”
In his shoes, would I have made the same decision? I don’t know.