The convoy pulled away from the curb.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Your father’s residence on Lake Shore Drive,” Marcus said. “Not the apartment. Not the penthouse. Not anywhere Mr. Vance knows well.”
I almost laughed. Even now, my father thought three moves ahead.
Dominic believed my family had money, yes. He believed my father owned a construction company that did “decent commercial work.” He knew my father had gifted us the SUV, helped with the apartment down payment, and quietly covered the cost of our wedding.
But he had never bothered to look closer.
That was Dominic’s fatal flaw. He loved status, but he hated details unless they praised him.
He never asked why my father’s “small construction company” had offices in twelve countries.
He never asked why senators called my father Charles instead of Mr. Brooks.
He never asked why investors who had ignored Dominic’s desperate emails for months suddenly called him back the week after our engagement announcement appeared in the society pages.
Dominic thought fortune had finally recognized his genius.
He did not know fortune had been sitting across from him at dinner, wearing my father’s old cardigan, asking if he wanted more coffee.
My phone buzzed in my lap.
Dominic.
I stared at his name until the screen went dark.
It buzzed again.
Then again.
Then a message appeared.
Where are you? You better not be making this into a scene.
Another.
Audrey, answer me. My mother is upset.
I let out a sound that was not quite a laugh.
His mother was upset.
Not his wife, five days postpartum and bleeding through hospital mesh underwear.
Not his newborn son, who had been sent home on a city bus.
His mother.
I turned the phone face down.
Dr. Mercer’s hand closed briefly over mine. “Your blood pressure is elevated. I want you lying down as soon as we arrive.”
“I can’t fall apart yet.”
“You already held yourself together longer than most people could.”
That sentence lodged in my chest.
When we arrived at my father’s building, the doorman opened the doors before the SUVs stopped. No one asked questions. No one stared. In the lobby, another guard blocked the elevator while Marcus helped me inside.
The elevator rose in silence.
At the top floor, the doors opened to a private residence I had not visited in almost a year. My father’s Lake Shore Drive home overlooked the gray-blue stretch of water with walls of glass and quiet wealth. It was not decorated to impress. It was designed like my father himself: restrained, powerful, and impossible to shake.
He was waiting in the foyer.
Charles Brooks was sixty-two, tall, silver-haired, and dressed in a charcoal suit even though it was Saturday. His face was controlled, but when he saw me, something raw passed over it.
Not anger.
Grief.
He crossed the floor in three strides.
Then he stopped.
Not because he was unsure.
Because he was afraid to touch me and hurt me.
That nearly undid me.
“Dad,” I whispered.