“And you said nothing?”
“You were in love with him.”
I laughed softly.
“So?”
“So I knew you.”
He turned.
“If I had told you Preston was using you, you would have spent six months proving me wrong.”
That hurt because it was true.
“And if I had forbidden the wedding,” he continued, “you might have married him at city hall out of spite.”
“I am not that childish.”
His eyebrows rose.
I almost smiled.
Almost.
Then he crossed the room.
“I should have done more.”
“No.”
The word came automatically.
He studied me.
“I was chairwoman.”
I swallowed.
“I had access to every contract.”
My father remained silent.
“I saw how dependent Caldwell had become on us.”
“Yes.”
“I saw Preston charging personal expenses through accounts I controlled.”
“Yes.”
“I watched him take credit in rooms where I had opened the doors.”
My voice cracked.
“I knew.”
“You suspected.”
“I knew enough.”
I looked at my hands.
“I just kept changing the definition of what would finally make me leave.”
My father sat across from me.
“That is what people do when they love someone who is hurting them.”
“I feel stupid.”
“You are not stupid.”
“I built a contingency plan for my own wedding night.”
“And?”
“And I still married him.”
He leaned forward.
“You wanted him to prove the plan unnecessary.”
That was the sentence that finally broke something in me.
Not my heart.
The dam around it.
I covered my face.
For the first time since Preston had left the suite, I cried.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
I bent forward in my mother’s chair and cried until my chest hurt.
My father came around the desk and put one hand on the back of my head.
He said nothing.
That mercy nearly destroyed me.
When the tears stopped, I felt emptied out.
But not weakened.
There is a strange strength in surviving the emotion you spent years avoiding.
At noon, Richard Caldwell requested a meeting.
I agreed.
He arrived at Whitmore headquarters alone.
