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“I’ve never lied to you before, sweetheart.”
I was repulsed. Utterly repulsed. I believed my father had forced Axel to hurt me, but I always hoped that there was more to the story, that perhaps something got lost in translation. But hearing my father openly admit this…made me realize it was completely true. Every word that Axel said. “Really?” I asked. “Never?”
His steely eyes hardened.
“I’m not sure I can believe that.”
“Axel has complicated my business, has compromised my relationship with the Colombians, a relationship I’ve cultivated for the last twenty years?—”
“We sat together in that restaurant, and I asked you if you had anything to do with my breakup with Axel. You looked me in the fucking eye and said no. Was that the truth?”
My father froze in place, his stare guarded by a twelve-foot wall.
“You’re trying to get rid of him now. What if you were trying to get rid of him then? You didn’t care about making me a widow. Why would you care about making me heartbroken?” My eyes took in the immovable features of his face, piercing the stone of his eyes. My breaths were quick, and I felt the dump of adrenaline in my blood. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to run or slam my fit into his face. “Did you lie to me?”
He retained his silence, only breathing, his eyes vicious.
I knew there would be no answer, so I turned my back on him and walked off.
He let me go.
When I returned home, Axel was on the couch in front of the TV screen. He didn’t seem to be watching anything, just staring at the screen as he waited for me to return from the dinner. His head snapped my way the second I walked into the room, and then he was on his feet. He didn’t ask how I was. He figured it out on his own, eyes switching back and forth between mine as he gauged my mood.
“He admitted it.” I tossed my purse on the table and kicked off my heels until I was on my bare feet. “Even tried to justify it. Said he thought it didn’t matter because we were getting a divorce.” I dropped into one of the armchairs at the dining table and slouched, my elbow on the table with my fingers underneath my chin.
Axel pulled one of the chairs close to me and sat down.
“I—I don’t even know him.”
His hand moved to mine on the table.
“I’ve never known him…”
He didn’t gloat. Didn’t say I told you so. There was no victory in his eyes.
“Then I asked him if he’d pulled this kind of stunt in the past…and he didn’t own up to it. I asked him if he’d lied to me when I looked him dead in the eye and asked if he’d said something to you to make you go away.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“I doubt he’ll ever admit that. Plotting to kill me is more forgivable than that.”
I stared at his hand as it rested on mine, his wedding ring sitting there. “I don’t know him. I’ve never known him.” He’d lied to my face, and then a moment later, Axel had walked in with Cassandra, an invisible gun pointed at his head. My father had planned all of that, planned for me to be utterly heartbroken just because he didn’t like Axel. “I feel so stupid…” Tears welled in my eyes and streaked down my cheeks. “Everything you said about him…you were right. I could have lost you for good and continued to eat his bullshit for the rest of my life.”
“But you didn’t,” he whispered. “Nothing will come between us again.”
“I was fucking livestock for him this entire time. I was running around in a little pen, eating slop from the damn trough. He’s never given a damn about me. He hates you enough to break us up, but he didn’t hate me enough to guilt me into marrying you once that suited him. I hate him.”
Axel’s fingers dug into mine as he held my hand on the table. Silence trickled by as the echo of my words filled the air. “I don’t like your father. Never have and never will. But I do believe he cares about you.”
My eyes lifted to his.
“In fact, I know he does. He just has a strange way of showing it.”
“You’re seriously defending him right now?”
“I’m not defending him. I just want you to know that he does care for you. He’s lied to you and manipulated you, and he’s done unforgivable things, but he does love you. I know this in my heart.”
