Chapter 68

Renee

I don’t know what I was hoping for. Maybe that I’d wake up and the results wouldn’t matter. That I’d feel something other than the sinking, hollow ache that had followed me the entire way out of the prison after Arielle had taken a DNA sample from him. She drove me to classes and promised that it would be done by lunchtime with a hug, a little pastry box and a pinch of my cheek.

You may be in pain now, but he will suffer for a lifetime.

The thought brought me no comfort as I went about my day, from class to class, trying not to think about it and ending up over thinking about it. I wanted the confirmation, yes. But I also just… I just wanted…

What?

An excuse? I wanted there to be a reason for all these years of abuse. Reason for everything that had happened and was still happening to me. I just wanted something to point to because the alternative really was just too much to bear, but honestly, what would it matter?

What he'd done to me, what he was still trying to do to me emotionally, socially, and everything in between, wouldn't stop, the damage done wouldn't suddenly go away. He'd probably just… plan to do more damage than he already had. Philip was not a nice man. He wasn't a kind man. He wasn't the kind of man who could admit he was wrong. I knew that. I'd seen that my whole life.

He'd double down in a heartbeat, and my stomach churned to think what that would even look like. I got to my lunch hour, shuffled to the courtyard to grab coffee and eat the lunch Arielle had packed for me. I was sipping my tea when the DNA confirmation hit my inbox.

I didn't want to open it. I didn't want the confirmation either way for some reason, but I did.

I couldn't have prepared myself for the gaping hole that opened in my chest when I saw the results.

99.9% related

I was Philip’s daughter. No mystery. No romantic fantasy about being the secret child of someone kinder, better. No clean escape from the man whose name felt like a curse every time someone said it near me. Nothing to point at as the reason for either of us. I stared at the results, reading them over and over like the words might change if I just looked long enough. But they never did. The percentages didn’t lie. The science didn’t bend.

I shut my email and dropped my phone to the table harder than I meant to. The echo of the click startled me, made me feel even more stupid for hoping. Arielle had tried to warn me that the results, the confirmation, wouldn't change anything. Wouldn't change me, him, or my circumstances. But it did. It explained everything and confirmed every terrible thing I had always thought of him.

The coldness. The cruelty. The way I’d always been treated like a pawn in his game. That was just who he was as an alpha, as a person, as a leader, as a father.

It was ludicrous to even imagine that he might have treated me more like Dominic treated Vivian if he'd known. My eyes burned. My chest was so tight I couldn't breathe. The urge to flip a table and storm back to the prison to punch him in the face was overwhelming.

I didn’t want to sit with it.

I didn’t want to feel anything.

Then, Arielle called me, just as I was about to pack up my lunch and go find something else.

"You are going to eat lunch because it's your favorite," she said sternly.

My jaw trembled. I looked down at the container and opened it. The smell made my stomach growl, but I… I just…

"I know it hurts now," she said. "And I want you to talk about it, but you cannot let him be the reason you don't take care of yourself… Do you think you'd be ready to see someone about everything soon? Or do you want to play hookie today?"

I shook my head, wiping my face. "No. I'm fine. I'll…. I'll eat lunch and finish classes and go to work and be fine."

My hands shook, my voice cracked.

"I'm sorry, Renee."

"It wouldn't have been any easier if he wasn't."

"No. It wouldn't."

I swallowed back a sob. "I just… It wasn't my fault."

"No, it wasn't."

I sniffled, tears streaming down my face. "He doesn't even care."

"Yes, he does."

"Not for the right reasons," I choked out.

"Should I have him tortured or killed?"

I let out a sputtering laugh. "I… Ari', I don't…"

"I'll ask again. Would you like some company? No brooding princes around?"

I let out a watery chuckle and looked up, catching sight of Neil as if he knew something was up. His eyes landed on me and all of a sudden he was heading toward me.

"Ah, looks like there is indeed."

I blinked. "How do you…"

My gaze drifted and I saw her, impeccably dressed with a small entourage, phone to her ear. She still had her shades on, lollipop in her mouth.

"You didn't think I'd let you open that and not be on hand, did you?" She paused. "You're family, Renee."

I sniffled and looked up as Neil reached me.

"Renee, are you…"

"Eat lunch with us?" I asked partially into the phone, partially to Neil.

He turned and looked up as Arielle was coming down the corridor. One of the members of her entourage was rolling a cooler behind her. People parted and she hung up just as she reached us.

She pulled me into her arms and squeezed me close.

"Torture is still on the table."

I sniffled. "Let's just stick with chocolate for now."

"Done!" She said brightly, someone pulled up a chair for her and Neil joined us.

It was a nice lunch, calming, soothing, distracting as Arielle told us all about how she'd spent her rather violent morning, cleaning up an issue for the family.

The hour flew by. She and Neil walked me to class, and I wanted to say that I felt better.

But I didn't.

So I got through my classes and went to work. I showed up early, avoiding the ride that Neil would have offered as had become routine. I dove into the reports, took on a backlog of tasks that no one wanted, said yes to every dry modeling request, every market analysis, every redundant task the supervisors lobbed my way. Even the ones I knew came from Vivian’s little campaign to burn me out.

I didn't care. I just needed not to think about my own life.

I spent the next week that way. Hustling through classes, losing myself in mountains of work, but I had lunch with Arielle and Neil every day. Neil looked at me sideways, worried, when I said I was staying late again.

Luckily, tonight, he and his team were staying late too and the two supervisors of the team were suddenly in the same room. Neil's team supervisor was a very sharply dressed woman with a no-nonsense attitude. She was clearly more qualified than my supervisor and hated the fact that our teams would have to work together. TO facilitate that, everyone on the project, namely the interns and the lower level associates, would all be stuck in a room together.

It would be the first time in a while that Neil and I had been in the same room during work ours. Neil waved me over to sit with him, pulling out a chair for me, his sleeves rolled up and his laptop open, something inside me gave a nervous jolt.

He smiled that easy, sincere kind of smile that always made me feel like the world wasn’t as cruel as it actually was. I slid into the offered chair with my laptop and tried not to look conspicuous.

"Don't you love group projects?"

I chuckled. "Yeah. They're right up there with presentations."

I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. Not with everything bubbling under my skin, the fatigue, the frustration, the quiet grief I hadn’t had time to name. I was barely keeping my edges from fraying, and Neil had this way of seeing right through me when I least wanted him to.

We worked in silence for a bit. Just long enough for me to start hoping he wouldn’t say anything. When everyone fell into quiet and a few people went out for coffee, he leaned close to me.

“Renee,” he said softly, voice barely above the hum of the AC vent. “What’s going on?”

I didn’t answer.

“You’ve been off. Distant. And I don’t mean just busy. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

I forced a laugh. “Maybe because I haven’t.”

“Don’t do that,” he said, gently but firmly. “Don’t pretend with me.”