Chapter 6

I was going to say no. Then I looked down and saw Lily peering up at me, watching my face.

For all the damage Julian had done, she was still his daughter.

I stepped back.

The assistant left him on the sofa and disappeared. Julian lay there for a moment, then slowly sat up. He dropped the performance. His eyes were red but he was steady.

"You wouldn't have let me in otherwise."

"You're right," I said.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he let out a slow breath and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

"I owe you more than an apology. But I'll start there."

He told me everything.

Victoria, he'd now confirmed, had used Ashford Technologies' name to contact several of my father's business partners, applying quiet commercial pressure that redirected contracts away from his firm. Six months of that, and the company had nothing left to stand on.

And after the divorce, she'd done the same to me. Every job I'd managed to line up — inexplicable terminations, references pulled, interview invitations that stopped coming. She had enough reach through Julian's network to make it seamless.

I sat very still.

So that was it.

I'd graduated from a good university and spent the years after our first divorce unable to get hired, unable to understand why. Running a market stall at night because it was the one thing no one could take from me.

It hadn't been bad luck.

It had been her.

"She was doing it without your knowledge?" I said.

"Without my knowledge." His voice was barely audible. "I wasn't watching for it. I thought — I told myself you were managing, that you'd ask if you needed something — and I let myself not look."

He pressed his fingers to his eyes.

"I'm sorry."

I thought about my father. The pressure his company had been under in those last months. The look on his face when he filed for insolvency. The hospital.

I didn't say any of that.

"Are you going to be able to forgive me?" Julian asked, without looking up.

"I don't hate you," I said. "So there's nothing to forgive."

He looked up.

"But we're not going to be married any more."

He nodded, slowly. He looked at the door to Lily's room. He didn't go in.

When he left, I found the divorce agreement on the coffee table, signed. He'd made amendments in his own handwriting — transferring substantial additional assets to me, enough that I was, on paper, worth considerably more than he was.