Empire of Desire by Rina Kent

She’s breathing heavily, chest rising and falling in a frantic rhythm, and a tear slides down her cheek.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

She’s too far gone for the motherfucker—whose death I will make the most painful possible.

“Gwen, Angel, listen to me. Those feelings could just be a manifestation of sentiments of your dependency because you only had him around when I was gone.”

“Can everyone stop using that word? It wasn’t dependency or neediness or a ruse of the moment. I’ve liked him since I was fifteen and those hormonal little girl feelings transformed into more. I liked him since I knew what liking someone means and it only grew deeper with time. I know what I feel more than anyone else, more than you and him, because unlike both of you, I’m not scared of my feelings. No matter how strong they are, no matter how overwhelming they get, I own them and wear them as a badge for the world to see. So don’t tell me I’m mistaking anything.”

My fists clench and I have this need to punch someone, Nate preferably. But I release them because she’s watching my hands with wild eyes.

The motherfucker was right. She is scared of me.

“I would never hurt you, Angel.” I try to soften my voice.

“You already did by hurting him, Dad.”

“So you’re taking his side now? First, he betrays me, then he touches you and now he turns you against me? What will it be next?”

“No, Daddy.” She wraps her clammy, trembling hands around mine. “I’m on both your sides. It kills me that you’re fighting. I can’t take it.”

“You can’t be on both our sides.”

“Dad…”

“You won’t be with him, Gwen. It’s not up for discussion.”

“But why? Didn’t you say you’d only let me be with someone I love with all my heart? That someone is Nate, Dad.”

“You think he is, but you’re too young to know for sure. You still haven’t met the right person.”

“It’s him. I know it. I’ve known it since I was eighteen, and stop using my age as a deciding factor. It’s just a number. I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”

“I’ll never approve of you with Nate, Gwen. It’s either him or me.”

A sob catches in her throat and she shakes her head frantically. “Daddy…don’t do that, please. Please don’t make me choose.”

“Him or me. You can’t have both.”

“I thought you would never hurt me, Dad.”

“I’m not. I’m protecting you. I don’t want to lose you, Angel.”

“No, you’re breaking me right now. Because I’ll never be happy with either choice. If I choose him, I’ll be unhappy and eventually hate him for coming between us. And if I choose you, I’ll hate you for taking away the one person who not only accepts me for who I am but also understands me and likes me for it. So congrats, Dad. You’ll lose me either way.”

She fumbles with the door handle and storms out of the room, but her hiccups and sniffles stay with me long after she’s gone.

I run a hand over my face and expel a large breath. Seeing her cry is like being sliced open from the inside out.

Even when she was a baby and had to cry now and again, I did my best to stop the flow of her tears. It fucks me up even more now that she’s an adult.

When I woke up, she told me that she didn’t let anyone touch what was mine, but she let Nate touch the most important thing.

Her.

So even though she’s in pain, I won’t console her like I usually do. I won’t bring her tea and joke around until she smiles again. This is out of necessity. To protect her.

Which reminds me that I need to protect her from her fucking mother, too.

The snake who couldn’t just fucking disappear like she did the night she threw her own daughter away.





34





Gwyneth





Dad came up with a plan.

Or more like expulsion.

He told Nate to go to the Seattle branch of W&S; it’s been around for a couple of years and has been growing noticeably. That way, he can stay away from me.

It’s not that Dad cares about the Seattle branch, it’s that he wants to separate us with everything he has.

Over the past week, he’s been setting things in motion for the separation of property and threatened Nate to shred the power of attorney agreement. Nate did it because he’s been mostly placating Dad. Besides, he doesn’t need power of attorney now that all properties legally belong to my father.

Then Dad insisted that he divorce me, and that’s when Nate said no. He also said no to leaving because, “Fuck you, King.”

Those were his exact words the other day.

I don’t see him much anymore, because Dad has kicked up the overprotectiveness a notch. Obviously, I intern with him now and he takes me everywhere, including to his ruthless showdowns with Susan that he usually doesn’t want me to witness. Then we go home together and he keeps watching me with that cold stare of his.

Something changed in Dad after the coma.

At first, I thought it was because he found out about me and Nate and lost it, but there’s something else.

There’s a troubled look in his gaze and agitation in his soul that seems to be consuming him. He’s harsher now, more ruthless than I’ve ever witnessed before. Though he was probably like this to the outside world before, he’d never directed it at me. It’s not that he’s stern with me—he’s still my dad, in a way, but he’s also become merciless.