Page 44 of Forbidden Girl

My exhalation is a gale-force wind. “You know this has nothing to do with you, right, Dad? I didn’t choose the daughter of your enemy to spite or hurt you. Love just happens. It’s uncontrollable. If anything, I tried to fight it. But I lost.”

He straightens himself in his chair. “I understand that. Your grandparents wanted to send your mother to Italy when she told them she was with me.”

“Really? I had no idea.”

“Yeah. They owned a bakery in the Bronx, and had a simple, happy life. I was twenty-two and already had a rap sheet. They saw me for who I was before I saw it myself.”

I knew my parents met in New York on what my dad calls “a business trip,” and that my mother is estranged from her parents. I met them once when I was very young. They were kind to me. I remember my grandfather was the first person to call me topolina and my grandmother cried when she hugged me goodbye. All this time, I didn’t comprehend why my mom had shut them out. It was part of the choice she had to make.

“So, you left together?”

“Yes. Over the years, Maria tried to reconnect. But they stood firm in their opinion of me. They were right all along, but she’s a very proud woman. I’m lucky to be loved by her.”

He’s got to be fucking kidding me. “Don’t you get that you’re doing the same thing they did? You’re pushing me out of our family.”

“This is different. Back then I was a low-level nobody. Rowan is not. I have good reason to worry about you. You saw that today with your own eyes. It’s clear you see a side of her I can’t, all the things about her that have earned her your love. And yes, she does love you, deeply, I witnessed it—but she isn’t safe for you.”

“I’m aware. Although, to be fair, being your daughter means I’m unsafe by default.”

“Which is the main reason I let you go to school on the other side of the country. You’re a very smart young woman; you’ve probably known that from the beginning.”

“I have.”

“The difference is you will always be my daughter. To put it in terms your big math brain is more comfortable with, your mother and I are constants. Rowan is the only part of this equation that is a variable.”

That’s where he’s wrong. Genetically, on a cellular level, he is my father, and that is unalterable. But Rowan discovered a way—albeit pricey and impractical—to make his presence in my life a mutable variable. I’m leaning more and more toward wanting him to be. I played the ace up my sleeve too early. Or perhaps I didn’t have one to begin with. I can try to reason with an unreasonable man, I can bat my lashes at him all I like, but he’s going to dig his heels in.

“There’s nothing I can say to change your mind, is there?” I ask. “You’re really not going to let me be happy, are you?”

“I can’t, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I have to do what I think is right for you, and that’s keeping you away from her.”

“And you’re willing to… do whatever it takes?” I can’t say it aloud. I don’t have to.

His brow furrows. “If it comes to that, yes. You think I’m as bad as Callum Monaghan. You’re right, I can be. But I understand now how much it would hurt you if she died, so please don’t make me make it come to that. If you truly love her, let her go.”

Unacceptable. I gave him a chance to be sensible and he blew it. This calculation needs recomputing with new parameters. Elimination method: Subtract a coefficient to nullify a variable. If that’s how it has to be, that’s how it’ll be.

“I guess there’s nothing left to discuss.”

He shakes his head. “No, there isn’t.”

“What about Callum and the Monaghan crew? You have reprisals in mind, I’m sure.”

“Yes. He’s going to pay for today.”

He should. Although doling out justice isn’t my father’s job any more than it is Teague’s or Callum’s—that’s what police are supposed to be for. But I don’t have a care in the world about any of them anymore. Let them all kill each other.

I hear the shower in the upstairs bathroom go silent. Mom must be finished. It’s the out I need to excuse myself from the conversation. I point to the ceiling, then at my chlorophyl-stained knees. “My turn to go get cleaned up.”

“Good. Try to relax if you can.”

Relax. Lol. “Sure.”

“One more thing,” he says to my back.

“Yes?”

“Give me your phone.”

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