Page 52 of Daddy's Dirty Little Secret

“I’ll talk to him,” my father added. “He’ll listen.”

“No, he won’t,” I said before I could stop myself. “Not if you come at him like this. Not if you drag me into it again.”

Dad looked at me, broken in ways I didn’t know how to describe. “I didn’t know they’d take you. I didn’t know it would go this far.”

“But it did,” I said, and my voice didn’t shake. “And now we’re here, and twenty thousand isn’t going to solve anything.”

Hayes stepped back toward the door but paused before opening it. “You have forty-eight hours,” he said. “After that, the terms change.” When I thought he would walk out, he stepped into the hallway, hand on the knob, and said, “Better run to Mr. Blackwell…let him know his unborn child needs his help.”

I blanched, guilt swelling up to choke me, and watched the door shut. The lock slid into place behind him a second later. The silence that followed was too heavy to name.

I sat down on the edge of the metal chair and pressed both palms against my thighs, trying to ground myself in something, anything. My father didn’t speak for a long time. When he did, it was barely above a whisper.

“I’m going to fix this.”

I looked up at him, at the man who used to keep change in his coat pocket for vending machines after school, who once drove halfway across town to find me the exact notebook I wanted. I believed he meant it. But meaning something didn’t promise it would happen. Half a million dollars was more than he’d ever seen in his lifetime outside of bank numbers. To come up with that much cash in forty-eight hours was an unreasonable expectation on Hayes’s part.

“How?” I asked.

“I told you,” he said. “I have a contact.”

“You mean Xander,” I answered, my voice flat. “You dragged him into this.”

He didn’t deny it. He didn’t have to.

His jaw tightened, and then he looked straight at me, eyes bloodshot and raw. “You’re pregnant, and you didn’t tell me?”

The words hit hard, louder than they needed to be. I stayed in the chair, frozen for a second before I could speak. “That’s not the point.”

“It is to me,” he said, stepping closer, voice hoarse. “They told me. Hayes told me. Said they saw the doctor’s card, your vitamins. Do you know what it felt like hearing it from him?”

My chest tightened as I sat up straighter. “I was going to tell you when it mattered. When things were calm. You don’t get to be mad about timing now.”

“Timing?” he said, laughing once in a bitter sound. “You think that’s what this is about? I failed you. I know that. But you’re my daughter. And now Hayes knows you’re carrying Xander’s kid. You think I’m not going to lose my mind over that?”

My stomach turned. I hadn’t wanted it said out loud, hadn’t wanted that particular truth in this room, with these walls and this threat around us. “You were never supposed to involve him,” I said. “You don’t get to wave my relationship around like it’s a bargaining chip.”

“I’m not using it,” he snapped. “I’m trying to protect it. Him. You.”

“You offered them twenty thousand dollars, Dad. That’s not protection. That’s proof we have nothing left to give.”

His shoulders sagged, like he’d spent the last of whatever strength he had getting that envelope into his hands. “It’s all I have. It’s everything. I got the car insurance money, cashed what was left of my savings, took money from a warehouse job I’ll probably get arrested over.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. The weight of what he’d done, and that it still wasn’t enough to fix it, sat like stone in the room.

The door opened behind him, and a guard stepped in without ceremony. “Time’s up.”

Dad glanced back, then turned to me one last time. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll get what he wants. Just hold on.”

He left before I could respond, and the door closed again, sealing me back into a room that felt like a prison.

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