Page 43 of The Vow Thief
“House arrest,” I said.“With better snacks.”
He ignored that.“You will be respectful to the staff. You will keep your phone off unless I say otherwise. Any visitors will be cleared by me. Your attorney will liaise through my office.”
I tilted my head, curious.“And Mother?”
He poured himself another measure.“Your mother left six months ago.”
Of course she did. She always preferred an exit to a fight.“Where is she?”
“Europe. She's discovered a taste for galleries and men who pretend to be artists. She's... finding herself.”
I nodded as if he’d told me the weather.“Maybe she’ll find a better man.”
He didn't take the bait. Instead, he slid a folder across the desk.“I’ve already handled the Holloway situation. His contract was terminated quietly, his reputation intact, for now at least, and mine even more so. No one blames you, Lily. You were misled. That’s what men like him do.”
I stared at him for a long moment.“Is that so? Then we will see how well reputations hold up when I file a sexual harassment suit against him. I might even add Matt Taylor to that list as well.”
The glass in his hand stopped just short of his lips.“You will do no such thing,”
“Oh, I most certainly will,” I said, and the room cooled.“I will sue Holloway for every inch of his public face. I will add Matt Taylor to the complaint. I will make a record that your spin doctors can't rewrite.”
His eyes narrowed.“You will not embarrass me. You will not impugn my name when I have moved heaven and earth to fix this for you."
The calm peeled back from his voice.“And what exactly have you misconstrued for sexual harassment? That man didn’t harass you, Lily. You were as much there as he was. And Matt Taylor? Do you know how many pictures of him we threw away and burned? The ones you had taped to your apartment walls like wallpaper in a shrine? A shrine, Lily, to a man you broke. To a vow you stole out from underneath his wife."
He leaned forward, slow and surgical. "You judge me for how I make a living, but what about you? The vow thief who thinks she’s above reproach? The courts love women like you. Morally gray, unrepentant, self-destructive. Yet here I am cleaning it up.”
“Wow, Dad,” I said, voice light but shaking underneath.“Victim blaming and gaslighting in the same breath. Did they teach you that in the school for the criminally gifted, or did you hone that skillset on Mom after parading a new girl through the house every other week? Where do you think I got my gray moral compass from, huh?"
"Careful, Lily." My dad growled.
I stepped forward, my temper becoming a live wire. "While your morals were crawling in the back seat with your integrity, I was watching. Learning. From you. So don’t pretend I’m some simple little lever you can pull. This goes my way, or you're all fucked.”
He didn't so much as blink. Instead, he slid a folded newspaper across the desk with the casual cruelty of a man dropping a mic. The headline glared up at me. The photo was of me mid-arrest at Tommy and Emily’s school, face caught, hands in the chaos. The caption was clinical, the photo merciless.
“Look at that,” he said softly, like he was reading me a fucking bedtime story.“Do you think a jury will see nuance when this is the image in front of them? Your little theatrics, the attempted kidnapping, the trespassing, the stalking. I could go on."
He leaned across his desk, knowing I was hanging on his every word.
"The system loves a woman who screams sexual harassment yet thinks she is an angel. You will be publicly picked apart, and for good reason. This is a circus I will not take part in, Lily.”
I mimicked his action and leaned forward until my face was inches from his. I could see the red veins in his eyes.“Do you hear what you sound like? You speak of a system that was built entirely by men. Men like you. You think protecting a man in power is more important than protecting your own daughter."
Silence. A slow, dangerous silence that tasted like metal.
Sean stood.
He had been silently observing the entire time, a shadow dressed in composure. Now, he stepped forward, shoulders loose, eyes locked on my father.
“I’ll handle Jim Holloway,” he said.
My father’s expression barely shifted, but I caught it, the briefest hint of unease.
“You won’t harm him,” he said.
Sean’s attention never left him. There was something still in his focus, something that made it hard to tell whether he was calculating or just patient.
“I’m not going to physically harm him,”
