I stare at this man—this stranger who claims to be my father—and something violent snaps inside me. The kind of break that sounds like everything I thought I knew about myself splintering into sharp, dangerous pieces.
"How do I know this is real?" My voice comes out like broken glass. "You show up when my marriage implodes and suddenly—suddenly—you're my long-lost daddy?"
I laugh, but it's the kind of laugh that could turn into a scream. "How convenient is that?"
Alexander doesn't flinch. Doesn't even blink. Just watch me with those green eyes that shouldn't exist on anyone's face but mine. The similarity is obscene—like looking into a mirror that aged me twenty-five years and changed my gender.
Alexander doesn't flinch. "What would convince you, my dear?"
Dear. The word hits me harder than an insult. Nobody has ever called me that with such weight, like I'm something precious instead of something useful.
"I don't know." The admission tears out of me. "That's the problem, isn't it? I don't know what's real anymore."
I'm pacing now, my heels clicking against his marble floor like a countdown to detonation. Can't sit still. If I stop moving, I'll shatter completely.
"For all I know, this is another scheme. Another rich bastard with an agenda. Maybe you and Kael are working together, maybe this is some elaborate—"
"Look at me."
He stands, movements deliberate and slow like he's approaching a wounded animal. Steps into the light streaming through his floor-to-ceiling windows.
"Look in my eyes, Maeve."
I do, and my breath catches. It's the same shade of green that stares back at me every morning, identical down to the gold flecks around the pupils that I've always hated. It's my expression, my features, on a stranger's face, and my knees threaten to buckle.
"Coincidence," I whisper, but even I don't believe it. "Contact lenses. Plastic surgery. There are ways—"
"I have DNA results," he cuts in, his voice sharp. "I have twenty years of investigation reports documenting every foster home you were shuffled through. I have facts, Maeve, not theories."
He pauses, and something fierce blazes in those familiar eyes.
"But more than paperwork, more than science—I have a father's conviction. I would recognize my daughter anywhere. In any crowd. Under any name."
The way he says "my daughter", fierce and certain, makes something in my chest crack. But I can't let it. Can't let myself believe right away.
Hope is a luxury I can't afford, not when I just learned how spectacularly wrong I can be about people.
"Why should I trust you?" The question comes out raw and bleeding. "Why should I trust anyone? Everyone lies. Everyone has an angle. For all I know, you're using me the same way Kael…"
I can't finish. Can't say it out loud without breaking completely. The words stick in my throat like glass shards.
"Which is exactly why I waited," Alexander says quietly. "You needed to see what the Dareths really are. What that world is. If I'd come to you three months ago with this story, would you have believed me?"
No. I would've run straight to Kael. Let him convince me it was some competitor trying to manipulate me.
"I still don't trust you," I say, but it sounds weaker now.
"You don't have to. Not yet." He moves toward his desk, gives me space. "But you're not spending another night in that filthy hotel. I've had a room prepared for you since I found you. My daughter doesn't sleep in cheap hotels while she has a real home."
"You had a room prepared?" Skepticism drips from every word. "For how long?"
"For years. Since the day I started searching." He pulls out a folder, sets it on the desk between us. "Down the hall, second door. Everything you might need. That room has been waiting for you as long as I have."
A room, waiting for years. That's not something you fake. Unless it is, and I'm just too fucking broken to see the real angle.
"Tell me everything, now," I say finally, still standing, still ready to bolt. "If you're really my father—tell me how I was taken. Why. All of it."
Relief crosses his face. He opens the folder, pulls out a photo. "You were at preschool. Four years old. Someone picked you up claiming to be your nanny."
He opens the folder. My hand trembles as I take the photo he slides across the desk. A little girl with my face, my eyes, holding a stuffed rabbit. "That's me?"
"Yes, dear. They changed your name, forged documents, placed you with a couple—Thomas and Sarah Winters. Good people who thought they were adopting legally."
My adoptive parents. The ones who died when I was fifteen. "They didn't know?"
"They were victims too. Paid by the man who orchestrated it, given falsified paperwork." His hands clench into fists. "The man who took you died in a car accident. His accomplice disappeared overseas. You were hidden under a false identity—Maeve Winters. I was searching for Olivia Welch."
The names feel like they belong to different people. Different lives.
"How did you find me?" My voice comes out barely above a whisper.
"Your Princeton scholarship application. You used a social security number—the one forged for your false identity. My investigator finally connected it to the original case."
He pauses, and something dangerous flashes across his face.
"By the time we confirmed it was you, you were already engaged to Kael Dareth," he pauses, his voice hardening. "My biggest rival's son."
The way he says 'rival' makes my stomach drop. "What kind of rival?"
"Business. Corporate. His family and mine have been competing for decades." Alexander's expression hardens. "When I discovered my daughter was engaged to the Dareth, I thought it was terrible luck. Cruel coincidence."
My mouth goes dry. "It wasn't a coincidence..."
"No." The single word drops like a stone. "It wasn't."
The timeline snaps into focus. "You found me three months before the wedding." The realization hits me. "You could have stopped it. You could have told me who I was, and you let me marry him. Why?"
Alexander's jaw clenches. The muscle ticks, his hands curling into fists at his sides.
"I planned to. Week before your wedding, I had everything ready—the evidence, the DNA results, the full story."
"Then why didn't you?"
His eyes meet mine, and there's something lethal in them now. Something that makes the temperature drop.
"Then I discovered what Kael was hiding from you."