Daniel Thompson was a poor excuse for a father. It wasn’t difficult to find out exactly where he was, and it wasn’t with the new family he’d begun after bailing on Keera and her brother. And it was so much closer than she would have imagined.
She wasn’t going to admit how much it was breaking her heart that he was living so close to her and still hadn’t wanted to be a part of her life. The last she’d known was he’d been in Southern California living in a gated mansion. He always lived well, and he had no guilt about it. He hadn’t cared that he’d abandoned his family—he’d just gone on to make new ones.
Now he was living in Victoria, Canada, in a mansion on the beach. He was going by a new name and had a wife Keera’s age. Keera was unbelievably disgusted as they pulled up to the entrance, and embarrassed beyond reason to have Arden next to her to see this man.
“I don’t know what the point of this is,” she said, not wanting to enter this place. There was a guard shack with a man gazing at their rental car.
“We need to get answers, and that file raised more questions than anything else,” Arden told her.
“He won’t let me in,” she said. That would be the ultimate embarrassment.
“Oh, he’ll let us in,” Arden said, his eyes narrowing.
The place looked as if it belonged to a movie star. While Keera and her brother had lost everything because of this man, he’d simply moved on and started a new life several times over. She now realized he’d never suffered. He probably had kept money stashed away, not caring that his former family had nothing left. That’s how heartless he was.
Arden pulled forward, taking the choice away from her. He rolled down his window, and the unsmiling guard stepped up to the car. The man was a giant, and he didn’t look at all as if he’d let them in.
“State your business,” the man said.
“Arden Forbes to see Dale Worth,” Arden said with such a note of authority, the man seemed a bit unsure for a moment.
“You’re not on the list,” the man said.
“Trust me, he’s going to want to see me,” Arden said with confidence.
“And why is that?” the guard asked.
“Because he can talk to me now as Dale Worth, or he can talk to the FBI as Daniel Thompson,” Arden said with that same smile.
The man said nothing, just stepped back from the car and went into his shack, immediately picking up his phone. He never came back out, but the gate suddenly opened in front of them.
“Wow,” Keera said. “He didn’t even ask who I was.”
“I’m sure the guard knows,” Arden said. “Your father might be the scum of the earth for what he did, but I guarantee you he knows where you are at all times, and what you look like.”
“I don’t like the thought of that,” Keera said. “It feels like a violation.”
“It most definitely is a violation,” Arden said. “I’m going to have a real difficult time speaking to this man, but I promise to keep my cool.”
“I hope I can do the same,” Keera said.
He took her hand and squeezed. Then he pulled up to the house and got out, taking her hand again as soon as she stepped from the car. The front door opened before they had a chance to knock.
It felt far more like walking into a museum than a person’s home, and the instant she looked around at his expensive items, it took her back to her youth, making her want to turn around and run.
She’d grown up with this exact wealth, and it had brought nothing but cold. She found herself pulling her hand away from Arden. He had more money than her father. She tried telling herself that Arden was in no way her father, but the money parallel was too close for comfort, and being here now made that so much more obvious.
“You’re here to see Mr. Worth?” a woman asked, walking from another room, looking so damn elegant in her pantsuit and perfect hair.
“Yes,” Arden said. “How long will it be?”
“Someone will be out shortly to escort you to him,” the woman replied.
Now Keera was confused. Was her father such a coward he needed to put on this show? Or maybe Arden was wrong. Maybe the man had no idea it was her there.
They didn’t have to wait long before another woman approached, this one in scrubs, though just as beautiful as the first with her coiffed hair and pearl earrings.
“Mr. Forbes, please come this way,” the woman said.
“Thank you,” Arden replied. He reached for Keera again, but she pulled away. He winced, making her feel guilty, but right now she didn’t have it in her.
They followed the woman down several hallways, and the elegance at the front of the place became sparser and more hospital-like as they went through a pair of double doors. The woman took them through another door, and then they were in a large room where she saw a man in a wheelchair looking out a huge window, his back to them.
“What is going on?” Keera asked. “Is that Daniel?” She stopped and cleared her throat. “I mean Dale,” she finished, her voice barely above a whisper. Her father had so many aliases it was hard to keep track. She wondered if his birth name was Daniel, or if maybe he’d had a family before hers. She didn’t know if she’d get any of those answers.
“Yes, that’s Mr. Worth,” the woman said. “He’s agreed to see you.”
As they slowly approached him, she noticed his eyes were shut. She wouldn’t have recognized the man if she’d passed him on a sidewalk. His once-perfect dark hair was now gone, his skin was wrinkled, and he had tubes in his nose. Keera looked at Arden, who seemed just as surprised as she was. The information they’d received hadn’t said anything like this.
“What’s wrong with him?” Keera asked.
The nurse looked down at Daniel, or Dale, as he was now called, with an affectionate smile.
“He has stage-four stomach cancer. He doesn’t have much time left,” she replied as she brushed a hand down his arm. The woman actually cared about him. Keera wondered why, wondered if her father had been a better man with his staff than he had been with his family, or multiple families.
“Mr. Worth, Arden Forbes,” the woman said as she gently shook his arm. “And your daughter.”
Keera was stunned when the woman said this. Arden had been right. He knew she was there; his staff knew what she looked like. There were so many emotions running through her she didn’t know what to think about any of it. She couldn’t process it. She might not ever be able to.
Her father, a man who had once been so strong, so controlling, and so cold, slowly opened his eyes. For a moment his expression filled with confusion, and then his gaze zeroed in on Keera, and she saw the same light in them she’d seen as a child.
He didn’t even look at Arden. It might as well have been just the two of them alone in the room.
“I knew you’d come,” he said, his voice weak and raspy.
“How?” Keera asked. “How would you even think I could find you?”
There was no greeting, no small talk. Why should there be? She wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
“Because I was the one who made the calls to Mr. Forbes. I was the one trying to protect you. It might have taken me too long to realize what I did to you, but I’m hoping that in these last moments it will give you peace knowing I did what was right,” he told her.
“How do you even know any of this was going on?” she asked.
“Because I always know where you are, and the moment you took that job in Edmonds, I knew the past was going to come crashing around us both,” he told her. “I knew Ethan had led you there.”
“He’s trying to hurt me, though. Why would he lead me there?” she asked.
Her father began coughing, and she automatically reached out, before pulling her arm back and stumbling away, almost feeling tainted by being too close to this man. Her entire life had been nothing but lies, and she didn’t know how to deal with that. She didn’t know how to deal with any of this.
“Rachel, my daughter is going to take me for a walk,” Dale said.
The nurse nodded, then turned and moved away. Even in his frail state, he wielded so much power. Keera remembered that, remembered how afraid of him everyone had been. Now, he still held power in his knowledge, but the difference was that she wasn’t afraid anymore.
“Go out the door to the left. We’ll take the path that leads to a beautiful view of the ocean. It might be my last time to see it,” he said.
“If you’re trying to garner sympathy, it’s not working,” Keera told him. Though she wanted to be cold, even saying those words hurt her. She could never be the type of person to intentionally hurt another—even someone who had once destroyed her.
“I know far too well I can’t earn your trust or sympathy,” Dale said. “I know it’s too late for that. But some sins of the past will haunt us forever, and you should at least know who your enemies are.”
“Any enemies I have are because of the life you chose to lead,” she told him. Her throat hurt with the pain of holding back her tears. But her father hadn’t earned the right to see her sadness. She refused to fall apart in front of the man.
Arden held open the door, and Keera pushed her father through it, easily following the shaded path to the edge of the property. They stopped when they reached a nice alcove. The view truly was spectacular. She decided to focus on that for a moment and let her rapidly beating heart have a break.
When she turned back around, Dale was studying her. She wanted to tell him to look away, that he didn’t have the right to look at her, but that was her pettiness coming to the surface, not who she really was.
“Is Ethan Dower really your stepson?” she asked, trying to mask the hurt. “Why does he want to hurt me? Why did he lead me to Edmonds? What is he looking for . . . ?” She trailed off.
“You were never meant to go to Edmonds,” Dale said, shaking his head. “But Ethan is a bad person, and the best way to get back at me is to hurt the only child I ever cared about,” her father said.
“You never cared about me. You couldn’t have walked away as easily as you did if you had,” she said. “And I had nothing to do with you, with what you did when I was a child, what you’ve obviously been doing since you left us behind,” she added, a small shake entering her voice.
“It doesn’t matter if you have knowledge of it or not. There are people out there who think they can get to me through you. It’s okay, though, because I’m taking care of that,” he told her.
“I need answers. I don’t want amends from you or excuses. I don’t want your help. I just want this to stop. When you walked away from me and my brother, you cut ties with us, and that should have been the end of our connection to you,” she told him.
“There’s never an end when it comes to blood,” he said as he shook his head.
“Then tell me,” she demanded, reaching for him, but taking her hand back at the last minute. She couldn’t touch this man, wasn’t sure what it would do to her.
“The doctor has told me my time will come any day now. I might have been the monster who plays in your nightmares, but I am your father,” he said before coughing again. He then looked her in the eyes, his vision perfectly clear. “I wanted your face to be the last I saw.”
“It won’t be. I’m not staying long,” she told him. “You won’t give me what I want, and I have no desire to reminisce about the past. It wasn’t a happy life for me. Tell me something or I’m walking away right now.” He smiled at her, and she felt herself growing more tense.
“Ethan was the son of the woman I married after your mother,” Dale finally said. Keera watched him, waiting.
“Why does he want to hurt me?” she asked.
“Because he figured out your brother got away with a significant amount of money,” Dale said with a laugh. “My son truly was a chip off the old block.”
“You say this like you’re proud,” she said with disgust. “My brother being a thief isn’t something to be proud of.”
“But you’re involved, too,” Dale said, gazing at her with far too much knowledge.
“I don’t know how many times I need to say this,” she snapped. “But I’m not involved and want nothing to do with your disgusting world.”
“They won’t stop coming after you,” he told her.
“They will when I stop them,” Arden said, interrupting the conversation.
“I hope you can protect her,” Dale said, looking briefly at Arden before turning back to her.
“I can protect myself. I learned how to do it when you abandoned me,” she assured him.
“Then I did leave you with something,” Dale told her.
“Don’t think for one minute you have anything to do with who I am,” she told him.
“Don’t you want to give an old man a little peace in his dying moments?” Dale asked.
“You won’t get peace, not with the way you’ve lived your life. You’ll die alone in this big mansion because love and loyalty mean nothing to you. I don’t know why you let us in, because you obviously won’t give me anything useful,” she said, frustration making her voice more bitter than she’d like.
“Watch out for Ethan,” Dale said quietly.
“Why?” she yelled. “What do I have to watch out for?”
He gazed at her a few moments without speaking, and then fiddled with the blankets in his lap. The water bottle that was sitting there fell off and began rolling away.
“Would you mind getting that?” he asked.
Keera sighed, then moved over to grab it. The thunderous explosion behind her made her heart jump into her throat as she whirled around. Arden was staring at Dale with horror before his head whipped around to her.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, quickly coming to her and pulling her into his arms, blocking her view of her father.
“What . . . what happened?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“He was fast. I don’t know how he was that fast. He pulled the gun from beneath the blanket and shot himself before I could take a single step in his direction. I’m so sorry, Keera, I’m so sorry.”
This was the first time she had seen her father in ten years, and he’d just killed himself in front of her. As if she didn’t have trauma from before, now it was a thousand times worse.
“Why? Why would he do that?” she asked.
“He lived and died on his terms, not giving a damn about the damage he was causing you,” Arden said. “We need to leave.” She tried to look at her father again, and Arden cupped her cheek. “Don’t look at him. Don’t give him that power over you.”
The nurse came running out, her eyes round with horror.
“What did you do?” she cried.
“He shot himself. Call the police,” Arden told her.
She looked at him in disbelief. “Security is on their way. Don’t go anywhere,” she said before running back into the house.
“It’s okay, Keera, let’s move toward the house,” he said, wrapping his arm around her and taking her back up the walk.
Security met them, and Arden told them what happened. Keera was in shock. It didn’t take long for the camera tapes to be reviewed, clearing them of any wrongdoing. The cops came, and Arden explained it again to them. Keera couldn’t speak.
It took a couple of hours before they were able to get away. By the time Arden loaded her into the car, she was finished. Though Edmonds hadn’t been her home for very long, it was now her haven, even with all that had happened in the past months. She wanted to go home.
“You’ll be okay, Keera. I’ll make sure of it,” Arden promised.
“No. I don’t think I will,” she said. Her voice was void of all emotion. She didn’t want to depend on anyone right now, but she couldn’t deny even to herself that she was grateful to have Arden beside her. Right now, she didn’t want to be alone.
She closed her eyes as soon as they were on the road, and she told herself for now that she’d simply take one breath in and one breath out. She wouldn’t show how much she was falling apart. Failure was for the weak. She would never be weak again.