“What do you mean you’re not coming home?” Walking towards the table, Lianna dropped her laptop bag and purse onto it, squeezing the phone tighter as his sigh brushed across the line.

“Lianna, I already explained this. I have a meeting that I cannot miss.”

“That’s the same thing you said the last time we planned a trip and you canceled it.” Her heels echoed across the tile as she started pacing, a harried clicking that only seemed to file her nerves down even further.

“Business comes before fun, princess.” The words were barely out of his mouth before she heard someone else talking to him, muffled and indiscernible. His answer came through loud and clear, “Yes, arrange it. No, I don’t want to wait until the morning.”

“Dad,” she tried to interrupt him, but he didn’t hear her. He’d pulled the phone away from his ear, talking to someone he valued enough to take with him, while she suffered another minute of his low muttering across the line.

This is such bullshit.

Raising her voice, she spoke again, “Dad, I’m hanging up.”

“I’m here.” Another of his quiet sighs. “Look, I will make this up to you. Why don’t you go shopping with one of your friends this weekend? Or keep the reservations and take some of them skiing like we planned.”

“Why didn’t you bring me with you?” Her question came out steady, even though his words stung. He was trying to placate her with petty distractions like he always did, when all she wanted was a little time with him, a taste of how things used to be — but instead she was alone, chewing her thumbnail and destroying her manicure.

Her father stayed silent, not even a sigh this time.

More useless pacing, heel to toe. Click. Click. Click. Around and around the island in the kitchen as she waited him out. A negotiation tactic that he had taught her. Never fill silence when you want an answer.

“I’ll try to be back by Sunday. We can go to dinner, just the two of us.”

Lianna stopped in place, laughing bitterly as she stared up at the lights in the ceiling until her eyes watered from their brightness. Of course he wouldn’t answer her. “I don’t know why you wanted me to work for you if you’re not going to trust me with anything that’s actually important.”

“Don’t be petulant, Lianna. You’ve been involved in over half of our acquisitions in the past two years, worked on multi-million dollar mergers, and that’s more than most people will do in a lifetime. You should be grateful—”

“Grateful?” Her fingers ached with how hard she gripped the phone, and she swallowed down the anger that swelled whenever he used his favorite phrase.

“I do not have time for this, Lianna, we need to take off.”

“Fine. Then enjoy your flight.” Ripping the phone away from her ear, she pressed her thumb to the end button and then tossed it onto the granite countertop. It skidded, spun, bumped into the blender and finally stopped.

It should have felt satisfying to hang up on him. Throwing the phone should have eased some of the rage inside her, but it hadn’t done anything worthwhile. If anything, the bitter anger was fading into simple bitterness, tinged with sadness — which was worse.

Tears stung her eyes and this time she couldn’t even blame the bright lights because she was staring at the floor, at her shiny, black Louboutins that were a stark contrast to the pale tile. She was still dressed for the office, in a form fitting skirt suit that would have worked perfectly for the dinner at Silver Den they were supposed to be having in an hour and a half.

She’d picked it out just in case they’d both worked late, the ivory Dior top was meant for transitioning from office to evening, but it didn’t matter anymore.

“You are not going to act like some child upset because her daddy left. You are not going to fucking cry,” she hissed the words to the air above, a promise already broken as she felt the damp on her cheeks.

You should be grateful.

“Damn you!” Lianna shouted, scrubbing at the tears on her cheeks as she turned to look across the quiet penthouse apartment.

To say it was beautiful was an understatement. Two floors of custom designed perfection, and room by room, item by item, she’d slowly transformed it until it no longer resembled her childhood home. Practically every piece of furniture, every piece of art, had been chosen by her. It was still her father’s home though. He owned it, hell, he owned the entire fucking building, and she shouldn’t be staying here anyway. Shouldn’t have agreed to redesign the apartment. Shouldn’t have agreed to get the MBA, shouldn’t have agreed to work for him…

Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

Muttering to herself, she walked to the stairs, taunted by her heels echoing in the silence. So, she tore them off before she went upstairs. It only took a few minutes to trade the nice clothes for pajamas, and by the time she’d washed her face and put her hair up the anger had left her completely.

Now, she just felt a heavy weight settling over her. Standing at the top of the stairs, looking out over the dim apartment, only made it worse. She was too aware of all the empty space. It was too much room for one person. Too much for even two people, and for the millionth time she questioned why she kept staying here during the week when she had her own place. Her apartment was smaller, warmer, and it wasn’t thirty-two stories up and atop her father’s company.

But the commute was a hell of a lot easier from here.

The not so subtle rumble of her stomach beckoned her back to the kitchen, and she rifled around in the freezer until she found one of the pre-packaged meals from the delivery service her father preferred. As the oven started to heat up she sat down at the table and plucked her laptop from her bag.

By the time the oven beeped to tell her it was pre-heated she was already deep in email, pulling documents from the shared drive to review them before she answered one of their department heads. It was only the insistent tug of her stomach that finally made her stand up and pop the dish in the oven so it would heat up.

Staring at the papers scattered over the rustic wooden table, she sighed in a way that reminded her of her father’s trademark exasperation. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried — at the end of the day she still wanted to make him proud.

All of the work spread out on the table made her remember times when she’d sat in the chair in his office and played with important papers, pretended to type on his computer, legs swinging because she was too small to touch the floor. Back then she’d just wanted to be like him, that was true… but now she wanted him to respect her, to value the work she did for the company, the time she put in. Wanted to prove to every asshole in the company that gave her the side-eye when she held meetings or walked the halls that despite being the daughter of the CEO she was still earning her position.

Which was exactly why she was working at eight o’clock on a Thursday night when she was technically supposed to be on vacation already.

Not like the vacation was on anymore.

She should really call Patricia and have her cancel everything. That would be the nice thing to do since they wouldn’t be arriving, and just the idea of trying to get people together to go felt exhausting. Her father had told her to hang out with friends, but if he ever paid attention he would notice she never had time for that anymore. It had been weeks since she’d even met up for a happy hour or a spa day. Two years post-grad school and she was as much of a workaholic as her father.

Success is never handed to you, princess, you have to reach out and take it.

Another snippet of her father’s wisdom playing on a loop in her head, outlining the cutthroat business mind that had made him such a success. But when had he become her inner monologue? When had his ideas, his goals, overwhelmed her own?

As she sent off the email she’d been working on, she pulled up her personal email and flipped through the various correspondence she’d had with art museums and auction houses around the world. A handful had responded to her inquiries of open positions with some interest, and her fingers itched to answer one. To pursue her own dreams instead of her father’s.

Guilt gnawed at her as she re-read the response from Sotheby’s in Lyon, France. Her French wasn’t perfect, but it had apparently been good enough to garner a response and they seemed very interested in speaking with her — which felt like an impossible dream.

Impossible because it would involve leaving her father. Not just leaving him, but leaving the country, and it had been just the two of them for too long.

He would never let you do it.

The smell of smoke jerked her out of her reveries and Lianna jumped to her feet, rushing to the oven to turn it off. Opening the door let out stinging, acrid smoke and she grabbed the potholder to rip out the ruined meal so she could slam the oven closed.

Staring at the blackened dish of what had been chicken and vegetable couscous she tossed the offensive thing into the trash and walked to the wine fridge in defeat.

It had been a shit day, and calories were calories, right?

At least she couldn’t ruin wine.