Chapter 27 Julia

"What were you thinking?" my father barks.

My heart is pounding. I've heard him yell like this before, but never at one of his children—not even close.

Next to me, hands gripping the armrests of the antique velvet chair where he sits, Davis lets out the slowest, longest breath I've ever heard him release.

"I can explain," he states.

"You can explain?" My father ceases pacing around his in-home office. Standing in front of the fireplace, he looks like the devil himself. "You can explain? Davis, you can't fucking explain. There's no explanation for you pimping out your younger sister—my only daughter—to a forty-something year old man so you could close a deal."

When Davis looks over at me, I can practically see him disintegrating under his skin. The stress radiates off of him. My brother is brilliant, motivated, and thorough and he can pretend to be steely with the best of them, but deep down he's a cinnamon roll. Our father used to hate it. He quashed it right out of him—turned him into a titanic, carbon-copy of himself. But underneath it all, Davis has always been neurotic and desperate to please him. Balancing his true nature with our father's expectations has been a gargantuan undertaking for most of his adult life—but one he has managed with aplomb.

And I went and screwed it all up.

"Don't blame Davis," I cut in, wishing my voice didn't come out small. "I'm just as much to blame."

My father's glare turns on me. "Oh, you think I only blame Davis? Julia, you have no idea what you're about to hear from me."

His response confuses me. I'm positive he doesn't know about the horrible things I said to Gus on the night I met him. The only other people who know are Davis and Gus, and neither of them would tell my father…so why the hell is he angry with me?

"How am I at fault?"

"You know," he shoots back. "The same reason I had to send Mikhail to retrieve you after you ran off to Europe to do god knows what after college…"

Davis's eyes widen and I inhale sharply. My father is slut shaming me. My father—a man on his third marriage to a woman only slightly older than Davis—is shaming me for this.

"Dad, that's so unf—"

"You're going to Paris," he interjects, refusing to look me in the eye. "You're taking a job in the Paris office, working on strategy in European markets. You're going to keep your head down, you'll never speak to Gus Winter again, and you will never, ever come near another deal. Do I make myself clear?"

I'm so taken aback, my hands begin to tremble. Wordlessly, I look at Davis, who looks equally shellshocked.

"Julia, do I make myself clear?" he repeats, planting his hands on his desktop.

"I'm not a child," I snap. "I'm twenty-eight. Do you think you can tell me who to spend time with? Where to go? What to do? No. I don't want your jobs or your ultimatums. Keep them both."

"Oh shit," Davis whispers so softly that I barely hear it.

My father's glare has never been more powerful. For a few painful seconds, he seethes without breaking eye contact, and I want him to stop. I'm withering deep down, and I want him to stop. My father and I have never fought like this.

"You don't want my opinion, then fine. Fine," he snaps, throwing up his hand. "Do whatever you damn well please, Julia. You always have. But from this point on, you're only a Ridgeway by name."

A silence sets over the three of us, leaving only the sound of the fireplace to break the tension.

"Dad…" Davis murmurs, shaking his head softly, sadly.

It takes me a moment to realize what he means when he says, "only a Ridgeway by name."

No more inheritance. Nothing.

My father is going to cut me off.

I'm going to end up like Jay Raymond, manipulating people and living in a constant state of desperation because the family I once had no longer accepts me.

"I love him," I finally blurt out, looking at my father to see if I can find a soul behind his frosty exterior. "Does that mean anything to you? Yes, the way we got together was unconventional—"

"You don't love him," he cuts in, sighing and shaking his head.

"—I've never been so happy. In fact, I've never been happy at all—"

"You don't love this man."

"And you have no idea how long I've waited for—"

"He bought you. He bought you like a whore, Julia," my father finally snaps.

The comment makes my stomach plummet. For once, I don't know how to respond. Speechless, I turn to Davis, whose jaw is so tight, I can see the tension in the side of his face.

"Don't talk to her like that," he protests coldly. "Don't ever say that to her."

"Why not?" our father replies, raising a shoulder and shrugging with the kind of confidence only a billionaire can muster. "Semantics, I suppose. She's not a whore because Gus Winter didn't even have to pay for her. You're the one who paid, right Davis? This man got fifty billion dollars, and he got to humiliate your sister. Quite a deal, frankly."

Davis's hands are literally trembling with anger. He rises. "Dad—"

"Stop," I interrupt, placing a hand on Davis's arm to push him back into his seat. "Don't. It's not worth it."

My father always gets the last word. Always.

With a slow exhale, my father shakes his head like he wants to undo the last twenty-four hours and go back to a time when he was the father of a perfect successor son and an unbothered daughter he could parade around at his parties. "I'm so disappointed in both of you," he murmurs. "At this point, I should leave everything to Kieran."

Davis and I know better than to protest. If my father is contemplating leaving everything to Kieran, we really have screwed our family up beyond recognition.

My phone buzzes in my purse and I know it's likely Gus, looking for an update on how the conversation with my father went. Sure enough, when I peek at the screen, I see his name.

My father must notice my attention is elsewhere because he raps his knuckles on the top off his desk. "Julia—look at me. Listen to me. This man is fifteen years older than you and a billionaire. He's going to get what he wants from you and discard you like you were nothing. There's no future here. Nothing. Do not let him ruin your life."

"So the solution is Paris?" I reply, hating the quiver in my voice. "You think that's going to fix everything?"

"How else will you earn the ten million dollars you owe me?" he replies slowly, the worlds rolling from his tongue like a curse.

And there it is. The last word.

"Fine. I understand." Slowly, I rise from my seat, my body numb. Davis and I leave the office and exit into the hallway. When the door shuts behind us, Davis pulls me into a hug. A tight one. And it's strange because we've never been an affectionate family, but I won't deny I needed this hug today.

"I'm sorry," he mutters.

"Don't be," I reply, surprised I can still speak when I'm on the verge of crumbling. "I fell in love with Gus. We have you and your ambition to thank."

"You really love him?"

I nod.

He raises an eyebrow. "I've known you for almost twenty-nine years and you've never said you love anyone before."

"I love you," I admit. "I never say it, but I do, Davis. I'm glad we got to work on this acquisition together. At the end of the day…well, it was amazing, wasn't it? I mean, aside from the whole, disgruntled-friend-zoned-grifter airing my dirty laundry to a tabloid rag, it was amazing. We closed a deal on a fifty-billion-dollar company. How many people can say that?"

"Yeah, you're right." He glances at the door to our father's office. "And hopefully I taught you something remotely helpful for your new job in…European markets, apparently."

In any other circumstance, I would laugh at the ridiculousness of it. My father's way of punishing me is to send me to one of the most revered cities in the world with a job many people would spend their entire careers scrambling to earn—and I didn't even apply.

"Good luck telling Gus," Davis says grimly, leading the way down the hallway. "He was ready to rain hellfire the night you rejected him. I don't want to be within a fifty-mile radius of that man when he finds out you're being taken away from him."