Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
“I’m afraid I fail to see how that concerns me.”
“If you want to punish me, there are other ways to do it. Say, cutting me out of your life for ten years. I can report, that worked quite well.”
“Sorry, Dad. This isn’t about you. It’s about Suzette.”
He shook his head. “Don’t think I’ll fall for that nonsense. You’ve got your mother in you.”
God, sometimes I wished I was a violent person.
In considering that, how bad was it to slap someone? Was that like, level three violent? Or more level five?
I was pretty sure I could do a three. I wasn’t so sure I could live with five.
“Diana!” he snapped, straightening from the desk.
“I live in a high rise. We have security. What, are his men going to storm the building?”
“You don’t mess with a man like Babić.”
“I have seen the pictures, so that isn’t lost on me.”
He took in a deep breath that expanded his wide chest, and I noted he looked good, as always. His dark hair was turning a glinting silver, not gray or white, and it was attractive. He’d always kept fit, getting up early to hit the home gym or the one at the office to put in at least a solid forty-five minutes of cardio and strength training. It was noticeable he hadn’t changed that habit.
I wondered, though, if he got Botox, because without the silver in his hair, he looked to be a man in his early forties, tops, not late fifties, which he was.
“I didn’t handle that situation well,” he announced. “The one on campus. I see that now. I was thinking like a man of my generation. What we’d been taught and what I knew women had been taught in terms of how to look out for themselves. I didn’t consider that line of thinking was not only outdated, but wrong.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“And I’d like to have a relationship with my daughter,” he finished.
I knew what to say to that.
“Well, if we’re entering negotiations, drop Babić as a client, make sure no one in your firm picks him up, and maybe use some of the influence you’ve spent decades amassing to make it difficult for him to find someone in the legal community that would help him out.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that, Diana. Even if I withdrew, it’s my duty to protect a client’s interests. I’d have to recommend new counsel and advise them on the case.”
“So that takes our short negotiations to a close,” I muttered.
“I’m proud of you,” he announced, apropos of nothing. “You got your degree. You took that further. You did it on your own, which I’m sure was difficult. I have friends who have gone to you for conservation work. They say you’re talented.”
Oh no.
No way in hell.
He didn’t get to do that.
I began to walk around his desk, stating, “We’re not doing this.”
“Diana, please come to dinner,” he requested of my back on my way to his door.
I turned to him.
And I said what I said next despite the sharp pain I felt at hearing the undisguised and genuine entreaty in his tone.
“I’ll consider it, but before then, I’ll share that it wasn’t your outdated…and you’re right, wrong line of thinking that was the problem. It was that you thought like a man, not a father. You, my father, after what I went through, put me through a different kind of onslaught by taking the stance of a man, and in so doing, you protected another man, one who had harmed me. That was why I walked away and never come back.”
I had to hand it to him, once I’d said this, he looked stricken.
Okay, no.
He looked wrecked.
But I couldn’t let that affect me, because I wasn’t done.
“If you’re standing there, telling me you want to be my father, then I’ll tell you, it’ll never work, and I’m not putting myself through it, if you don’t figure out what being a father means. Now, this may seem extreme to you, but representing a man who very obviously brutally attacked a woman physically, sexually, and having a daughter, is not in the slightest bit okay. I don’t give that first shit he’s entitled to a defense. Let someone else offer it to him. You are not a struggling lawyer who needs to take cases to put food on his family’s table. Babić had a retainer with another firm, he did this, they dropped him. You picked him up. You. A man with a daughter who’s survived a sexual assault. Think on that, Dad. Think why I might have an issue with that. Think what it might mean to me that you’re defending this man. Once you do, contact me. And then maybe we’ll chat.”
“So it is about you,” he declared, and there was a hint of a smirk on his lips.