Hena had refused to name Liyah’s father while living, but she’d done her best to give her daughter a positive impression of the absentee parent.
As positive as she could in the face of undeniable facts. The man had been much older and married. Hena had been a complete innocent, in America for the first time and too-easy prey.
“She said the support proved you cared about me even if you couldn’t be in my life.” Though that had been his choice, hadn’t it?
He’d kept his affairs secret; he could have kept a minimal relationship with his illegitimate daughter just as heavily under wraps.
“It sounds to me like your mother said a great deal, much of it fabricated.” He sounded unimpressed and too matter-of-fact to be prevaricating.
Sick realization washed over Liyah in a cold, unstoppable wave that made her feel like she was drowning. She was breathing, but couldn’t get enough air. Betrayal choked her.
Her mother had lied to her.
The one person in her life Liyah had always trusted. Her only family that mattered.
Something inside Liyah shattered, loosening feelings and entrenched beliefs like flotsam in the miasma of her emotional storm.
Liyah’s entire reasoning behind following through on Hena’s last wish was false. Her father didn’t know about Liyah, wanted nothing to do with her and never would.
“I can only repeat, I never made any such payments.” There was no compassion, no understanding, in his cold blue eyes. “If you really were my child and I had elected to help support raising you, you can rest assured the monetary stipend would not have been negligible.”
She stood, her legs shaky—though she wasn’t about to let him know it―her heart a rock in her chest. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I won’t do so again.”
“See that you don’t. Your regret would far outweigh anything you might hope to gain.” He rose, as well, towering over her, despite the slight stooping of age. “If you attempt to cash in on our supposed connection in any way, I won’t hesitate to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
She reeled back, feeling as if he’d struck her. “My mother was wrong.”
“She certainly was to send you on this wild errand. Is she even dead? I doubt it?”
“Yes, the only parent that will ever matter to me died four months ago.”
“And it took you this long to come find your supposed father? More like you worked out how to cash in on some convenient coincidences.”
Drawing on the brittle exterior she’d had to show to the world too much in her life, Liyah lifted her head and looked at Gene Chatsfield like the worm he was. “The only convenience is the fact your hotel paid for my trip here.”
“I will expect you to put in your notice tomorrow. I won’t have a would-be blackmailer working in my hotel.”
“I would leave right now but unlike some of the children you raised, I have a work ethic.” With that, Liyah swept from the suite on legs that barely held her up.
Not that she’d let the man in the suite see her weakness. He’d gotten the single moment of vulnerability from her she would ever give him. The moment when she’d asked him in so many words to be her father.