Sinner (Shelter Harbor #1)(164)
I swallow, taking a half step towards him, but stopping when his head almost imperceptibly shakes.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers again, his eyes fierce, his jaw tense, and a pained look on his face.
“What?”
“You can’t sell the team.” Landon turns away from me, glowering over the boardroom table, his body tense.
“Landon-”
“You can’t sell the team because she’s his daughter.”
The words hit me like a cold freeze, raking into me, chilling me, locking my feet to the floor and sending a sharp slice through my heart. My eyes blink in shock, trying to process what he’s just said, and my lips are moving, but now words come forth.
“I- Landon, what-”
He turns back to face me eye-to-eye, looking shattered and pained. “You can’t sell the team,” he says, quieter this time. “Because Serena is Sam Horn’s daughter.”
I meet his eye, and something inside of me just rips.
The ice shatters, the spell breaks, and the freeze snaps. My feet are working again, and without a word, I’m tearing my eyes from him and running from the room.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Serena
Twenty-One Years Ago:
“How come I don’t have blue eyes?”
My father grins at me, his baby blues twinkling. “Because you just don’t. Everyone has different eyes, you know.”
“Well how did I get green? Melanie Dursting says they’re green like moss and it means I’ve got moss inside my head and that my brain is moldy.”
My dad chuckles and picks me up onto his knee. “Do you think you’ve got mold inside your head.”
“No,” I pout, scowling.
“Good, me neither. I think you’re too smart a girl to have moldy brains.”
“So why aren’t they blue, like yours?”
He shrugs. “Well, sometimes you get your dad’s eyes, and sometimes, you get your mom’s.”
“Mommy had blue eyes too.”
My dad smiles quietly. “That’s right, she did.” He peers at me, tucking my hair back from my face. “Now how’d you get to be such a smart six-year-old?”
“I’m six and a half, Dad.”
“Don’t I know it,” he chuckles, his laugh rumbling through him.
“So, if you have blue eyes, and Mommy had blue eyes, why are mine green?”
“Well it sounds like we’ve got ourselves a mystery, doesn’t it?”
The words are digging deep into my chest, even as I’m running away from the room and the source of them. They’re still there, cutting me, twisting me, slicing me as I run out the side door and across the parking lot to my car.
It’s not true.
It’s not, because it can’t be. Because my father was my father. Of course he was my real father.
And yet, the doubt is there, lingering and pulling me down like a weight. Why else would I be here? What other possible reason would there be for the multimillionaire owner of a pro football organization who I’ve never met to deed me his team?
“Serena!”
I whirl, seeing Landon bolting towards me across the lot.
“Hang on!”
“Don’t!” I spit out, holding a finger out and narrowing my eyes at him. “Don’t.”
“Serena-”
“Is it true?”
He pauses, his mouth going tight.
“Landon!”
“Yes.” His shoulders slump. “Yes, it’s true.”
I stagger back, catching myself against the side of my car.
“How.”
“I don’t think you should hear it like this.”
“How!” I bark, fury boiling up inside of me.
“They met at a league conference or something, I’m not sure. It was short - maybe a week. Your mom didn’t want him to have anything to do with it - with you.”
I slump against the car, my heart hammering in my chest, the ground swimming beneath my feet. I glance up at him, my eyes suddenly falling on the manila envelope in his hand.
“Is that it? That the evidence?”
He nods and hands it to me. I almost don’t take it. I almost can’t even bring myself to touch it, and when I do, it feels cold against my fingers.
“Serena, I don’t know why what happened back then happened, and I didn’t know Bill Roth, but I know he loved you. And no matter what it says in that envelope, he was your dad.”
I bark out a bitter laugh. “Except he wasn’t, was he?”
Landon is silent.
“Was he?!”
He shakes his head.
“Did he know?”
“No,” Landon says quietly. “Not that I can tell.”
“How about you?” I say icily, my eyes narrowing at him.
“What about me.”