Johnathan turned from the window, his face unreadable. “Maybe you should stop romanticizing her, son. She left you without a word. She made a mockery of this family. And now she’s returned for profit. It’s time you see her for what she really is.”
Ryan clenched his fists under the table. “You don’t know her like I do.”
Leah sighed. “Oh, Ryan. That’s the problem, you think you know her. But people like her, like her father, they live off manipulation. She learned it from him.”
Ryan’s throat ached. His thoughts were spinning, images of Eve laughing in their kitchen, the softness in her eyes when she whispered his name. None of it fit the greedy caricature they painted now.
Then Kimberly slid a printed receipt across the table. “If you need proof, here it is.”
He stared down at the pape
