Episode2
1278 Words
Chapter two
Stephanie pov
(Rodrigo's Mansion)
I arrived at my father's mansion with tears streaming down my face.
The car had barely stopped before I pushed the door open myself. Behind me, the driver scrambled out, shut his door with a quiet urgency, and hurried around to bow slightly before me.
"Let me help you, ma'am," he said softly, reaching for my file and handbag still sitting on the seat.
I didn't respond,not because I meant to be rude but because I couldn't. My lungs felt too small for the air around me.
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Fear and disappointment had wrapped themselves around me like a vice, squeezing tighter with every step.
My father had warned me. Years ago, before the wedding, before the ring, before I had convinced myself that love was enough, he had sat me down and told me exactly who Kain Mark was.
And I hadn't listened.
Now here I was.
I walked slowly toward the entrance, my heels barely lifting off the ground. My eyes burned, heavy with tears I had already spent and more that were still threatening to fall. I pushed the front door open and found him.
He was seated in his single armchair beside the television, a folded newspaper resting in his hands. The moment our eyes met across the room, he stilled.
He looked at me, he really looked at me and I watched the pity settle quietly into his expression like he had been expecting me all night.
My feet stopped moving.
"Father—"
His name broke apart in my throat before I could finish it.
"I heard the news, Stephanie." He set the newspaper down on the table beside him and rose slowly to his feet. His voice was calm, deliberately calm, the way it always was when he was choosing his words carefully. "But now is not the time for blame. Not tonight."
He opened his arms.
Something in my chest gave way completely.
"Come here."
I crossed the room in three steps and walked straight into his embrace, and for the first time since the parking lot, I let myself fall apart properly, completely in the one place I had always been safe enough to do so.
He held me for a long time. He simply kept his arms around me, one hand patting my back slowly, the way he used to when I was seven years old and the world had felt too large and too cruel. I had forgotten how much smaller pain felt inside my father's embrace.
Eventually, he pulled back just enough to look at my face. He said nothing about how I looked, the mascara, the red eyes, the dress that still smelled faintly of the parking lot floor. He simply cupped my face in both his weathered hands, studied me for a moment, then guided me gently to the sofa.
"Sit." he said quietly.
I sat.
He lowered himself into the cushion beside me and turned toward one of the helpers standing near the hallway entrance.
"Bring us something warm. Two glasses."
"Yes, sir." The help disappeared without another word.
I leaned back against the sofa and stared at the ceiling, too emptied out to even think. The mansion was so quiet I could hear the clock on the wall. Every tick felt like it was measuring the distance between the life I had this morning and whatever was left of it now.
My father sat beside me, calm and unhurried, his hands resting loosely on his knees.
The help returned with two glasses of warm brandy on a small tray and set them on the table before us without a sound. My father picked his, up, took a slow sip, then set it back down. I wrapped both hands around mine just for the warmth.
Several minutes passed.
Then he cleared his throat.
"I am glad you are back home, Steph." he said. His tone had shifted not cold, but measured. The tone he used when something important was coming. Calling me Steph means a lot.
I turned to look at him.
"You need to rest, papa. It is late." I said softly.
"Rest." He almost smiled. "There is no time for rest."
I frowned slightly. "What do you mean?"
He turned to face me fully, studying me the way he always did before delivering news he knew would not land easily.
"There is a deal on the table," he said. "One of the largest this family has seen in twenty years. The kind that does not come twice."
I sat up slowly. "Papa, tonight is not—"
"I know what tonight is." His voice was gentle but firm. "And I am not asking you to forget it. But I need you to hear me. I will be brief."
I closed my mouth and let him continue.
"The man holding this deal, he is not just a businessman. He is the kind of man entire industries move around. His signature alone is worth more than most companies see in a decade." He paused. "He will only close this deal under one condition."
Something about his tone made the hairs on my arm rise.
"What condition?" I asked slowly.
My father looked at me steadily.
"Marriage."
The word dropped into the room like a stone.
I stared at him. "I'm sorry?"
"He wants a wife before he signs. Don't ask me to explain the man's reasons, I have stopped trying to understand them. What I know is that the deal is real, the number is real, and he has agreed to one candidate. He is older, maybe 35 years older than you, Steph but he is genuine."
My lips parted. "Papa—"
"You."
I let out a short, disbelieving breath. "You cannot be serious."
"I am entirely serious."
I stood up, my body simply could not process what he was saying while sitting still. I walked two steps forward and turned back around.
"I just left my husband, papa. Tonight. I left him in a parking lot while he was giving another woman a car and announcing her pregnancy to a crowd of journalists." My voice didn't break. It came out flat, which somehow felt worse. "And you are sitting here telling me to marry someone else?" I breath in heavily, then out with a chuckle.
“You just said the man is older than me, what am I supposed to do with such person?”
"I am telling you that life does not pause for heartbreak." He said it without cruelty. "Your grandfather did not build what we have by waiting for the right moment. Neither did I."
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then something shifted in me, just the exhausted recognition that my father never raised a subject without having already thought it through from every angle.
I sat back down.
"Who is he?" I asked quietly.
My father's expression remained steady. "You will meet him soon enough."
I shook my head slowly and reached for my glass. Took a sip. Set it back down.
"Papa." I said carefully. "There is something I need to tell you."
He waited.
"I am pregnant."
The clock on the wall kept ticking. My father's expression did not change. He simply reached for his own glass, unhurried, and took a slow sip.
I watched him. "Did you hear what I said?"
"I heard you."
"You are not surprised." It wasn't a question.
"No." he said simply.
I turned on the sofa to face him fully. "How?" My voice dropped. "How did you already know?"
- Writer
