My Father My Almost

WEAPON AND SHIELD

What was intended to be a dinner to bring two worlds together had instead shattered them into three.

Xavier, left completely dazed and heartbroken, a man who commanded boardrooms, was now brought to his knees by a single, unchangeable truth.

Aaliyah, her secret ripped from her, was still hoping against odds that Xavier could see beyond their blood ties and focus on the love they shared, while furious at Linda and holding her responsible for breaking up her perfect relationship.

Paul and Linda, confused and reeling, were just hoping their daughter would see the absurdity of the situation just enough to let Xavier go.

“Mum, you once told me love covers all gaps!” Aliyah’s voice was desperate, broken.

Linda’s eyes held a pain too deep for tears. She reached for her daughter’s hand, her voice steady but hollow. “Not this gap, ‘Liya.”

The silence in the room was thick enough to choke on.

Xavier, frozen with both shame and shock, finally broke it. His voice was gravelly and foreign. "All this time..." He wasn't looking at anyone; his gaze was fixed on the floor as if it held answers.

"You knew. And you let me... I mean, we..." He couldn't finish. The memory of their intimacy, once his most cherished possession, now felt like a violation.

Aliyah stood her ground, tears streaming. "What was I supposed to do, X? Tell you? And then what? Lose you completely?" It was a desperate plea. "I chose having a part of you over having none of you! That's how much I want you in my life. I need you, X, and I don’t care if it’s as a father or a husband. These are just placeholders; the person is what matters. You are what matters." She said as she reached to hold on to his arm.

His love had completed her. Every day and hour with him had given her both the affection of a lover and the safety and security of a father. It filled a hole she never knew she had but desperately needed.

It now made sense to him why their first meeting felt magnetic, why she intrigued him, and why he thought she was perfect for him. She was him. And his supposedly long-lost lover. It made sense. The playboy was too good and too brilliant to fall for anyone but himself.

Xavier stumbled back, away from the table, away from Aliyah, and away from the life he thought he was building. "I have to go," he muttered, not looking at anyone.

"X, wait—" Aliyah started, but Linda held her back.

"Let him go, Aaliyah."

He fumbled for his car keys, his hands shaking so badly he could barely grip them. He didn't look back.

And just like that, it was over.

The engagement was officially, quietly called off. No announcements, no drama. It just ended.

Xavier couldn't bear the weight of his past in the penthouse that was meant to be their future. Every room was a ghost. He sold it within a month, the papers signed without a flicker of emotion. It was just a space, now empty of the only thing that had ever made it feel like home.

He became a shadow of himself. The wild CEO became a calm, closed-off shell; the sharp edges were back, but it came with a cold focus. He was always ready to do what it takes to get the work done, but the trouble in his soul was evident to anyone who cared to look close enough. The skeleton hadn't just come out of the closet; it had taken up residence in him. He never contacted Aliyah again. There was no father-daughter reunion, no conversation, or opportunity for healing. The bond that had been formed, however wrongly, was too toxic to be reforged into something pure, even though it felt like the purest and most perfect thing to both parties.

Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. Aaliyah struggled with bitterness towards Linda. It was hard to be around her or want to talk to her. But she couldn’t lose both Xavier and her parents, even though she blamed them for her hurt.

Broken, she threw herself into her work. She crammed her calendar with new hobbies. She drifted through parties where the music was loud enough to drown her thoughts. But it was all noise. And she returns to the silence of her home; the reality of her loss rests heavily on her soul.

“Aaliyah, you look flushed.” Yasmin, her co-worker, said with concern. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah…” Aaliyah said, rubbing her temples where a constant ache had settled, “I’ve just been doing way too much.”

She was indeed doing way too much—way too much working, way too much running, way too much pretending, way too much thinking, and way too much not thinking. When the headache had refused aspirin and the average pain medication, she mustered up the courage to go to the emergency room; after all, it had lingered for weeks.

“Any chance you might be pregnant, Ms. Aaliyah?” the doctor asked whilst doing her routine exam.

A cold jolt shot through her.

What? No, Aaliyah thought to herself; her voice was firmer than she felt.

“That can’t be. I’ve been on the pill for two years.” She said, trying to keep her calm.

"Okay. Well, it's not completely impossible," the doctor said softly, her expression becoming professional and concentrated.

As the doctor exited the room, a strange, oppressive silence appeared to spread throughout Aaliyah's body. “This can’t be happening; this should not be happening. It's just a headache. I came in for a headache, not a pregnancy test,” Aaliyah said, speaking to herself and trying to hold herself together.

Minutes later, the doctor returned with the verdict.

"Congratulations, Ms. Aaliyah, you are three months gone. I'll set up an ultrasound so you can hear your baby's heartbeat, and we can check other vitals."

The words didn’t feel real. They felt like facts that belonged to someone else. She was pregnant.

The future she planned, which had already been broken and left for ruin, had mutated into something completely new, horrific, and irreversible.

What was she going to do? Was this her child or her sibling? Would Xavier be its father and grandfather? It was too messy a situation. The love that was supposed to conquer all gaps had been obliterated by the one gap that was unconquerable, and now it had become something else.

“No. I won't repeat the same cycle. I won't do this. I am not my mother.” She said to herself.

“No matter how messy Mum and Dad think this situation is, I am his mother, and X is his father.”

Whilst driving from the emergency room, she thought to herself, Maybe this is a divine intervention or a sign from the universe that she and Xavier were meant to be together. No one needs to know they are biologically related.

She found her way to the sidewalk, the city buzzing around her, feeling scared yet brave. In her hand was a brown envelope, the grainy black-and-white image of a future tucked inside. Her eyes lifted to the gleaming skyscraper that housed SEON Engineering. Somewhere up there was Xavier—the man who is her father and the father of her child.

“Who is that?” Taylor said, looking through the 4th-floor window.

The board had just concluded a meeting about opening a branch down south—a move that would require the current CEO, Xavier, to travel or even relocate for a while.

“Who are you referring to?” William came toward the window.

“That young woman with the brown envelope over her head?”

“X, I think you need to see this.” Calling Xavier to the window,

Xavier, looking at his Liya for the first time in a long time, felt chills that weren’t from the air conditioning. His breath was locked in his chest. The deliberate numbness that he used as a shield for the past months vanished in an instant and was replaced with a raw, gut-deep knowledge.

The stoop of her shoulders, the way she held the envelope as a weapon and a shield. He understood what it meant. He knew exactly why she was there.

This absurdity wasn't over. It was just beginning.