Page 32 of Love Her

They made my apartment smell like a funeral.

“Who died?” I muttered, coming towards my father.

He didn’t bounce awake like he usually did—which was odd. I remembered as a child my father used to sleep like a cat, always half awake, just in case.

And now that I was standing above him, in a rare moment of superiority he looked…frail. I could feel the head of steam I’d been building in the Uber over dissipating—which felt entirely unfair.

I deserved this argument.

“Dad?” I asked, bumping my couch with a knee.

That made him blink to life, slowly. “Lia,” he said, as his eyes focused on me—and at saying my name, ten years faded off his face. “You’re alive.”

“Of course I’m alive,” I said, squatting on my heels. “What the fuck?” Then I realized that my question had too manypossible antecedents for him to understand. “I’m not marrying him.”

I didn’t care that Rhaim said I needed to go through with this charade for the IPO—I wanted to have this fight first.

I’dearnedit.

My father heaved a sigh and sat up on the couch. “Where have you been?” he demanded.

“I was up planning my dream wedding at an all-night wedding planners,” I said, as saccharinely as possible. “Gee, I can’t wait to wear a big poofy white dress and everything! Is it going to be at our place in the Hamptons?” I asked, pretending to be enthused.

“Stop that Lia?—”

“No, again, fuck you,” I said, finding my anger and holding on. “I’ve been working my ass off for your stupid fucking IPO and then you just went and sold me out in public? To some man more than twice my age?”

I watched the lines around his eyes harden. “I acknowledged, Lia, that you’re doing well?—”

“No, I’m doing fucking fantastically,” I corrected him, because Rhaim had said so—so I knew it was true. “But then you side-swiped me in front of the entire city, like you didn’t fucking care, and now I’m just some—some—girlagain. You’ve taken away all of my power!”

“Your…power?” my father asked, sounding condescending. “I think you meanmymoney, andmylast name.”

“So? Yeah, I didn’t come into things a blank slate—but that doesn’t mean I still haven’t been putting the time in! I’ve been devoting my life to this?—”

“And that’s part of the problem,” he snapped, cutting me off. “What’s going to be left for you once it’s through?”

I inhaled, but then caught myself. I could hardly tell him Rhaim was putting me on the board.

“I want to work,” I enunciated slowly, as he sharply shook his head.

“But a Ferreo woman shouldn’t have to.”

I threw my hands up in the air. “Oh my God. We are now firmly in patriarchal bullshit territory—” and then Rio came up, looming over both of us.

“Tell her,” he said, looking at my father.

My father’s jaw clenched as he squinted up at his bodyguard. “I didn’t hire you so you could play Dr. Phil?—”

“Fucking tell her,” Rio said, as I looked haplessly between them.

“Tell me…what?” I demanded, rising up on my knees. “What?”

My father inhaled deeply and then sighed. “I’m sick, Lia. I have been, for quite some time—I’ve just been hiding it is all.”

“What kind of sick?”

“The kind that comes with a shelf life. Kidney cancer,” he said, then wagged a finger at me as I moved to cut him off. “I’ve already seen all the doctors I’m going to. I’m done. It’s my right.”

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