Page 33 of Love Her

“Doctor Enzo’s not an oncologist!”

My father blew air through pursed lips and rolled his eyes.

“I don’t understand how you can get to decide when you get to give up,andwho I’m going to marry!”

“I’m taking care of things—and of you.”

“I can take care of myself, dad!”

“Can you?” he said, staring me down. “When your mother killed herself—it shattered me.”

Only this time I stared right back. “Because you were sad? Or because for once something happened in your life that you couldn’t control?”

The words hung between us, as cloying as the scent of the lilies all around.

“Who the fuck sent all these, anyhow?” I said, standing, wanting to kick the nearest display of flowers over.

“Your fiancée. They’ve been arriving all morning,” my father said, standing up slowly. “You’re meeting him tomorrow for lunch to sign the pre-nup. Trevia’s going to be going over with you.”

“Great. Your mafia lawyer.”

“Don’t say that,” he growled.

“Why not? It’s true! Everyone knows it!”

“I raised you to be something different!”

I blinked at him, panting with barely suppressed emotion. “Did…you?”

He ran a hand through what remained of his hair. “Well I tried to, in any case.”

“You don’t even know me. Or you would know that I don’t want this—with every fiber of my being.”

My father gave me a look that was withering for both of us, a mixture of disappointment and sorrow, because I’d told him the truth, and he knew it.

“The thing is Lia, that in this case, I don’t care what you want.” He came up to me and tried to put his hands on my shoulder, but I shook them off and stepped back. “You’re a child. You’ll see that, eventually, when you look back at this moment.”

“But I don’t want to—” I said again, fully aware of how even the mere statement made me sound like I was whining.

There was no way to win—Rhaim was right. If I ran away from this engagement now, it would look bad, not only for Corvo, but for me.

“It’s my dying wish,” he snapped, “and all I want is to walk you down the aisle.”

My jaw clamped shut. There was no fighting it. And when he stepped up to me again, I didn’t step back, and his papery lips kissed my cheek like they had at least a thousand times before. “Ilove you, Lia,” he said, from up close, and then turned around to leave the room, before pausing in the doorway. “I’m only doing what’s best for you. You’ll see that, in time,” he said, and left, with Rio at his heels.

My audience was over, and my fate was sealed.

I sat down on my couch, which was still warm from him sleeping on it, and pulled my knees into my chest to cry.

I spentthe rest of the day watching Netflix, eating ice cream, and making my doorman come and take all of the flowers out of my room. I didn’t care what he did with them, give them to his friends, or put them out on the street, or threw them in the trash, I just needed them away from me.

Once he was finished, I moved the books away from Rhaim’s camera.

I wanted to message him, but I had no idea what he was off doing, and I didn’t want to come off as needy?

Which was stupid—I’d just found out my father, the one shitty fixture in my life, was dying.

The thing was though—was I was fairly sure that Rhaim had known that, too.

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