Page 106 of Penalty Kiss
I don’t wait for my father to make the first move. This is my life. My fight.
“Why did you come here, Dad?”
He turns from the window, his expression unreadable. "Your brothers sent me some enlightening files. One look and I knew it had to be you. I anticipated Lucien’s play, though I'll admit, not quite like this. When my security team informed me Lucien was making his move, I came to retrieve you."
“Retrieve me?” The words are clinical. Not daughter. Not woman. A misplaced asset.
“You came to take me back. To the life I ran from.”
“To the life that can protect you,” he says, impatience sharpening every syllable. “This… spectacle at the market proves you are incapable of protecting yourself.”
Rage, hot and sharp, cuts through my composure. “Incapable? Did you not see what just happened? An entire town—my friends, Cam—my family—just put themselves between me and danger. They protected me. That’s something your money has never been able to buy.”
“Friendship is a sentiment, Taralyn. Security is a strategy.”
“And love?” I shoot back, my voice shaking. “Is that a sentiment—or a strategy?”
That stops him. For the first time, I see more than steel in his eyes. Hurt. Confusion. Maybe even the ghost of the man who once knew love.
I don’t let it soften me. Not now.
“I left because your world was hollow. All glitter, no substance. I know because I remember everything.” I feel my tears flowing and I don’t care.
“Every contract you drilled into me, every party you drowned yourself in, every time you called me an asset instead of your daughter. My memory doesn’t let me forget. And I refuse to live that life again.”
My eidetic memory, the gift he tried to weaponize, becomes my sword.
“I remember Christmas morning when I was ten. I went looking for you. And I remember the woman who came out of your bedroom first. Gardenias and whiskey. Her laughter—slurred, careless. And the way you didn’t even see me standing in the hall.”
He flinches, the memory hitting its mark.
“I remember every single party. Every drunken deal made in the library. Every casual cruelty disguised as a joke. I remember the faces of hundreds of people, and I can’t recall a single one who looked genuinely happy. They looked hungry. Or bored. Or broken.”
I draw in a breath, my chest aching. “Here? Today, an eighty-year-old woman named Edna Henderson was ready to defend me with her cane. Cam—the boyfriend you dismissed—entered a pie-eating contest just to make me smile, even knowing he might forget the gesture tomorrow. That’s real. That’s what I was starving for. A life that isn’t just a series of transactions.”
I lift my chin, steady now. "I don't need a castle. Never needed a crown. I’ve built my kingdom here—with people who see me. Not the Delacroix name. Not the trust fund. Just me. And that's worth more than everything you think you're offering."
My dad’s gaze doesn’t leave mine. For once, his tone isn’t sharp or commanding. It’s low, stripped bare.
“Your mother chose you, Taralyn. The doctors said they could save one. She told them to save you.” His hand tightens on the window frame, the knuckles bone-white. “I’ve known that every day since. I’ve never blamed you. Not once.”
His voice frays, and the sound jolts me—it’s not the steel of an empire-builder, but the crack of a man undone.
“But when I look at you, I see her. Every line of your face, every glance of your eyes. You are her mirror. And with it comes the weight of knowing she died so you could breathe. I know it was her choice, I know her body failed her—but my mind…” His jaw flexes, and for the first time he looks older than his years.
“…my mind has never learned how to separate the gift from the loss. I thank you for living, even as I grieve that she is gone. You are my greatest joy and my deepest grief, bound so tightly together I can’t tell them apart.”
The words leave the air raw, aching.
For the first time, I see it—really see it. He doesn’t hate me. He never did. He’s been drowning for twenty-four years, clinging to me as both life raft and anchor. His love has always been shackled to his grief, twisted into chains he mistook for protection.
I swallow hard, tears burning hot. “Dad…” My voice cracks. “You think holding me tighter redeems the choice she made. But all it does is erase me. I can’t be her stand-in. I can’t be the living monument you chain yourself to.”
“Your love for Mom ran deep and true,” I say, softer now, each word measured so he can hold it. “But losing her shouldn’t mean losing me too. I’m still your daughter. I always will be. Can’t you keep a place for me?”
The question hangs between us, begging for a space where both grief and a living daughter can coexist.
Cam’s hand steadies at my back, a quiet promise. I lean into him, knowing he’ll always catch me.
