Chapter 1 - The Daughter He Forgot
My father told a mafia boss he had three daughters while I sat close enough to hear the ice shift in his glass.
I was his fourth.
I was also the reason his company still existed.
“Which daughter is yours?” Dominic Vale had asked.
“All three,” Charles Whitmore said, smiling as he introduced Madison, Lauren, and Emily.
Georgetown.
Social partnerships.
Art history.
Then Dominic looked down the table at me.
“You said three daughters.”
My father’s smile tightened.
“Oh. Claire. She’s from my first marriage. She helps with household matters.”
Under the table, I pressed my thumb against my index finger.
Once.
Don’t react.
Don’t make it worse.
It was a habit I had learned before I learned to drive.
Dominic noticed.
“Household matters,” he repeated.
My father immediately started talking about waterfront access.
Dominic let him finish one sentence.
Then he turned back to me.
“Claire. What exactly do you do for this company?”
“I handle—”
“She means scheduling,” my father interrupted.
Dominic didn’t look at him.
“I asked Claire.”
The table went still.
I set down my water glass.
“This morning, I corrected a health-insurance renewal error worth two hundred eighty-six thousand dollars.”
My father’s hand stopped halfway to his wine.
“I negotiated a payment schedule so four hundred twelve employees wouldn’t lose coverage. Then I cleared the documentation hold on a Savannah account that owed us just under nine hundred thousand.”
Rebecca gave a small, embarrassed laugh.
“Claire gets very attached to paperwork.”
“Was the Savannah client Mercer Cold Storage?” Dominic asked.
“Yes.”
“Which document was missing?”
“The corrected delivery order. Their receiving agent changed in August. Our files didn’t.”
He nodded once.
Not impressed.
Confirming something.
That frightened me more.
Across the table, my father said, “Claire works under my direction.”
I looked at him.
For nine years, those six words had covered everything he stole.
My work.
My time.
My name.
Dominic placed a slim folder beside his plate.
“Interesting,” he said.
My father glanced at it.
“What is?”
“Your presentation says your chief financial officer resolved the Mercer issue.”
“He supervises the department.”
“There’s no department,” I said.
The words escaped before I could stop them.
“There’s me.”
Nobody moved.
Then Dominic opened the folder.
On top lay an email I had written at eleven seventeen that morning.
My wording.
My figures.
My solution.
May you like
Someone had removed my name.
And beneath it, in blue ink, my father had signed his own.
