Chapter 6: The Question I Was Afraid to Ask
The medical team worked in a rented suite at the Bel-Air Hotel, which was where my father always stayed when he came to Los Angeles.
He owned property in the city but preferred hotels.
He said it kept him from feeling settled in places that weren't home.
A doctor named Reeves cleaned and dressed my back while I sat forward on a chair and looked at the wall.
My father sat across the room.
He did not look away while the doctor worked, and he did not speak, and that silence told me more than most conversations.
"Six lacerations," Dr.
Reeves said.
"None deep enough for stitches.
You'll have scarring."
"I know," I said.
"You should report this formally.
The physical evidence—"
"It's already been documented," my father said from across the room.
"Photographs were taken before she left the house.
The documentation has been filed."
Dr.
Reeves nodded and continued working.
When he was done and had stepped out, my father poured two glasses of water from the carafe on the table.
He brought one to me and sat in the chair closest to mine.
I looked at him.
"Who sent me that message?" I said.
He didn't ask which message.
He set his glass down.
"I don't know," he said.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the true answer.
I don't know who sent it.
I have a suspicion."
"Tell me."
He was quiet for a moment.
My father was not a man who chose silence to avoid a question.
He chose it to find the right words, which was different.
"When you told me you were going to marry Nathan Brooks," he said, "I had him looked into.
That was standard.
I do it with anyone who becomes significant to my children.
What I found was a man with a promising but overleveraged business, a history of attaching himself to people with more resources than he had, and a pattern of relationships with women who came from money." He paused.
"I told you what I found."
"You told me he was ambitious.
You said you weren't sure his feelings were genuine."
"Yes."
"You didn't tell me to stop."
"No.
You were twenty-eight.
You were certain.
And I had been wrong about people before." He picked up his glass.
"What I did not tell you is that after you became engaged, Nathan came to me privately.
He said he wanted to discuss a prenuptial arrangement.
I thought that was reasonable.
What he actually wanted was a financial guarantee — a sum of money, paid to him directly, in exchange for his commitment to the marriage."
The room was very quiet.
"He asked you to pay him to marry me," I said.
"Yes."
I looked at the wall.
The wallpaper was cream-colored with a very faint pattern I couldn't identify from where I sat.
"What did you say?"
"I said no." My father's voice was steady.
"I told him that if his feelings for you were contingent on a financial arrangement, he should end the engagement immediately and I would ensure he was compensated fairly for any costs already incurred.
I told him that if he married you for love, as he claimed, then no arrangement was necessary." He set the glass down again.
"He married you.
I chose to believe he had made the right decision for the right reasons.
I watched for three years.
And then you called me."
"He married me anyway," I said.
"Without the money."
"Yes."
"So he thought he'd get it another way.
Through the business connections.
Through me being in the room."
"That is my belief, yes."
I sat with that for a moment.
The doctor had given me something mild for the pain and it was making the edges of things slightly soft, which I was grateful for.
"The message," I said.
"You have a suspicion."
"Gerald Howe knew about Nathan's approach to me.
Nathan told him — I believe as a way of demonstrating that he had leverage over the Calloway family that other investors didn't have.
Gerald may have told others." My father looked at me carefully.
"Or Nathan told someone himself, recently, as a way of trying to destabilize you before the legal process begins."
"To make me doubt you."
"To make you doubt me, doubt the recordings, doubt your own judgment.
To make you come back to the table from a position of uncertainty rather than strength."
I thought about Nathan's voice in that room.
*Did you ever actually love me.*
Not grief.
Strategy.
"He's still trying to negotiate," I said.
"He will try for some time yet," my father said.
"That is why I need you to be very careful about who you speak to and what you say in the next several weeks.
His attorneys will look for anything they can use."
I nodded.
Then I looked at my father directly.
"Why didn't you tell me?
About what he asked you for.
Before the wedding."
He held my gaze.
"Because you loved him," he said.
"And I wasn't certain enough that he was wrong to ask.
Some men ask difficult things and then become better than the asking.
I hoped he was one of those men." A pause.
"I was wrong.
I'm sorry, Sophia."
My father had said those words to me perhaps four times in my entire life.
Each time, he meant them completely.
I reached over and put my hand over his.
We sat like that for a while without speaking.
Then my phone buzzed again.
May you like
This time it was a number I recognized.
It was Madison.
