Alana
I walkedup the few steps of my parent’s old Brownstone and rang the doorbell. My pulse raced as I waited for the door to be answered. I had pored over the papers that Alejandro had given me last night, and they had made for very interesting reading indeed.
If they were genuine, then my father’s explanation for my forced marriage to Alejandro just didn’t make sense. If what I’d read on those papers was true, it seemed that my father had an entirely different reason for marrying me off to the King of L.A and the heir to the Montoya family business.
Of course, I knew that paperwork could be faked but I had an awful feeling that it hadn’t been, and that Alejandro was the only one telling me the truth.
I took a deep breath.
I could do this!
I was about to confront my father, the man I had always looked up to, and accuse him of something so heinous, it was unthinkable.
Cassandra, my father’s PA, answered the door to me. ‘Alana?’ she said with a look of surprise on her face. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to see my father, Cassie. Is he home?’
She nodded and stepped aside as she opened the door wider. ‘Of course. Come in, come in. He’ll be so happy to see you.’
I followed her into the kitchen, where my father was sitting drinking coffee and reading the morning papers. I wondered briefly why Cassandra was here so early in the morning, but dismissed the thought from my mind. I had enough to confront him with without wondering if he was having an affair with his PA.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said as he looked up from his newspaper. ‘What are you doing here?’
I shrugged. ‘I just needed to see you, Daddy.’
He folded his paper and stood up, crossing the kitchen and placing his hand on my shoulder. ‘Is everything okay, Alana?’
I blinked back the tears. How the hell was I going to do this? ‘Where’s mom?’ I asked.
‘In bed. She’s having one of her migraines,’ he replied with a roll of his eyes. My mother spent more time in her bed than any other person I’d ever known.
She always had some ailment or other. I thought about asking him to go get her, or marching up the stairs and waking her myself, but I thought better of it. I wondered if she knew what her darling husband had done.
She had always taken his side over mine. He had always been the most important person in our family. Everything had always been about him and his career, and until that moment, I had never even thought to question it.
I looked sideways at Cassandra and thankfully she read the situation like a pro. ‘I’ll leave you two to it. You must have lots to catch up on and I need to prep for our interview later. I’ll see you for lunch?’ she said to my father.
‘Yes. I’ll see you there, Cassie,’ he said warmly and I noticed the way their eyes locked for just a fraction longer than they should have.
It was as though I was suddenly seeing my father without the filter of being his adoring daughter. Maybe my mother’s constant illnesses were due to something more than her being a hypochondriac?
‘It was nice to see you, Alana,’ Cassandra said, snapping me from my thoughts.
‘Yes, you too,’ I nodded politely and watched her walk out of the door.
‘Is anyone else here?’ I asked.
‘Only Paulo. Why?’ he frowned at me.
Paulo was my father’s personal security detail and had worked for him for the past two years. I knew that my father trusted him implicitly and I doubted there was much that went on in my father’s world that Paulo wasn’t privy to. ‘I just have something delicate to discuss, that’s all.’
‘Well, Paulo won’t bother us,’ he said with a wave of his hand. ‘What is it, sweetheart?’
I sat down at the table and he did the same.
I looked at him. His hair was greyer than I remembered, and he didn’t seem as tall either. I used to find him formidable and intimidating, but now he just looked like an old man. Still, he was my father, and I loved him, and what I was about to ask him wasn’t easy.
‘I want to know the real reason why you asked me to marry Alejandro,’ I said, my voice trembling.