Chapter 109 Real talk
Grey
The silence in Cassie's house felt oppressive after our conversation. I needed answers from the source. While she showered, I slipped out to the garden with my phone, seeking the privacy of the jasmine-scented morning air.
My father answered on the second ring, his voice carrying that familiar tone of controlled authority.
"Greyson. I was wondering when you'd call."
"Were you now?" I kept my voice level, but anger simmered beneath the surface. "Maybe you were wondering when I'd figure out that you've been using me as a pawn?"
"Ah. Miss Hunter filled you in, I see."
"Cut the bullshit, Dad. What the hell is going on with Hunter Maritime?"
"Business is never usual, son. It's war by other means." Papers rustled in the background. "Logan Hunter has been a thorn in our side for two decades. It was time to remove that thorn."
"By using me to get close to his daughter?"
"By using every advantage at our disposal. Your relationship with Cassandra was... fortuitous."
The casual way he said it made bile rise in my throat. "Fortuitous. Right. And Emma? Was her death fortuitous too?"
The silence stretched so long I thought the call had dropped. When he spoke again, his voice carried a weight I'd never heard before.
"Greyson... there are things you don't know. Things I've kept from you."
"What things?" My blood ran cold at his tone.
"Emma didn't die in that accident."
The words hit me like a physical blow. The phone nearly slipped from my suddenly nerveless fingers. "What did you say?"
"She wasn't in the car, son. We made sure of that."
"We?" The world tilted around me. "Who the fuck is 'we'?"
"Vivian and I. Your mother. The family." His voice was steady, matter-of-fact. "The accident was... necessary. Emma was safe. She's been safe all along."
I sank onto Cassie's garden bench, my legs suddenly unable to support me. "You're lying."
"I'm not. The car accident was staged, Greyson. Vivian needed to disappear for a while. But we couldn't risk Emma. She's been living with your aunt Margaret in Switzerland."
"No." The word tore from my throat. "No, I identified the bodies. I buried them."
"You identified what we needed you to identify. What you believed you saw." His voice softened slightly. "We couldn't tell you, son. Your grief had to be real. Your rage, your isolation it all had to be genuine, or people would have suspected."
"Suspected what?"
"That Vivian was still alive. Still legally your wife. Still entitled to half of everything you own." He paused, letting that sink in. "Including your shares in O'Malley Group."
The pieces clicked together with horrifying clarity. "The Hunter Maritime takeover."
"Exactly. As long as you remained unmarried, remained the grieving widower, your shares stayed consolidated under family control. The moment you showed signs of moving on..."
"You needed to remind me I was still legally married." I laughed, but there was no humor in it. " You let me believe my wife and daughter were dead for three years so I wouldn't remarry and dilute your control."
"It was for the greater good of the family business."
"The greater good?" I stood abruptly, pacing across the garden. "I've been in therapy for three years! I've been on antidepressants, having nightmares!"
"now you know they weren't your fault."
"They never happened!" I shouted, not caring if Cassie heard me. "Where is she? Where's Emma?"
"Safe. Happy. She thinks you're dead too, Greyson. It was easier that way."
The cruelty of it stole my breath. My three-year-old daughter, who used to climb into my lap for bedtime stories, thought her father was dead.
"I want to see her."
"That's... complicated now."
"Why? because of Cassie?"
"The Hunter situation, yes. Your relationship with Cassandra throws a wrench into years of careful planning." He sighed, sounding tired. "We
needed Hunter Maritime weakened. Having their daughter fall in love with you was supposed to give us inside information. Instead, you've actually fallen in love with her."
" that's a problem?"
"It is when she's the key to everything we've worked for." His voice hardened again. "It's fair game now, Greyson. Your loyalty should be to family first."
"My loyalty is to Emma."
"Then prove it. Help us finish what we started with Hunter Maritime. Use your influence with Cassandra to ensure the takeover goes smoothly. when it's over, you can have your daughter back. Liam is Jake's boy. "
The threat was implicit but clear: cooperate, or never see Emma again.
"You bastard," I whispered.
"I'm a father protecting his family's legacy. Same as Hunter." He paused. "You have forty-eight hours to decide, son. Help us, or lose everything."
The line went dead.
I stood in Cassie's garden, surrounded by the beauty she'd cultivated, and felt like I was drowning. The nightmares that had tormented me weren't about loss; they were about separation. My subconscious had been trying to tell me what my conscious mind couldn't accept: Emma was alive, and I was being kept from her.
The sound of the shower turning off inside the house reminded me that I had another impossible choice to make. I could tell Cassie the truth about Emma, about Vivian, about the fact that I was still legally married. But doing so would destroy any chance we had together.
Or I could keep lying, keep playing the role of the grieving widower, and hope I could find a way to protect both Emma and Cassie.
Neither option felt like something I could live with.
I walked back toward the house, my phone buzzing with a text message. The number was unfamiliar, but the message made my blood freeze:
Daddy? Uncle Patrick showed me your picture. He says you might come visit soon. I can't wait to meet you! - Emma
Below the text was a photo that stopped my heart: a little girl with my eyes and Vivian's dark blonde hair, older now, twelve, holding a drawing of a stick figure family. In the drawing, a little girl stood between two adults—one labeled "Mama" and one labeled "Daddy."
Even in her art, even believing I was dead, she'd included me in her family.
I sank onto the porch steps, staring at the photo through blurred vision. My daughter was alive, was thinking about me, was hoping to meet me. And I was trapped in a web of lies.
When Cassie emerged from the house twenty minutes later, dressed in a flowing sundress that made her look like something from a dream, she found me still staring at my phone.
"Everything okay?" she asked, settling beside me on the steps.
I looked at her this woman who'd brought light back into my world, who'd made me believe in love again—and made the coward's choice.
"Just some business calls," I lied. "Nothing that can't wait."
She smiled and leaned against my shoulder, trusting and warm and completely unaware that the man she was falling in love with was still legally married to a woman she believed was dead.
"Good," she said. " I was thinking we could spend the day planning our counterattack against our meddling families. What do you say we show them that some things are more important than business?"
"Absolutely," I said, wrapping my arm around her while my phone burned in my other hand like evidence of my betrayal.
I would find a way to save Emma, to save us, to beat my family at their own game. I had to figure out how to live with myself while I was still lying to the woman I loved about everything that mattered.