Chapter 120 What do title does she hold
Greyson
I woke up in my childhood bedroom, sunlight streaming through windows I'd stared out of countless times as a boy, dreaming of the day I'd be free of this house and everything it represented. The irony wasn't lost on me,here I was, thirty-four years old, and still trapped in my father's web.
The night before was a blur of carefully controlled conversation and implicit threats. My father's men had escorted me here "for my own protection," they'd said, though we all knew the truth. I was being held until my father got what he wanted from me.
I reached for my phone on the nightstand, desperate to check if Cassie had called, but it was gone. Of course it was.
"Looking for this Greyson?"
I turned to find my father standing in the doorway, my phone in his hand.
"Where is she?" I asked, not bothering with pleasantries.
"Safe. Having breakfast with young Aiden Massa, last I heard." He stepped into the room, settling into the chair by the window with the casual authority he'd always possessed. "He's quite taken with her, apparently."
The words hit me like a physical blow, but I kept my expression neutral. "What do you want, Dad?"
"The same thing I've wanted for years, son. For you to stop running from who you are."
" who am I, exactly?"
"An O'Malley." He leaned forward, his blue eyes—so like my own—intense and unwavering. "The heir to everything I've built. The bridge between the old world and the new."
I stood and walked to the window, looking out at the sprawling grounds of the estate where I'd grown up. It was beautiful in an intimidating way, all manicured perfection and underlying menace. "I never asked to be your heir."
"No, but you were born to it anyway." His voice was quiet, almost gentle. "Greyson, I know you think I'm a monster. That what we do is wrong. But everything I've built, I've built for you. For our family."
"Our family?" I turned to face him. "You mean the family you destroyed when you drove Emma away?"
Something flickered across his face—pain, maybe, or regret. "Is that what you think happened?"
"I know what happened. I lived it."
"You lived part of it." He stood and joined me at the window. "Tell me, son, when did you last speak to Vivian? Really speak to her?"
The question caught me off guard. "She's dead, Dad. You know that."
"Is she?"
The quiet words sent ice through my veins. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that sometimes the stories we tell ourselves to survive aren't the same as the truth." He pulled out his phone, scrolled through something, then handed it to me. "This was taken three days ago."
The photo on the screen showed a woman with long auburn hair pushing a young girl on a swing in what looked like a public park. The woman was older than I remembered, more mature, but unmistakably Viv and the child...
"Emma is eleven now," my father said quietly. "She looks just like you did at that age."
My legs gave out. I sank into the chair he'd vacated, staring at the image of my supposedly dead wife and the daughter I'd never known existed.
"How?" The word came out as barely a whisper.
"Vivian didn't die in that car accident, Greyson. She was hurt, yes, but not killed. When she woke up in the hospital, she made a choice. She knew about the miscarriage about the son you lost. She knew you were destroying yourself with guilt and grief. And she knew that as long as she stayed, you'd never be free to make your own decisions about the family business."
"So she just... left?"
"She disappeared. Changed her name, started over. I've been keeping tabs on her over the years, making sure she and Emma were safe and provided for, but respecting her decision to stay gone."
The phone slipped from my numb fingers. "Emma Liam's younger sister..."
"Your daughter." His voice was gentler than I'd heard it in years. "Emma named her after my mother. She wanted the child to have some connection to family, even if she couldn't have her father."
I couldn't process it. Emma was alive. I had a daughter. Eleven years of believing I'd lost everything, eleven years of guilt and grief and self-destruction, and it had all been based on a lie.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"you need to understand what you're choosing between." He reclaimed his seat, his expression serious. " Viv has agreed to come back, Greyson. She and Emma are on a plane right now. They'll be here this afternoon."
My head snapped up. "What?"
"She wants to try again. To be a family again. But there are conditions."
Of course there were. There were always conditions in my father's world. "What conditions?"
"You take your place in the family business. Full commitment, no more halfhearted participation. You marry Emma properly this time—no more of this living in sin nonsense. And you stop this affair with the architect."
The words hung in the air between us like a death sentence. "Cassie isn't an affair. We're not married because Emma is—was—" I struggled with the tense, my mind reeling.
"You're not married because you refused to accept that Emma was gone and move on with your life," he said firmly. "But now she's not gone. She's coming home. You can have your family back, Greyson. Your daughter can have her father. All it costs is one relationship with a woman who was never really meant for your world anyway."
The casual dismissal of Cassie, of what we'd built together, ignited something fierce in my chest. "You don't understand what she means to me."
"Then explain it to me." He leaned back, his expression shifting from commanding to genuinely curious. "Make me understand why you'd choose her over your own daughter."
"It's not about choosing," I said, standing and pacing to the far wall. "With Emma, even before everything fell apart, I felt like I was constantly performing. Being the son you wanted, the husband she needed, the leader the business required. I was drowning in expectations."
My father's eyebrows rose slightly. "And with this woman it's different?"
"With Cassie..." I stopped, struggling to find words that wouldn't sound like betrayal to Emma's memory. "We lost a baby, Dad. 2 months ago. A miscarriage."
The words hung in the air between us. My father's expression changed, softening in a way I hadn't seen since I was a child.
"I didn't know," he said quietly.
"Of course you didn't. You were too busy orchestrating this reunion to notice that your son was grieving again." The pain was still fresh, still sharp. "here's the thing that would shock you—she didn't leave. She didn't disappear or fake her death or sacrifice herself for my 'greater good.' She stayed. She held me while I fell apart. She cried with me, not for me."
My father was silent, his keen eyes studying my face.
"When I told her I was afraid I was cursed, that everyone I loved either died or left, you know what she said?" I turned to face him fully. "She said that love isn't about avoiding loss. It's about showing up anyway. About choosing each other through the worst moments, not just the best ones."
"Son..."
"She knows who I am, Dad. Not the sanitized version, not the performance. She's seen me at my absolute worst—broken, angry, terrified—and she didn't run. She didn't try to save me from myself. She just... stayed. That's what real love looks like. Not sacrifice, not martyrdom. Just showing up."
For the first time in years, my father looked genuinely shaken. "You think Emma didn't love you?"
"I think Vivian loved the man she thought I could become if I was free from all this." I gestured around the room. "Cassie loves the man I actually am, shadows and all. There's a difference between being loved despite who you are and being loved because of who you are."
My father stood slowly, walking to the window where he stared out at his manicured empire. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than I'd heard it in decades.
"Your mother used to say something similar. About acceptance versus expectation." He glanced back at me. "I thought I was protecting you by hiding you from the worst of this world. Maybe I was just hiding myself from the disappointment of who you might choose to be."
The admission caught me off guard. "Dad..."
"When Viv left—when she chose to disappear rather than fight for your life together,I told myself it proved she wasn't strong enough for our world. But maybe..." He paused, seeming to wrestle with something. "Maybe she just didn't love you the way this Cassie does."
Before I could respond, there was a soft knock on the door. Meagan peered in, her expression carefully neutral.
"Sir? The plane has landed. They're on their way."
"Dad Cassie is it for me .'
" Is she enough?"
"Always ..."
"What title does she hold?"