Maybe he did, in his selfish and immature and ruinous way.

“I loved you too,” I said.

“More than you will ever know.

And that’s why it took me so long to understand the last thing I had to understand.

Loving someone doesn’t mean you’re required to keep living beside the person who destroyed you.”

The divorce was finalized two months later.

I did not fight for a share of the Ashford empire; I reclaimed only what had always belonged to the Parkers, and my father’s trust came, at last, into my own hands.

I used part of it to rebuild the companies that had vanished after his death.