You didn’t fail to love me because you didn’t know my father’s name.
You failed to love me because a name was the only thing about a person you had ever learned to value.”
And there it was — the whole tragedy of him in a single sentence.
A man who had spent his life so certain that worth was a thing conferred from the outside, by fortunes and family names, that he had stood inside a marriage to a woman who possessed exactly what he worshipped and never once seen her, because she’d arrived without the label he needed in order to look.
He hadn’t been fooled by my disguise.
He had simply proven, every single day for six years, that the disguise was the only part of a person he knew how to read.
He dropped back to his knees, reaching for the last card he had.
“We can start over.
Seraphina manipulated me — I was confused — please, Talia, for Poppy’s sake, one more chance.”
I looked down at my daughter, safe in her grandfather’s arms.