Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,58

her gaze away from the ocean to look at me. “I—what?”

“Who’s my dad?”

She blinked at me like she was wondering if the car crash had left me with an undiagnosed brain injury, then said slowly, “Leonard Parker.”

Leo. Everyone called him Leo.

Not that the man who’d raised me in Idaho had found himself blessed with a lot of friends, but the few acquaintances he’d made had always called him Leo.

“Did you ever meet him?” I asked, not bothering to clarify that I wasn’t asking because I’d forgotten the man’s name.

I just wasn’t sure he was my real father.

Her brows drew together, and she sat up a little straighter in her chair. “No. We learned about him after Charlotte left Roseland. I always assumed she’d kept him a secret from us because she was ashamed of him—when she found out she was pregnant, she never would tell us who the father was, no matter how hard we pressed.”

“You never saw him?” I leaned toward her. “Not once? You never heard his name until after she was gone?”

Jacqueline gazed at me suspiciously, confusion crossing her features. “No. Never. We didn’t even know she was in Sand Valley until several years after she left, and we didn’t learn Leonard’s name until after she died. What is this about, Talia?”

“Nothing. Just wondering.”

I sank back into my seat, turning to face the water again. I could feel my grandmother’s curious gaze burning into me, but I didn’t look back at her.

My father—the man who had raised me—had never told me about Roseland or my grandparents. He had certainly never mentioned living here himself.

It was possible he had lived here, that he’d met my mother here, and that he’d kept all that from me. It was possible he and my mom had been in some kind of hidden relationship, and that she’d moved away with him when she’d left California and her family behind.

But wasn’t it also possible that my dad—that Leo—hadn’t talked about Roseland because he hadn’t known about it? That someone else had been the father my mom had refused to name?

Jacqueline had said it herself—Adam Pierce wasn’t of the same “caliber” as her daughter and her friends.

So why would my mom ever tell her that he was the man who had gotten her pregnant?

Chapter 16

I stayed for dinner at Philip and Jacqueline’s house, but I called Elijah before we ate to invite him too. I knew the guys didn’t mind driving me around—they insisted on it, actually—but I felt like an asshole making him wait that long to take me back to Oak Park.

That didn’t ease any of my nerves about having him over for dinner though.

I wasn’t sure how much Jacqueline had heard about the Princes from the Roseland rumor mill, but I was positive she’d picked up at least snippets of the shit that Adena had broadcast to the world. And considering Jacqueline’s tendency to judge people almost solely on their social standing, I was more than a little afraid she’d be a bitch to Elijah.

But she obviously didn’t know that his parents had threatened to transfer his inheritance to his younger brother, because she treated him like fucking royalty. And Elijah knew just how to handle her, how to handle the serving staff and the fancy silverware and all of it. Sometimes I forgot how perfectly he’d been groomed by his parents, brought up with the singular purpose of upholding the family name.

No fucking pressure or anything.

He slipped into the role so easily and completely that it almost broke my heart—knowing how much he hated it. He had been stuffed into a mold by his parents, and even though he fit inside it perfectly now, that was only because they’d broken parts of him to make him fit.

Philip was friendly in a more real way than Jacqueline, and the whole dinner was, on a surface level at least, pleasant.

And I counted that as a win.

On the way back to Oak Park, Elijah fiddled with the buttons on the dash until a sweet song came on the radio. Then he reached over and threaded his fingers through mine, lifting our joined hands to his lips.

The warmth of his breath traveled over my skin before he pressed a kiss to my knuckles, and I closed my eyes, feeling a sort of contentment wash over me.

If I ignored the fact that the queen bitch of school was out for my blood, that I wasn’t sure who my real father was anymore, that unanswered questions