Lethal Wedding (Wedlocked Trilogy Book 2) - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,6

into my father's hospital room and look at a man that I don't even recognize.

When I was a child, my father was a God, tall, powerful, and completely invincible. But laying there in that hospital gown with the pillow propped up behind his head, he looks tired and worn out.

He forces a smile, and I force one back. I take his hand and ask him how he's feeling. He tries to sit up, but he doesn't have the strength.

He seems to have aged a decade in only a few days.

"I'm glad that you're feeling better,” I say, patting his hand.

"Thank you for coming, it's good to see you,” he says.

We don't talk about anything significant and just keep each other company for a while.

I don't remember the last time my father and I spent any significant time together. Honestly, ever since I started graduate school, I have been avoiding him.

I knew that he didn't approve but he paid my tuition despite it. It's a private university, and he barely noticed the $40,000 a year, but it was really a matter of principle.

He didn't want me "wasting my time pursuing things that didn't add to the bottom line," as he had called it.

The thing is that for him, passion and money were aligned. He wanted to start this business and it just happened to be a media company, and media companies just happen to make money, if they are run properly. But it's not like that at all pursuits, and that was something that he couldn't understand.

Occasionally, I glance back at the door to his room, keenly aware of the fact that there are two police officers stationed right outside.

This place isn’t bugged, my father's investigators did their daily sweep only an hour before I arrived. We can talk about anything and everything that we want, at least for the time being, but the difficulty is approaching the subject, that's a little hard to stomach.

"Thank you for coming, Aurora," my father says, looking straight into my eyes.

While everything about him has aged, somehow his eyes have not.

"Of course," I say with a casual shrug. "I'm here for you, no matter what."

He smiles a little and looks out of the window.

“What, you don't believe me?" I ask.

"No, it's not that,” he says, waving his hand, his body suddenly invigorated.

“I know that this is a difficult time for you," my father says. “The thing is that I know that we are asking you to do a very difficult thing.”

He is avoiding saying the words directly, but we both know what he is getting at.

"Tell me what's going on, Daddy."

He shakes his head no.

"Please," I insist. "You've kept me in the dark for a long time."

He shakes his head again and then looks up at me, focusing his gaze on mine.

"That's not exactly what happened," he says. "Don't you remember?"

Now it's my turn to shrug and look away.

"You made it perfectly clear that you had no interest in being involved with Tate Media and we tried to keep you out of it for as long as possible."

"I appreciate that," I say. "But I would have much preferred a vice president position rather than a wife to the owner."

"That may be the case," Dad says, trying to sit up again. This time he succeeds. "But the thing is that you weren't involved earlier and things happened the way that they happened."

"What exactly is going on?"

He clears his throat and then says, "We are in real trouble, pumpkin. Things have not been going well for some time. I've been trying to keep things afloat by telling the investors what they wanted to hear and hoping that I could get things to turn around, but I have not been as successful as I had wished."

He pauses for a moment and I wait for him to continue.

"Franklin Parks is the only one who can help us," Dad says. "He has connections that are… well, they are astonishing. He knows everybody and everybody owes him. That's why those charges were pressed so quickly. That's why they arrested me in the way that they did and that's why they were dropped just as fast afterward."

"But what does he want?" I ask.

I adjust my seat on the edge of my father's bed, trying to get comfortable without squishing him or any of the tubes running in and out of him.

"He wants you."

Dad and I have never talked about anything this private before. I mean, he knows that I have dated guys