with his nose and eyes, and Sabine’s hair and smile.
The weight of having a birds’ eye view of his life splitting down two paths, one where he hadn’t sent the letter, one where he had, folded him over his knees.
Lacey shifted beside him. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
Victor didn’t even look up as she walked across the room and out the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I’m going to be your boss. The words had circled his head as Victor put himself through gut-busting rounds of press-ups, burpees, and pull-ups to stop himself from chasing after Lacey. The burn in his muscles and lungs almost distracted him from the revelation but did nothing to distract him from their kiss.
Lacey was going to be the CEO. Every time he opened the intranet, every major announcement, every organizational road would lead to her. She would be amazing. More than. She would be phenomenal. She would be a shooting star. He gave it six months before he couldn’t walk past a newsstand that didn’t have a glowing profile of her in some business publication.
She would be surrounded by the best minds, the smartest people, the highest flyers.
And what was he? A lobbyist with a daughter from a one-night stand that he hadn’t even met. He wasn’t enough for Lacey before, and he would never be enough for her now.
Pressing his face into his T-shirt, he scrubbed the cotton from his forehead to his chin. He didn’t even waste time pretending he wasn’t hiding. Hiding from the sound of Lacey driving away, hiding from his mother, whose slow-earned faith he was about to shatter. Hiding from once again being the person who let everyone down and broke their family.
Lacey was better off without him. His family was better off without him. His daughter could well be better off without him. But at least with her, if Sabine let him, he had a chance to be something good. Even if it was only being a part-time father.
A knock came at his door, and he opened it. Probably his mum wondering why he hadn’t been down for breakfast.
“Hey. Do you have a second?” His sister-in-law stood in the hallway, dark circles under her eyes, indicating she’d had about as much sleep as him.
Victor stepped back to let her in. “Sure.”
Emelia looked down the hallway then half stepped into his room, just past the door frame. Like she wasn’t supposed to be here. Which was probably true if Peter was even ten percent as mad as he’d been the night before. “Your mum called a family meeting.”
“She what?” The last family meeting that had been called had been after the infamous poker event, when their parents told Peter and him they were separating so they didn’t kill each other.
Emelia shrugged. “That’s all I know. It’s in ten minutes. I said I’d come tell you.”
“Okay.”
His sister-in-law looked at the ground for a second. “I called Sabine.”
“You what?”
Emelia shifted on her feet, her fingers pulling at the hem of her T-shirt. “Lacey mentioned you don’t know what your daughter’s name is, and I had Sabine’s number from when we worked on that fundraiser, so I called her. It didn’t feel right that you didn’t even know her name.”
“And?”
“Her name is Peyton, and she just turned three.”
“Peyton.” Victor tested the name out, connecting it to the face he’d seen on Sabine’s phone.
“Peyton Carlisle Montclair.”
Victor blinked. Then blinked again. But that didn’t do anything to stop the sudden moisture build-up in his eyes. “She has my name?”
Emelia’s hands twisted over each other. “Sabine said she’d always intended to tell you. But you were in rehab. By the time you got out, she’d convinced herself it was better for everyone if you didn’t know.”
Victor scrubbed his hand over his head. “She announced her retirement from rowing while I was in rehab. I remember reading about it.” Everything clicked into place. Sabine’s retirement, the two-year break, followed by her return to rowing last year. She’d always been reserved about her private life. While some of her teammates supplemented their income with TV appearances and tell-all interviews to tabloids, Sabine never had. Leaving the GB squad meant her pregnancy and Peyton’s birth got no media attention.
Emelia tapped her phone and held it out to him. “She sent me a photo for you to show your parents.” His daughter, with hair in pigtails, grinned back at him. It was the photo on Sabine’s home screen. “I’ll send it to you.”