Jenna Black - Resistance

Natestared at his father, his mind unable—or, more likely, unwilling—to grasp what he had just heard. “Your daughter,” he repeated, trying the words on for size.

His father nodded. “By a different mother.”

If his father had a sense of humor, Nate would have accused him of playing a spectacularly unfunny practical joke. Surely he was misunderstanding what his father was saying to him. He looked at Dorothy again and noticed that her eyes were the same shade of cold gray as his father’s. The curve of her chin and her arrow-straight nose were like softened versions of the Chairman’s, as if a craftsman had filed away all the rough edges.

Nate shook his head in an effort to deny what his eyes were telling him. “No.”

“I’m sorry, son,” the Chairman said. “I couldn’t think of any good way to tell you about this.”

“She’s an impostor!” Nate snapped, glaring at Dorothy, who was obviously enjoying what she was seeing and hearing.

“I can show you the DNA test if you’d like. She’s not an impostor. I told you before that your mother and I had a falling out, and I admitted that it was my fault, that I was unfaithful. Dorothy was the product of that infidelity. For many years, I didn’t know about her—”

“Oh, and now she just happens to appear in your life after Mom died? How convenient.”

“No, son. She appeared in my life about ten years ago, when she was thirteen and her mother was beginning to consider her marriage prospects.”

Nate swallowed hard, feeling like he was about to be sick. Ten years ago. Right about the time Ellie Hayes left her husband and her son and shut herself behind the walls of the retreat forever.

“That’s when your mother found out about the affair,” the Chairman continued. “It was ugly, to say the least. She was so very angry…” His eyes lost focus for a moment, as if he were haunted by the memory. “I’m sure you remember what a battleground our home became in the weeks before your mother left. Once the DNA tests came back and confirmed that Dorothy truly was my daughter, I wanted to acknowledge her, and give her all the rights and privileges that the daughter of a Chairman ought to have. Obviously, acknowledging her would cause a scandal, but I would hardly be the first Chairman to have had a child out of wedlock.”

“But you didn’t acknowledge her.”

The Chairman shook his head. “Your mother wouldn’t stand for it. She threatened to make a public spectacle of our marital difficulties. She even insinuated that Dorothy or her mother might meet with an unfortunate accident if I were to publicly acknowledge paternity.”

Once again, Nate shook his head, as if by denying what his father was telling him, he could make it not be true. His memories of his mother had dimmed over time, and he’d been angry with her for so long that he was sure it had colored what memories he had. But no matter what, he couldn’t imagine the mother he had known threatening to have an innocent child killed.

“She would never have done that!” Nate said, willing it to be so.

The Chairman pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture that made him look almost vulnerable. “She was not herself at the time. I honestly don’t know what she would have done if we hadn’t reached a compromise.”

“A compromise?”

“I agreed that I would not acknowledge Dorothy as my daughter for as long as your mother lived. And she agreed that she wouldn’t attempt to humiliate our family or harm Dorothy. But our marriage was over, and she preferred to spend her time in a retreat than to live with me. Dorothy and her mother have been living abroad ever since, and I have been supporting them.”

“And now that your mother has freed him from their agreement,” Dorothy said with a gleeful smile, “I can finally be my father’s daughter for real.”

None of this is true, Nate told himself. He didn’t care what the DNA test said, or how much she resembled the Chairman—Dorothy was not his daughter.

It wasn’t impossible to imagine that the Chairman could have kept a secret for all these years—keeping secrets was one of his most polished skills—but not one like this. Not when he was paying for Dorothy’s upkeep. Not when Nate’s mother must have had friends she would have poured her heart out to, friends who would have let the secret slip. There would have been at least a rumor of Dorothy’s existence if there were even a kernel of truth in this whole ridiculous story.

Most damning of all was that Dorothy was older than Nate. Sure, she was illegitimate, and that made Nate legally his father’s heir by default. But thanks to the laws of primogeniture, his father could easily bypass the default succession and name Dorothy as his heir. And if his father could have done that, he would have been holding the threat of disinheritance over Nate’s head for his whole life.

His father had never once suggested that someone other than Nate would be the next Chairman of Paxco; therefore, there was no other potential heir. And that meant Dorothy was an impostor—and his father knew it.

Nate drew himself up into his tallest, most dignified stance and met his father’s eyes, dismissing Dorothy from his attention altogether.

“I don’t know who that woman is,” Nate said, his voice calm and uninflected, “but she isn’t your daughter. If she were your daughter, you certainly wouldn’t be introducing her into society during my mother’s funeral. Even you aren’t that much of an asshole.”

Dorothy gave a gasp of outrage, but there was too much satisfaction in her eyes for it to be convincing.

“How dare you talk to our father that way?” she cried. “He deserves more respect than that, both as our father and as the Chairman of Paxco.”

The Chairman laid a calming hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, Dorothy,” he said. “He’s understandably upset.”

Suddenly, the vibe in the room felt even weirder. Chairman Hayes was not the sort of man to be so understanding—either of Nate’s behavior or Dorothy’s outburst. But if he was in the mood to pardon bad behavior, then Nate was in the mood to take advantage of it.

Nate sneered at Dorothy. “Why don’t you go back to whatever hole you crawled out of and stay there. Showing up at my mother’s funeral is so far beyond tacky there’s no good word for it.”

“Daddy invited me,” she replied with a smirk. “I’m his firstborn, and we’ve been kept apart for too long.”

A chill traveled down Nate’s spine as he caught the subtle implications of her words and the emphasis with which she delivered them. Dorothy was fully aware of her potential place in the line of succession. And she had ambitions.

Nate had always been secure in the knowledge that his father needed him, but Dorothy’s arrival said the Chairman was doing everything he could to change that. To make Nate as expendable to him as Nadia.

“Is that what this is all about?” he asked his father. “You’re so sick of me you’re grooming a new heir?”

“Don’t be absurd. You’re my heir, and introducing Dorothy into society won’t change that.” Dorothy smiled a we’ll-see-about-that smile, then had the nerve to wink when Nate glared. The Chairman either didn’t notice the byplay or chose to ignore it. “For your information, the reason I’m introducing her here, even though I know it seems tactless, is that it’s the only time I will have so many of the top Paxco Executives gathered together without the press. I will, of course, have to notify the press about her, but I believe my Executives should learn about it in a more private manner.”