Page 8 of His Son's Wife
A few hours’drive meant little to a man with both a driver and a pilot on standby.
The front door opened before I reached the stairs.
Asher Kersey stood there.
Gabriel resembled him enough that the future suddenly felt less abstract. Same dark hair. Same height. Same sharp features.
But where Gabriel carried charm easily, his father wore restraint like armour.
Forty-three shouldn’t have looked like that.
Yet somehow he did.
“Come in,” he said, already turning away.
I blinked at his back.
“Hello, Sayla. Lovely to see you. Yes, I’m very well, thank you for asking,” I muttered under my breath as I stepped inside.
The door shut behind me with a heavy final sound.
I reminded myself why I was here.
Sign the prenuptial agreement or Gabriel lost access to the family money.
Father of the Year. Truly.
I inhaled deeply. Money didn’t matter. It never did. I loved Gabriel for who he was and I wouldn’t let his father harm him because he chose to marry me.
I rushed after him, heels clipping on the wooden floor.
In the hallway.
Around the corner.
Stairs.
Another hallway.
Then he stepped into a room and I followed.
An office. Or something between an office and a library—bookshelves that climbed almost to the ceiling, packed with volumes that looked read rather than decorative, though I told myself they were probably just for show. A power move. The kind of room designed to make people feel small before the conversation had even started.
It was working.
I took the time to study him while he sifted through papers without acknowledging me.
His hair was thick and dark like mine but with a slight wave to it, kept in place with something that caught the light. He wore a formal suit—even in the photographs Gabriel had shown me it was always a suit, always immaculate, never a hair out of place. His money was in property or development, I wasn’t entirely sure. Self made, though Gabriel had mentioned once that there’d been something to start with—family money, a foundation to build on. The kind of head start that got quietly forgotten once the empire grew large enough.
Gabriel had told me his father was closed off. Cold.
I’d tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But standing here, watching him read through papers as though I hadn’t just clipped across three hallways and a staircase to keep up with him, I couldn’t find another word for it.
Apathetic.
He simply didn’t care.
