Page 203 of Faking Cinderella
“My medical training says he’s on the verge of a stroke,” Lucky replies. “I should probably leave while I still have plausible deniability about walking away from a medical situation.”
“Who the actualfuckare you?” my father demands. “And what the actual fuck do you think you’re doing here?”
Lucky’s hand shoots in the air. “I know! I know this answer. We’re Karla Sullivan’s sons.”
“Remember her?” Jack says.
My father sneers at them. “I have no idea who that is.”
“You fucked her in a hotel room in Denver while your wife was pregnant with Margot,” Decker supplies.
My mother gasps.
“And a DNA test says we’re Margot’s half-brothers, so either you’re our father, or you’re not hers,” Lucky adds.
That finally lands.
“Get out of my house,” my father roars.
Daphne, who hasn’t flinched at all, tucks her arm into mine. “I like them,” she whispers.
“How—” I start.
Her grin keeps growing. “They came looking for you at the burger bus.”
“So here’s how this is gonna go,” Decker says. He and Lucky and Jack are a wall between our parents and Daph and me. “You’re gonna quit your job and retire somewhere that none of us ever have to think about you.”
“You’re also going to give us each fifty million dollars to pay for college, the emotional damage done to our family by your actions toward our mother, and for the horrible way that we had to find out we’re related to such a piece of shit,” Jack adds.
“Oliver made him say that,” Daphne whispers to me. “They don’t actually want money.”
“And if you don’t, we’re going to the press,” Lucky says.
“That too,” Daph murmurs. “But I think they’ll actually do that one.”
“I still love Oliver,” I murmur back. “But not the way you do.”
“Best kind of family. A little dysfunctional, a lot of love.”
I can’t believe she just made me giggle here.
“Also, lose the moose head. That’s gross,” Decker says.
“Why the fuck isn’t Daphne in the family paintings? She’s the best of all of you.” Jack glances back at me. “No offense, Margot.”
“No, no, I fully agree,” I reply.
“You’re going to donate another hundred million to a fund to save the polar bears,” Decker says.
Daph sucks in a breath.
Apparently Oliver didn’t tell them to say that.
Which means?—
I suck in a breath.
Does it mean what I think it means?
