Page 144 of Pink Ink

I whip my head toward the movement at the corner of my vision to find Reyna looking at Shepherd like she’s seeing a ghost. His expression is of sheer, inexplicable panic.

I glance between them. The resemblance hits me for the first time: the rich shade of their eyes, the identical flick of their brows, the curve of their chins, even the little cleft in their noses.

“Dad?”

“Reyna,”Shepherd gasps.

MADDOX

What the fuck?

REYNA

Dad holsters his gun under his suit jacket. “You shouldn’t be here.”

I blink, processing what he’s saying.He’s real.

“Ishouldn’t be here? You’re meant to bedead.”

“He’syour sperm donor?” Maddox chimes, just as shocked.

The gun is back out of the holster and pointed straight at Maddox before he has the chance to step toward me. “Your father tried to kill my daughter. An eye for an eye,” my dad tells him.

I can’t bring myself to question why Dad’s got a gun or why he’s standing there.

He’s alive.

He shouldn’tbealive.

He died two years ago in a car accident.

Maddox holds his hands up. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but your daughter isn’t dead.”

“Whyaren’t you dead?” I sound more disappointed than someone who just found out her father is alive should. “Mom died.”

His eyes soften, and I can almost see the same pain Mom felt for him when he died. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Sorry?

Fury hot and rapid rips through my veins. Mom’s dead, and he’s not. She’s fuckingdead, and she’s not coming back. But him? He’s standing right in front of me, suited up and clean-shaven like her passing meant nothing to him. Like the death of my only real parent meant fuckingnothing.

She tried to blame her moods on the chemo, but I knew it was because the love of her life was dead, and there was nothing I could do to fill the hole he left in her heart.

Tremors shake my fist. I can’t stand looking at him—breathing the same fucking air as him after everything he’s done.

“My mother died with a broken heart, and you weren’t fucking there,” I spit.

I lost the wrong parent.

His throat bobs. “I couldn’t—”

“I had to sit in the hospital room all alone and watch my mother die. And you weren’t there,” I repeat. “I had toburyher the same way I had to buryyou. Except that time, I was alone. And you. Weren’t.There.” I choke back rage-filled tears. “I lost everything, and where were you? Huh? Where thefuckwere you?” I scream.

The silence stretches as I wait for the answer. The room’s temperature is rising, blanketing my body with a cloying feeling that makes it hard to breathe through.

“It was for your safety.”

I gape at him, hardly believing my own ears. “Safety? You think I gave a shit aboutsafetywhen I lost everything I cared about? Mom’s last words to me were that I shouldn’t cry for her because she’ll finally be reunited withyou.” I sneer. “You without your work. Without secrets. Without anything getting in the way of your relationship. Mom died thinking that you’d be the first person she saw once she got to the other side, andyou aren’t there.”