Page 34 of Rich and Rotten

She giggled as she stood up and kissed my cheek. “I’ll email the realtor tonight to let him know we want to move forward with making an offer. I’m sure we can get the price down some.”

I watched as she switched toward the door, her heels clicking loudly on the floor.

“Love you, Ya.”

“Love you, too. Call me later.”

“Will do.”

I stayed seated after she left and finally got the courage to look into Nazir’s eyes.

“Tata, we need to tal—”

Before he could finish, I hopped up and headed to the front desk to grab my purse. “As much as you want to sit and talk, I’m not there yet.”

“Not about where you are with us––it’s about my daughter.”

“You don’t know that she’s your daughter.”

He tilted his head, staring down into my eyes. “You gonna lie that easy?”

I swung my purse onto my arm and started walking toward the door. “Can we go?”

He nodded and caught up to step in front of me, pulling me behind him. Once we reached the car, he held the door open for me. I settled into the seat and closed my eyes.

Why me, Lord?

Chapter Ten

Tatiana

I felt sick to my stomach as I looked over myself in the mirror.

Today was my wedding day and I was getting married to someone that I didn’t know. Every time I brought it up, my mother or father would remind me that we went to middle school together. Middle school was ages ago, and it wasn’t something that I really never remembered.

If Karin Sterling was someone I was supposed to know and marry, then I would have remembered him. I would have run into his arms and been excited to walk down the aisle to him. Instead, I felt this lump in my throat, and wave of sickness in my stomach. My body was telling me to run away and not go through with this.

As much as I wanted to listen to my body, I also knew that I couldn’t. My father had gone through so much for this wedding and for our marriage. Apparently, it was a union that was always supposed to happen.

The door creaked and I saw my father coming into the room. The photographer followed him as he smiled with this look of pride on his face, taking in the dress that I wore. It was flown in from Italy. A mermaid style dress with beautiful lace flowers that were sewn one by one onto the dress.

My veil floated behind me as I walked with the Sterling crest embroider into the lace. As sad as I was today, I couldn’t deny that I felt beautiful in this dress. The only thing that I kept thinking about was Nazir. How much I wanted it to be him that I was coming down the aisle to.

“Tati, you look beautiful, Baby… like an angel,” he came and gave me a kiss on both of my cheeks, as he looked down at me.

The photographers took pictures of us having our first look as father and daughter. My father quickly dismissed him once he finished doing his how for the photos.

I dropped my smile as I returned back to looking in the mirror. My father looked from behind me as I messed with my hands. In this moment I was resentful of my father. Resenting the life that I could have had. Instead of being seconds away from walking down the aisle, I could have been enjoying college and having fun.

Have love with the love of my life, not sitting here about to vow to love someone that I didn’t even love. How did my mother do this?

“Moving up the wedding date was the smartest thing to do.” He said, from behind me, as I avoided eye contact with him.

I was supposed to have months to prepare for this, and it was slapped right into my face. Forcing me to deal with what I never wanted to deal with in the first place. Instead of being a father, he was treating me like a cash cow. Stock that he could just use whenever he wanted.

“Why do I have to do this?” My voice broke, hoping that he would find it in his heart to just love me.

Be my father and not the businessman he had always been. I wanted him to protect me because that was something he had never done before. Instead, he looked at me in the eyes, fixing a loose strand of hair from my updo before smiling.