He shifted in his chair, propping his ankle on his knee. “I’ve never stopped loving you, Chloe. Never.”
“Then why, Dad?” I clutched my hands in my lap so I wouldn’t fidget. “Did Mom do something to push you away?”
“No.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s complicated.”
Dad stood, grabbed his glass, and downed the rest of the amber liquid. Then he crossed the room to the bar in the corner for a refill. He kept his back to me.
Anger slowly built in my chest. Why wouldn’t he answer me? He owed me an explanation, and I wasn’t going to leave until I had one.
“Dad,” I said forcefully.
He took a long, slow drink, still keeping his back to me. If he thought he could ignore me and I’d go away, he was wrong. Well, if he wasn’t going to tell me why he abandoned me, maybe he’d tell me more about our family history.
I cleared my throat. “I know about the Zoya witches and the Halstead vampires.”
Dad whipped around, eyes wide. His face was ghost white. “What did you say?”
“I know that you’re descended from a powerful witch named Rector Zoya.” Despite the nerves trampling through my stomach, my voice was steady. “I know he cursed a vampire for killing the woman he loved.”
“How do you know all of that?” His voice was barely audible, but it sounded like a bullhorn in the silent room.
“I found some stuff in the boxes of pictures. A journal and some family trees.” Feeling empowered, I stood. “Who’s Samara Rose?”
He muttered a string of curses. “I thought I’d gotten rid of all that junk.” Dad downed the rest of his drink in one large gulp, and then refilled his glass. He shook his head. “Jesus Christ.”
My patience wore thin, and I curled my hands into fists.
“Who else knows about this?” he asked.
“No one,” I said quickly. “Are you Frank Miller?”
He swirled his drink around in the glass, the ice clicking against the sides of the tumbler. “I never wanted to have this conversation with you.” He took a sip. “Everything I did was to prevent this exact thing.”
“What?”
“I never knew about the Zoya until my grandfather was on his deathbed.” He took another drink and then moved to sit on the bench that was situated beneath the window. Hanging his head, he heaved a loud sigh. “He told me and my father this ridiculous story about witches and vampires…” He brought the tumbler to his lips, hesitated, then lowered it without taking a drink. His hand trembled.
“My father dismissed it as nothing more than a dying old man who’d lost his mind.” Dad grunted. “But I was young and curious. I read the journals he’d kept, and it was enough for me to realize there was some truth to what he’d told to us. I tried to convince my father to take it seriously, but he wouldn’t.”
I remained frozen in place, afraid if I moved he’d stop talking. “So… what happened?” I whispered.
“I went off to college. Met your mother.” He lifted his head and smiled faintly. “I forgot all about witches and vampires and curses. Until I married your mother and we found out she was pregnant with you.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, waiting for him to continue.
“I still wasn’t sure if any of it was true, but when I found out I was going to have a daughter, I wasn’t willing to take any chances. I legally changed my last name to Madison.”
I exhaled loudly, the weight of his admission hanging over us like a black cloud. He’d just confirmed what I already knew—I was the female descendant capable of breaking the Halstead curse.
“Figured if it was true, it would be harder for anyone to trace your lineage with yet another name change,” he said. He took a long drink, his gaze focused somewhere behind me. “A woman visited me right after you turned seven. Her name was Samara Rose, and she was a witch.”
I momentarily closed my eyes. Part of me regretted asking him about any of this, but my need to know outweighed anything else. Slowly, I lowered myself back into the chair and gripped the armrests.
“What does that have to do with you leaving us?” I asked.
“Everything. She came for you, Chloe. She wanted you so she could hand you over to those filthy Halsteads. She wanted them to change you into what they are, to make you a bloodsucking monster so she could restore the magical balance.”
That was the witch Trent had told me about…
“When Rector invoked the power of his ancestors, he tipped the magical balance. All the good, responsible witches were angry, and one of them sought us out. She said she was aware of the curse and had been watching closely, waiting for us to reset the balance. But her coven had been weakened by the Zoya magic, and she couldn’t continue to do nothing. So, she offered to help us find a descendant, and she claims she found one, but she wouldn’t tell us who or where. She wanted to seek her out without the Zoya knowing, so she left. We never saw her again.”
“She made the mistake of telling me that she was the only one who knew the truth about me. About you,” he said, his voice oddly detached. “And I saw a way to make sure the truth about who you were stayed hidden.”
I opened my mouth, but I was speechless. My jaw snapped shut, and I slouched in the chair.
“You were just a kid,” he said, looking up at me with sad eyes. “I wasn’t going to let her take you.”
My stomach twisted into a tight knot, and bile rose thick and heavy in my throat. “What did you do?” I
