His eyes narrowed. “Then prove it.”
I almost smiled.
Because I could see the real reason he’d come tonight.
It wasn’t nostalgia.
It wasn’t regret.
It was desperation.
“Why are you really here?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
I watched him for a long beat, then said the words like sliding a knife into silk.
“Monroe Engineering is failing.”
His throat tightened. A flicker of rage crossed his face—because he hated being seen through.
“We’re restructuring,” he snapped.
I nodded slowly. “How bad?”
Silence.
Then, finally, the truth crawled out of him.
“We have investors pulling out,” he admitted. “Contracts in jeopardy. The logistics division is under scrutiny.”
I held my gaze steady. “Because the product doesn’t work without me.”
He flinched like I’d slapped him.
“Autumn—”
“No,” I cut in softly, colder than steel. “You took the code, but you didn’t take the mind that built it.”
His shoulders stiffened. “We can make a deal.”
Of course.
Everything with him was a deal.
He leaned in like he was back in a boardroom, trying to buy what he couldn’t earn.
“You come back,” he said. “We fix this. We put your name on it. We make you family again.”
Family again.
As if family was a title he could revoke and restore depending on my usefulness.
I exhaled slowly.
And then I said the words that made his entire face change.
“No.”
His eyes widened. “You’re making a mistake.”
I smiled faintly. “You taught me that line.”
He took a step closer, voice urgent now, cracking at the edges. “Autumn. If Monroe Engineering collapses—”
“You’ll lose everything,” I finished.
He went still.
Because he heard it.
Not as concern.
As satisfaction.
Leia’s laughter floated from the party behind us, carefree, ignorant.
My father swallowed. “What do you want?”
Ah.
There it was.
The part where the king realizes the pawn has reached the other side of the board.
I looked past him, out at Manhattan, lights pulsing like a heartbeat.
“I want you to understand something,” I said quietly. “You don’t get to steal my work, erase my place, humiliate me in public… and then come crawling back when you need me.”
His jaw clenched. “You’re enjoying this.”
I turned my eyes back to him, calm and deadly.
“No,” I said. “I’m finally not suffering.”
He stared at me, breathing hard, like he couldn’t process that I wasn’t begging.
That I wasn’t pleading.
That I wasn’t trying to be chosen.
And then he whispered, almost to himself:
“You really don’t need me.”
I held his gaze.
“I never did,” I said.
The silence between us wasn’t just quiet.
It was the sound of a dynasty cracking.
Behind him, the party kept sparkling.
Champagne kept pouring.
Investors kept smiling.
But my father stood there on that terrace like a man staring at the edge of a cliff he didn’t realize he’d been walking toward.
I leaned in slightly, voice soft enough to feel like a secret.
“I’m not here to destroy you,” I said.
Hope flickered in his eyes.