Frank Fuentes placed the slim folder beside his champagne and let the silence settle before he continued.
My father was still smiling, but only technically.
I knew that expression.
I had watched him use it through bad meetings, uncomfortable questions, and moments when someone across a conference table knew more than he expected them to know.
The difference was that this time, the conference table was covered in white roses, his favorite daughter was wearing a wedding gown, and nearly everyone whose opinion mattered to him was watching.
Frank looked toward me.
“Lucy and I met professionally several years ago,” he said.
“Her firm has advised people I trust, and I’ve had occasion to rely on her judgment myself.”
My father blinked.
Sarah’s hand dropped from Michael’s arm.
Michael looked from Frank to me.
“You know each other through business?”
Frank nodded.
“Very much so.”
There was nothing dramatic in his delivery.
That was what made it worse for my family.
He wasn’t defending me out of sentiment.
He wasn’t rescuing a wounded woman because a wedding had become uncomfortable.
He was stating a fact.
In the world my father respected above almost everything else, I already existed.
And I had existed without him.
My father recovered first.
“Well, of course,” he said, spreading one hand as if this were pleasant news he had somehow forgotten to mention.
“Lucy has always been ambitious.”
The sentence almost made me laugh.
Ten years earlier, ambition had not been the word he used.
He had called me embarrassing.
Unmarketable.
The ugly graduate.
Now that Frank Fuentes knew my professional reputation, apparently I had merely been ambitious all along.
Frank’s gaze rested on him for a beat too long.
“Ambitious isn’t the word I would use,” he said.
“Disciplined, perhaps.
Careful.
Particularly about conflicts of interest.”
Something changed in my father’s face.
Small.
Fast.
But I saw it.
So did Michael.
Frank touched two fingers to the folder.
“A few weeks ago, my office began preliminary discussions concerning Martinez Holdings.”
There it was.
The partnership.
My father’s reason for floating from table to table all night with a smile brighter than the chandeliers.
Nobody moved.
Frank continued.
“When Lucy’s firm became aware that our team was looking at outside advisers for parts of the review, she disclosed immediately that she was related to the Martinez family.”
Michael slowly turned toward Sarah.
Sarah stared at me.
I could almost see her replaying the last few weeks in her head: the invitation, my arrival, Dad’s urgency, the way he had kept me away from the Fuentes table.
Frank went on.
“She also said she had been estranged from the family for ten years and would not participate in any assessment involving her father’s company.
She stepped away before anyone asked her to.”
My father’s mouth opened.
Frank raised one hand.
