Page 8 of Damaged Mogul

“In any case, she insisted I try it on. I couldn’t refuse. It fit me like a glove.”

“I’m sure Dior Haute Couture isn’t cheap, but you’ll make a statement tonight.”

“My father forgot my twenty-first birthday a week and a half ago, the dress is retribution.”

Michaela’s jaw drops, her eyes widening in shock.

Shit.

That overshare slipped my lips without my permission.

She frowns. “How is that even possible?”

“That conversation requires half a dozen martinis, and I won’t have time. It’s five o’clock now, and Gage will be here in an hour.”

“Please tell me your father made up for it.”

I hesitate for a moment, and decide to trust this woman with my humiliating secret. “He’s giving me the silent treatment.” I bite the inside of my cheek. “We haven’t spoken to each other or exchanged texts in a week and a half. I sent him a quick text at five a.m. this morning before I left my place. No response.”

Myriad emotions flash in Michaela’s eyes.

The last one being the most heart-wrenching one. Few people know the story of my life because I don’t want to be pitied.

And now, I regret opening up.

“I’ll survive.” I’m lying to myself.

Since it was two-thirty in the morning in Paris by the time I returned to my place after I left my father sitting at the restaurant, I couldn’t call my best friend to lament. I had to suck it up.

One of the best things about New York is that it’s the city that never sleeps. I asked the taxi driver to drop me off at one of my favorite spots. Sorrow curled my stomachwhen I walked through the doors of the bakery, but it dissipated when I inhaled the sweet sugary aroma floating around me.

I bought a pink champagne cake with pink champagne frosting before swinging by a liquor store to purchase a bottle of Dom Pérignon rosé. In the multi-million-dollar brownstone my father bought me to atone for his sins, I licked my wounds.

I celebrated the big 2-1. Alone.

As I numbed my pain with too much champagne, only the poignant vocals of my favorite blue-eyed soul songstress kept me company.

I didn’t choose how I came into this world.

How long will I have to pay the price for being Fisher Edgington’s illegitimate child?

Drunk on Dom Pérignon and high on sugar with my expertly applied makeup a mess because of the river of tears streaming down my face, I cried myself to sleep.

Yeah, Happy Twenty-First Birthday to me?—

Michaela is still staring, dumbfounded.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

I grow more and more uncomfortable each time she bats her long, dark eyelashes.

She reaches out and runs a hand up and down my arm. “Twenty-one is a big deal,” she says in a soft voice. “A big fucking deal, if you ask me.” The expression on her face transforms into something menacing. “I don’t know your father––and I might be out of line––but his behavior is appalling.”

A wave of sadness washes over me. “I’m nothing but a footnote in his manuscript.”