Chapter 9 - THE FATHER MY CHILDREN THOUGHT I WAS
Therapy was humiliating.
Not because therapy is humiliating.
Because my therapist asked obvious questions I had spent years avoiding.
“What do Sophie and Caleb think you do?”
“Business.”
“What kind?”
“They don’t know.”
“Why?”
“Security.”
“Why?”
I hesitated.
“Because some parts of my family history are complicated.”
“Do they think people are afraid of you?”
Silence.
“Yes.”
“Who taught them that?”
Vanessa.
Then I stopped.
No.
I had too.
The guards.
The drivers.
People calling me sir.
Doors opening.
Adults lowering voices when I entered.
Children absorb hierarchy before vocabulary.
I began changing things.
Not pretending I was ordinary.
I wasn’t.
But making home less ceremonial.
Fewer rotating staff around the children.
Clear reporting channels bypassing household management.
No one person could intercept school or medical communications.
Every caregiver had my direct number.
Sophie got her own simple phone.
Emergency contacts.
Rebecca’s photographs returned.
Not as shrine pieces.
As family.
We talked about their mother.
Said her name.
Caleb barely remembered her.
That was okay.
Sophie remembered enough for both.
One night she asked:
“Daddy, do you make people disappear?”
My heart stopped.
“No.”
“Vanessa said—”
“I know.”
I sat on the floor beside her bed.
“My family did bad things a long time ago.”
Not every detail.
Age appropriate.
“Some people still tell scary stories about us.”
“Are they true?”
“Some.”
I swallowed.
“But my job is not to scare people who disagree with me.”
“Then what do you do?”
“Mostly contracts.”
She looked disappointed.
“Boring.”
“Extremely.”
For the first time in months, she laughed.
May you like
That laugh mattered more than half my empire.
---
