CHAPTER 190: Kim’s Office

POV: Selene Castellano

David Kim had Daniel Reyes's photograph on his desk before they sat down. Which meant he’d already known.

Which meant Philip Cross wasn’t the only one watching the theatre that night.

“You already have him,” Avalon said. 

“We’ve had him under surveillance for three weeks,” Kim said. “Since the Vantara approach became public. The timing was too convenient. A board member initiating an acquisition conversation timed around a birth.” He looked between them. “We wanted to understand the full scope before we moved.”

“What’s the full scope?” Selene asked.

Kim opened the folder.

“Daniel Reyes has been working with a group of the original Pierce Holdings investors for fourteen months,” he said. “People who believe the foundation’s displacement bond acknowledgement opens them to civil liability. They’ve been funding a coordinated effort to discredit the foundation before any lawsuits can be filed.”

“Sandra Cole,” Selene said.

“One piece,” Kim said. “The Vantara approach was another. There’s a third piece we’ve been tracking.” He paused. “They commissioned a full investigation into your personal history, Selene. Not just Elena. Everything. Your years before Pierce Holdings. Your finances. Your relationship with Maya. Anything usable.”

The office was quiet.

“How long have they had investigators on me,” Selene said.

“Eight months,” Kim said. “Since the Chronicle piece about the displacement bond acknowledgement ran.”

“Eight months,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“While I was pregnant,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

She looked at her hands on the table.

“What did they find,” she said.

“Nothing actionable,” Kim said. “Your history is clean. Your finances are clean. The foundation is clean.” He paused. “But they found Elena’s medical records. And they found something else.”

“Tell me,” she said.

“Your father,” Kim said carefully. “He filed a civil claim eighteen months ago. Against you specifically. Claiming financial damages related to his estrangement.”

The room tilted slightly.

She felt Avalon go completely still beside her.

“My father,” she said.

“Yes,” Kim said. “It was filed in Sacramento. You weren’t notified because your legal address wasn’t correctly listed in the filing.” He slid a document across the desk. “Daniel’s group funded the filing. They found your father and they paid for his lawyer.”

She looked at the document.

At her father’s name.

A man who had abandoned her and Maya, who had tried to have her killed, who had disappeared from her life completely after the warehouse, now resurrected in a legal document funded by investors trying to discredit everything she’d built.

“He’s alive,” she said.

“Yes,” Kim said. “Living in Fresno.”

She looked at Avalon.

He was looking at her with the expression that had no management in it.

“What does the claim say,” Avalon said. His voice was very controlled.

“That Selene’s public success was built on family resources he contributed to before the estrangement,” Kim said. “It’s legally frivolous. Any competent judge would dismiss it immediately, but it would still create a public record. A headline.”

“Foundation leader sued by estranged father,” Selene said. “That’s the headline they want.”

“Yes,” Kim said.

“Whether it’s true or not,” she said.

“Whether it’s true or not,” Kim confirmed.

She didn’t speak on the drive home.

Avalon drove without trying to fill the silence.

She looked at the city going past the window.

At San Francisco being completely indifferent the way it always was.

Her father.

She’d told herself she’d made peace with him. With his absence and the shape of a life built without a parent who should have been present.

She’d been wrong.

You didn’t make peace with something like that. You just got better at carrying it until someone dug it up and put it on a desk in a federal office and suddenly it weighed exactly what it had always weighed.

“Say something,” she said finally.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked.

“Anything,” she said. “Say anything.”

“He doesn’t get to define you,” Avalon said. “He never did and he certainly doesn’t now.”

“I know that,” she said.

“Do you tho,” he said.

She looked at him.

“Right now,” he said. “In this car. Do you know that?”

She was quiet for a moment.

“No,” she said honestly. “Not completely.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then I’ll know it for both of us until you do.”

She looked at him.

At this man who had spent a year learning to stop managing things and had arrived at something better than management.

Certainty, he offered freely with no conditions attached.

“My father is alive,” she said. “He’s in Fresno. Daniel Reyes’s investors paid for his lawyer.”

“Yes,” Avalon said.

“And I have to decide what to do with that,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “But not today.”

“When?” she asked

“When Elena is asleep and you’ve eaten something and you’ve stopped looking like the floor might move,” he said. “Then we decide what to do with it.”

She almost smiled.

“I don’t look like the floor might move,” she said.

“You look exactly like that,” he said.

“Drive faster,” she said.

“I’m not running red lights,” he said. “That was a one-time event.”

“It was twice,” she said.

“The second one was yellow,” he said.

“It was not yellow,” she said.

“It was transitioning,” he said.

She looked at him.

“Transitioning,” she said.

“Aggressively transitioning,” he said.

She laughed. A short, real and completely unexpected laugh.

He glanced at her.

“There it is,” he said quietly.

“Don’t,” she said.

“I’m not doing anything,” he said.

“You’re collecting it,” she said.

“I always collect it,” he said. “You know that.”

She looked out of the window into the city continuing around them regardless.

“My father,” she said quietly one more time.

“Your father,” Avalon said. “Who is in Fresno. Who has a frivolous lawsuit funded by people who are afraid of what you built.” He paused. “And who has absolutely no idea what he walked into.”