She took a shaking breath, and the words tumbled out in a terrified rush. “He said he has connections and that he can shut down your shoe shop with one phone call. But he promised he wouldn’t if I did something for him.”
I kneeled before her. “What did he ask you to do, Grace?”
“What did he ask you to do, Grace?”
“He said if I don’t go with him tonight for his team’s big Thanksgiving dinner, he’ll make sure you lose everything. He needs me to SHOW everyone that he is a self-sacrificing family man who raised his daughter alone. He wants to steal YOUR role.”
The irony, the sheer, disgusting nerve of it, made me feel sick. I felt something inside me just collapse.
One thing was certain: there was no way I was going to lose my little girl!
There was no way I was going to lose my little girl!
“And you believed him?” I asked gently.
She burst into tears. “Dad, you worked your whole life for that shop! I didn’t know what else to do.”
I took her hands in mine. “Grace, listen to me. No job is worth losing you. The shop is a place, but you’re my whole world.”
