02

DAD WANTED TO talk, and I'd already seen this coming.

This would be another one of our long talks about how even though these meetings were boring, they would help me run the business one day, and it would end up a mess because I'd tell him that it wasn't what I wanted.

Running a business, wasn't something I wanted to do not because it was hard but because my interests didn't even come close to what I liked doing. My father didn't understand that because he wasn't around enough to know them.

Ever since I was born, it had been just the two of us. He wanted me to have everything I wanted. But all I wanted was for him to be around. He never understood that.

I pushed the glass doors to his office open, and stepped inside, bracing myself for what was to come.

He was sitting in his chair, frowning at something placed on the desk before him. It was a clutter, something I hadn't expected from my father.

"You called for me?" I asked, realizing that he hadn't the slightest clue that I was here.

He looked up, and his frown disappeared. My dad, for a man in his late forties, looked extremely young. His dull black hair was cropped short; something that made him look more intimidating.

"Why hello there, drama queen," he gave me a slight smile—something rare—and I shook my head.

"I'm not a—"

"You ran out of that meeting like Flash. Even Al didn't get out that fast. And he despises me."

I slumped down in a chair across from him, spinning around once purely for fun. "Al doesn't despise you, you're the one who's so hostile," I huffed.

Another pointless argument.

"It's no secret that he would like to see our business burn to the ground, Autumn. For an amateur, he's quite cunning."

He used all the wrong adjectives.

"And why would he want our business, when he already has a perfectly good business of his own?" I challenged.

Something flashed in his green eyes. The very green eyes I'd inherited from him. I got my red hair from my mother. Almost unconsciously, I tugged at a strand of it.

Mom died the moment I was born, and there was nothing heavier than the guilt of that which I carried around. She gave up her life for me, and I'd not end up wasting it by doing something I didn't want to and disappoint a whole economy.

"I think we've strayed from the point, here," dad said. "There's another meeting tomorrow and—"

"No, dad," I said blatantly.

"But you don't even know what I—"

"I am not going to attend another meeting, dad. It's a firm no." I made my voice as final as possible.

"Autumn, this is necessary for when you're going to—"

"I am not taking over this business, dad. I’ve told you that before. Find someone else."

"We've talked about this before," his eyes glinted with anger. "There's no one else who can take my place."

"There may be. There are a lot of people who want to be a part of your business," I reasoned. "This isn't what I like doing."

"Then what do you want to do?" he said, voice flat.

I laughed incredulously. Did he really not know?

"I want to go out and travel. Be a journalist. I've told you that so many times before. Hell, I even double majored just so I could take up journalism alongside business."

Countless times before, I had brought it up during the countless number of arguments we had. But to him, I was still a little girl, and wanting to become a journalist was like a five-year-old wanting to be a princess when she grew up.

"Autumn you can't leave this place without being at risk."

"Dad . . ."

I'd fought with him for years over why he wouldn't let me go out. Why he wouldn't give me my freedom, and he always responded with, 'It's not safe'.

He couldn't keep me locked up my entire life.

It especially became worse after what happened near the East Wing almost a decade ago. Someone was found dead. Shot. The worst part was that he was my father's colleague. A friend. Raymond Black.

He stopped trusting everyone when his other friend, William Snow was arrested for the murder of Raymond and for cheating dad's investors who then went bankrupt.

The Snow Scandal, they called it, which seemed a little cinematic to me.

His jaw clenched. "It's not—"

"Safe?" I finish. "Twenty years you've held me like some kind of captive in this house, dad. Twenty years I put up with not having my freedom. I'm old enough to make my own decisions. You want to protect me from the people who want to run your business? By all means, dad, give it to them! I don't even want this! I don't want run this business."

Finally, it was all coming out. Everything I'd been meaning to say from so many years. Finally, out in the open. Not a snippet of it, but the whole truth.

I knew he wouldn't react well to this little outburst.

He looked mad. "You don't mean that. You want to run this business. You just don't realize it."

I laughed without any amusement. "So now you decide what I want? Oh, why not, you've done the same for the past so many years. Why not one more time, right?" I didn't even realize how mad I was until I started yelling. "Have you ever once asked me what I wanted, dad? Even once? Do you know anything about me? Do you know what I like doing? Hell, do you even know my favourite colour? Our driver knows my favourite colour!"

"Autumn, enough," he says firmly. "Listen to me—"

"No, I need you to hear this." I say firmly.

All these years I listened to him. All these years I buried what I wanted. Now was about time I spoke up.

"You may think I'm overreacting or that what I'm saying is driven by my anger, and that I don’t mean any of it, but I do, dad. I've been thinking it for years now, and I mean it when I say—"

"Autumn, that's enough!" he boomed loudly.

Even now, he wasn't ready to listen. Even when his demure, and quiet daughter was speaking up like this, he wouldn't listen.

I shook my head unbelievingly. I was wasting by trying to explain all of this to him.

I got up, rolling the chair back in the process, and stalked up to the glass doors, and opened them, ready to end this conversation already.

"Autumn stop acting like a brat," he said, and I halted. "I didn't say you could leave."

So, wanting to do what made me happy made me a brat.

I turned around and stared him dead in the eye. "I don't need your permission," I said, and left his office.