SEVEN

“Why would you come here? You are supposed to be at your husband's house,” William said when he saw his daughter sit in the living room with them.”Do you want people to gossip? You should go home.” Lial rolled her eyes at him. She wanted to tell him that she had come to get a few things, but she kept that to herself as she wanted to have a more serious conversation with him instead. 

 It had been a long day for them, especially considering that they had been on their feet all day, lying as much as they could and trying their best to convince everyone about the marriage. The rest of the family had all retired to their own houses since it was already late at night. 

Lila and Levi had agreed to go to their homes and then meet up at their new house later in the night. Lila did not care about the house they lived in since she was not interested in getting married to him, so Levi did the research and got the house for them. She was only going to get the address and show up with a suitcase. 

“You sound desperate to get rid of me,” Lila said, tilting her head to the side.

“Why are you so rude to your dad? You know that he would not leave you with the enemy if he did not have a choice,” Eleanor chimed in before Williams could get a word out. 

“He gave me out to the enemy anyway, put me directly in their middle, and is leaving me to be chow for them.” 

LILA!” Eleanor’s voice rose as she shifted to the edge of her seat. 

“She is right, dear,” Williams said, raising his back from the chair and holding his wife’s hand. 

“What?” both women exclaimed as they turned to him in confusion. Was he agreeing to the accusations that his daughter had been throwing at him for a while now? 

“I guess I am not really a family man like I like to call myself; I was so desperate for a business deal that I did not hesitate to throw my daughter into the hands of those vipers,” he said. 

Lila was trying her best now to see if he was serious or if this was all a ploy to make her guard down, and then he would throw her down. "But what can we do? We have already signed the agreement, and it is too late to back out now,” he added in a murmur. 

“Just a year, wait just a year, hang in there for just a year, and you would be out of there in no time.” 

Lila did not have any more accusing words to throw at her father now that he was admitting mistakes and apologizing in some kind of way because she had not heard an apology from him and was only assuming it. If she continued to talk as she pleased, she would be the bad daughter then. 

“What are you both playing at by making us work together on the Skyline project?” Lila asked since she was confused about why her father would put her up against her husband. It would seem to others like they were working together, but those who knew that it was a competition and it was the strongest man that would win at the end of the day. 

“We both compared our sales, and we discovered that since you both started working at the subsidiary, the sales have increased by sixty to eighty per cent and we know that you both would be the best to have work on this.” 

“You want us to work together?" She knew the answer to that, but she wanted to hear it from him. 

“Work together?” he scoffed, rubbing his palms together. “You have to make sure that at the end of the one-year time frame, that skyline knows that the Carrington family have been the one doing all of the great things that have been happening” he said and she nodded. 

This was not her first rodeo with Levi, so she knew all of his techniques and how dirty he liked to play just to win, she was not to make the mistakes she had always made in the time past of trying to take the high road. This time she was going to use all the dirty tricks he used and more. 

“That is the least I can do for myself,” she murmured before licking off her lips. 

“That reminds me, you have to bring him along for all of the Sunday dinners together as well,” Williams said, causing the women to turn to him again. 

“Do we have to have him here? We do not need to pretend to the family that we are close,” Eleanor said. None of the things that had happened were looking good to her, but there was nothing else she could do about it. She had always followed the will of her husband, no matter what he wanted to do. 

“I know, but it would give him the illusion that we are not hiding anything from him, and he would think that we have let our guard down, and that would make him vulnerable around us.” 

Lila had always known that her father was wise, and this was one of those times that he had shown her that he earned that title. She would have thought that bringing him around the family was a wrong idea, but how wrong she was to think that. 

“I will make sure to bring him,” she said, standing to her feet and dusting off the imaginary dust on her trousers. She had hung out of the dress and was now in more comfortable clothes. 

“Darling, please be careful,” Eleanor said, standing up to hold her daughter’s hand. She rubbed a part of her face with a sad smile on her face. 

“Don't be worried; don't you know me? I am your best daughter,” Lila said.