“No. Honestly, he hasn’t mentioned anything.” In fact, he specifically expressed a desire to keep his past hidden, so maybe there was something to Dad’s rumors.

“Could you keep an eye out for anything that looks amiss about the man? I want to preserve the reputation of the business.”

“You want me to spy on him?” This was rich. Not two minutes ago he was encouraging her to marry the man because of his MBA.

Dad shook his head. “I didn’t say spy.”

“But that is what you’re asking.”

Dad frowned. “I have to protect this project and the family’s good name. I trust your judgment, maybe more than anyone’s.” He sighed. “Find out more about him. Who does he have associations with? Who is important to him? Both here and overseas. You’ll know if you hear something that doesn’t sound right.”

Amazing. Her mother wanted her to find out what kind of daal the man liked, and her father wanted to know who his friends were. Why didn’t they just ask him? Reena picked at her doughnut, scraping a fingernail full of the maple icing and sucking it off her finger. And besides, Dad trusted her? Bullshit. He only said that now because he wanted intel on his protégé.

She knew little about Nadim and his life before he moved to Toronto, and she knew he was hiding things from her. A hollowness formed in her core. She trusted Nadim. Maybe too much?

“Can I count on you to be honest with me, Reena?”

And that was the crux of it. Reena had never been honest with her father. Not at sixteen, when she snuck out of her bedroom window to meet boys, not when she happily told him how much she loved working in finance, and certainly not now, out of work, and making cooking videos for a national contest. Did her father realize she never told the whole truth? Probably. After all these years, he had to know.

But the stakes were higher now. And this little heart-to-heart was his way of reminding her of that. Asking her to meet him specifically at the building so she could see its progress. Buying her a doughnut and making a joke about their alliance against Saira. And finally telling her, for the first time, that he trusted her judgment. These confessions were intentional. All the family finances were tied up in this project. Even if Reena didn’t care too much about her parents’ opinion of her, she didn’t want to see them lose everything. This was her family.

And Dad wanted her to decide if she had their back. Did she?

She had a lot to think about while up north this weekend.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Is this some sort of intervention? And why did Duncan leave to feed turkey to chickens?”

The calming view of the river across the street from Amira’s house framed by trees dappled with shades of orange, red, and yellow did nothing to soften the effect of the unique torture that Reena just endured. For the last ten minutes, her best friend in the whole world had been listing everything wrong in Reena’s life with the thorough accuracy and attention to detail one would expect from a brilliant industrial engineer.