Though she said it, Tonya knew that Layla’s desire to meet her father ran way deeper than knowing her genetic history. But she wasn’t going to give Rick the satisfaction of acknowledging that he meant something to a person he’d so adamantly refused to let mean anything to him.

“I heard she’s a great student.”

Tonya hadn’t told Kelner that, had she? “Where did you hear that?”

“It’s not true?”

“She’s an excellent student,” Tonya snapped. “But I asked where you heard that.”

Rick unhooked his mask to scratch at his stubble, revealing his full face. Objectively, it was as handsome as Tonya remembered, though the five-o’clock shadow looked dirty rather than sexy given her loathing. “Nate told me before.” Rick sighed, selfishly releasing a ton of unidentifiable particles into the air. “He was teaching a writing elective or something for kids after school. She’d taken it.”

An invisible fist squeezed her heart. Somehow, Layla’s absentee father knew something about her daughter that she didn’t. Layla had never mentioned taking Nate’s class. Why wouldn’t she have told her? Why wouldn’t she have shown her any of her work?

“He said her stuff was really good. Told me I might have a screenwriter in the family.”

Tonya pressed a hand to the elevator wall. It was descending too fast, a free-fall carnival ride. She felt her stomach rising into her throat. “You talked about her?”

“Not really. Nate wasn’t working much, so we didn’t talk all that often. I called him a week before he died about the status of a mutual business investment. In the interest of full disclosure, he told me that he was teaching my kid.”

“She’s not your kid,” Tonya spat. “You have to raise a child to call them that.”

“Fair enough.” Rick cracked a smile. “Nate told me that Layla’s very pretty. Looks a bit like me, he said.”

Tonya shuddered at the thought that Nate had been checking out her child. The man hadn’t been a pedophile—at least, not to her knowledge. But he had been a predator. She doubted he could look at her beautiful daughter and not recall what he’d done to her mother. Had the memory made him feel guilty, she wondered, or aroused?

Or had it made him angry?

When Layla’s preschool teachers had recommended that her “gifted” daughter apply to St. Catherine’s and try for a scholarship, she’d reached out to Nate. Her auditions regrettably hadn’t landed her any parts, she’d said, but news of how they’d gone wouldn’t do much for his career given millennial attitudes toward men who abused their power. She’d agreed to remain silent in exchange for Nate putting in a good word and endowing a scholarship. At the time, it had seemed the least he could do.