“I can see the wheels turning in your mind, trying to find a way out of this, so I will do you the favor of running through what will happen should you not be standing in this spot when I pull up. I will send those emails to every single contact I have and light the match at the end of the fuse that is Kai’s career. By the time I’m done with him, he’ll be lucky if he can make a dime panhandling on the street. Yes, you’ll have this baby you seem to want so badly, but you will have nothing else because everything you have is because I made it so. I bought the clothes on your back, the food in your belly, and the home you sleep in. I pay for your education, your housing, and your car. Hell, without me you wouldn’t even have health insurance to care for this child, unless you plan to give birth at the free clinic you seem to love so much. That coveted internship of yours might look nice on a résumé, but it certainly doesn’t pay any bills. So what will you do when all of that is ripped away from you? When I retract the grace I’ve extended you? Oh, let me guess.” He switches to a tone that is a clear mockery of me. “None of that matters, Dad, because we love each other and we’ll be fine without you.”

He bends the top half of his body closer to me. “Wrong. Those are the words of a privileged princess who has never experienced any real struggle in her life. You have wanted for nothing your entire life and yet you call me a monster. I’ve put in the work. I’ve bled for you and for your absent mother. I threw myself into the lion’s den of corporate America. I clawed my way to the top of the ladder with you on my back and became a king so that you wouldn’t have to. So that you could look down on the kingdom I made you. Imagine being the parent that stayed but still being made into the villain. Do you think Kai is still going to love you when he’s living in a four by four shithole without a pot to piss in? He might at first because, as you claim, he loves you so much, but slowly that love is going to dissolve into nothing but resentment at the fact that being with you cost him his dream and he has nothing to show for it.