She's My Daughter, Not Yours!
Joey
I stormed out of my office and went to the receptionist, who monitored the lobby on my floor. There was nobody else on the floor except me so I gave her Madison’s number to try to reach her while I continued with my day. She looked up at me, smiling.
“Any luck?”
“No, sir.”
“How many times have you called?” I asked.
“Repeatedly, like you asked, Mr. Morgan.”
“The number, Jane. How many times?”
“63 times in the last hour and a half, Mr. Morgan.”
I gave her a curt nod before going back to my office. I snatched my phone off its cradle, dialing Amber’s number. She answered after four rings.
“Joey,” she purred.
“Can it, Amber! Have you heard from Madison?”
“Of course I have. She’s my daughter,” she sneered.
“SHE’S OUR DAUGHTER, AMBER! NOW, TELL ME WHERE IS SHE?!”
“Whatever, Joey.”
She hung up, and I angrily pushed the button on the phone to call her back. She sent me straight to voicemail, and I set up the phone again, immediately calling her back.
“WHAT?!” She screamed.
“Come to the office. Let’s talk,” I say, barely holding my anger back.
I tapped my fingers on the desk while she had a whispered conference with her lover.
“It’ll cost you.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course it would. Everything with her did. It was just who she was. She always failed to remember that no price was too high when it came to Madison. “How much?”
I waited impatiently, as there was another whispered conference. “$500 thousand.”
“I will send you half now, and then the other half when you get here.”
I pulled up my bank account to make the transfer when she screamed to wait. I let out an angry exhale.
“Make it a million, and I’ll be there in 30 minutes.”
I transferred the money, and I knew she had received it when she squealed in my ear.
“30 minutes, Amber, or else I’m coming for you.”
I hung up on her to call Madison myself. I threw my phone across the room when my call was forwarded after three rings, telling me Madison had seen it was me calling and rejected it. I got up to pace around my office with my hands behind my back. If she didn’t get here soon, I was going to break down her fucking door. The door opened behind me, and I spun around to glare at my wife. Her perfectly curled, dirty blonde hair and beautifully done makeup gave Amber a look of sophistication that hid her true self.
She was a snake that killed everything good around her and was only good enough for an occasional roll in the hay. She had even tried to break Madison down. I don’t know what she told my daughter to make her hate me so much that she hadn’t spoken to me in two years, but I didn’t care. I had the chance to get back into Madison’s life, and I wasn’t going to let Amber get in my way. She leaned her hip against my desk, purposely crossing her arms under her breasts to push them up.
“Is this about Madison?”
“Where is she?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Why?”
“STOP IT, AMBER! AND TELL ME WHERE MY DAUGHTER IS!”
She narrowed her eyes on me. “Why the sudden interest in my daughter? You haven’t been worried about her since she left. Why now?”
“YOUR DAUGHTER?! YOUR DAUGHTER?! SHE IS MY DAUGHTER!”
She looked down at her nails before looking smugly back up at me. “You may have signed her birth certificate, but you are not her father. Sam is.”
I grabbed her around the throat, pinning her on top of my desk. “Your pregnancy with her is the only reason I married your ass. You told me I was her father!”
“I told you several times that you weren’t her father. It’s not my fault that you didn’t believe me,” she snapped.
“YOU ONLY SAID THAT WHEN WE WERE FIGHTING AND THE NEXT DAY SHE WAS BACK TO BEING MY DAUGHTER! I NEVER THOUGHT YOU MEANT IT! AND NOW YOU’RE SAYING THAT SHE’S NOT MINE! SHE WAS THE ONLY REASON THAT I ALLOWED ALL OF YOUR BACKSTABBING WHORING WAYS! I TOOK CARE OF HER! I PROVIDED FOR HER! I WENT TO HER RECITALS AND ATTENDED ALL THE DADDY DAUGHTER DANCES! I LOVED HER! THAT’S WHAT MAKES ME HER FATHER!”
She spit in my face. “That makes you a fool!”
I slammed my fist into the desk beside her head. “I’ll be a fool over her!” I hissed as I flipped her over before placing a piece of paper and pen in front of her. “Her address! I know you know it! Write it down! Now! This is nonnegotiable!”
“It’ll cost you!”
I let her go to move around my desk to the safe behind it. I pulled a black card out of it before throwing it in her face as I dialed the number to the bank the card was attached to. I turned the phone toward her, ordering her to type the card number in. She did and when she heard that there were 11.72 million dollars in the account, her eyes widened. I hung the phone up before pushing the paper back toward her.
“The address, Amber, and the card is yours.”
She quickly wrote down an address about 15 minutes away before shoving the paper in my face.
“Nice doing business with you,” she sneered.
I rolled my eyes as she headed toward the door.
“Oh, and Amber?”
“What, Joey?”
“Stay away from Madison. I won’t let you turn her into you.”
She looked over her shoulder at me. “She’s my daughter, Joseph. It’s in her blood.”
She walked out, cackling like a lunatic, leaving me fuming and asking myself what I had ever seen in her. I grabbed my suit jacket as I stormed out of my office to go to the address on the paper. I pulled up in front of the dilapidated building, getting even more furious that this was where she had been living. It was a well-known drug area with a lot of prostitution. I had to get her out of here. She was too good to live here.
I rushed inside, only giving the out-of-order elevator a quick glance before racing up the stairs to the third floor. Her apartment was directly across from the stairs, and I wasted no time banging on it while calling her name. After a few minutes of her not answering, a woman poked her head out of an apartment three doors down.
“She’s not there. She left about an hour ago.”
“Do you know where she went?” I asked. The woman shook her head. I sighed. “Do you know when she’ll be home?” Again, she shook her head. “Thank you.”
I spun on my heels to make my way back down to my car. I was determined to find her, and nothing was going to stop me. I knew her well enough, or so I thought, to find her. My Porsche roared down the street as I went to all of her favorite hangouts from when she was 16. The only thing that kept me from going crazy as I searched for her was the fact that she wasn’t my biological daughter. It made me feel less disgusting. Not much, but enough to keep me from feeling like a complete piece of shit for what happened in my office. At 11 PM, I gave up looking to go back to her apartment. I clenched my jaw when she still wasn’t home. Where the fuck was she?
As I neared the door to leave her building, her loud laughter made me sprint outside, only to draw up short when I saw her all over four other young men. I instantly knew she was wasted, and they weren’t. It renewed my fury as I stomped down the stairs.
“MADISON RENE MORGAN!”
Her head snapped around to look at me before she broke out into a fit of giggles.
“Oh, look, boys. It’s my Daddy,” she slurred.
I pointed to the ground in front of me. “Come here! Right now!”
She met my eyes. “I’m grown. You can’t boss me around.” She smiled up at one of the men, gripped his collar, and swayed a little. “But you can boss me around,” she said flirtatiously.
I began to roll my dress shirt sleeves up. “I’m warning you, Madison. Say goodnight to your guests…”
“Or what?” She snapped. “You’re just mad that I didn’t take your money after I blew you.” She giggled before turning her attention back to the guys. “I was going to give him my virginity, but now you can have it. You can be my Daddy for the night.”
“That’s it,” I said as I lunged forward to grab her.
I threw her over my shoulder, holding her legs down as she flailed. I narrowed my eyes on the men.
“Get out of here.”
I didn’t wait to see if they complied or not as I carried Madison inside her apartment. I removed her keys from her pocket to unlock her door before locking it and carrying her toward the end of the short hallway where I saw her bed. I tossed her down on it, and she giggled.
“You’re too young to drink, Madison! What in the hell were you thinking?”
“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, DADDY?” She screamed. “SPANK ME? Well, here you go!”
She struggled to roll over and pull her dress up. I swallowed hard when her thick ass cheeks came into view. She wiggled a little, and I was hypnotized for a moment by the way her thong shifted between her cheeks. I reached out to run my hand over her ass before slapping it once and pulling her dress back down. She rolled back over to glare at me.
“That’s all?”
“Don’t push me, Madison. You need to go to sleep.”
She jumped to her feet and immediately fell forward into my chest. She tipped her head back to look up at me.
“You don’t want me.”
I wrapped my arms around her. “Maddie, sweetheart, I’ve always wanted you. Just not in that way.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, and I immediately felt like a bastard again. “I just wanted to make her pay,” she sobbed.
“For what?”
“For sleeping with Nathan. It’s why I ran away.”
I picked her up before sitting on the edge of her bed, cradling her in my arms. “Maddie, you don’t have to sleep with me to get back at her.”
She sniffled. “She told me that you hated me and were glad I left.”
I stared at her. Amber said what? “I looked for you, baby. I hired private investigators, but they couldn’t find you.”
She buried her face in my chest. “She told me that everything was my fault. That you didn’t pay attention to her because of me. She said that you didn’t know how to be a man, just a father.”
I tucked her face into my neck as I rocked her. “Go to sleep, Madison.”
She wrapped her arms around my waist, and I laid my cheek on top of her head. None of the mess between her mother and me was her fault. I couldn’t believe that Amber had said those things to her. Actually, I could, and I was going to make her pay. I took a deep breath, already regretting that if Madison wanted to get back at her mother in the morning, I was going to let her. No matter how she wanted to do it. If tonight proved anything, it was that I no longer felt entirely fatherly toward my little girl.