The lock turned with a heavy click.

I stepped into the dim entryway.

The air smelled of old paper, cedarwood, and the faint scent of the pipe tobacco he had smoked for decades.

“Dad?” I called out softly.

The hallway was dark except for a single lamp burning in his study at the end of the hall.

I walked toward the light, my wet shoes squeaking on the polished hardwood floors.

My father was sitting behind his large mahogany desk.

He looked older than his sixty-eight years, his shoulders slumped and his gray hair disheveled.

A half-empty glass of scotch sat near his right hand.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said, not looking up at me.

“You betrayed me,” I said, dropping the heavy medical files onto the desk in front of him. “Look at them. Read what they are doing to my husband.”

He didn’t touch the papers. He just stared at the amber liquid in his glass.

“He isn’t your husband anymore, Claire,” he said softly. “To the world, Alexander is the man running Whitmore Global. The man married to Victoria Sterling.”