The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 58

Chapter 58 A Father’s Last Gambit

Kieran Nethys was not a man used to closed doors. In his world, doors were supposed to swing open at the mere mention of his name, or better yet, at the flash of his money. But lately, doors were not just closing. They were locking. Bolting. Vanishing from the walls altogether.

It had started subtly. A golf partner cancelling last minute with a vague excuse about a sore back. A call to a banker about refinancing a loan, only to be put on hold and then gently, politely, told the “climate wasn’t right.” An invitation to a charity auction he’d sponsored for years that somehow never arrived in the mail.

At first, he’d brushed it off. Coincidence. Bad luck. The natural fallout from the scandal.

But after his magnificent, triumphant press conference, after he had so publicly and graciously reclaimed his daughter and her powerful new husband, the silence should have broken. The phone should have been ringing off the hook. Congratulatory bouquets should have filled the foyer. Instead, the silence had deepened and grown colder.

Now, sitting in his too–quiet study, staring at a rejected proposal for a waterfront development–a project that had been all but guaranteed–the cold truth was settling in his gut like a stone. The Valdrises were not just licking their wounds. They were moving. Quietly, methodically, they were building a wall around him.

They were cutting him off.

The thought was so enraging, so terrifying, that he felt dizzy. He had gambled everything on the Valdris merger. His liquidity, his reputation, his future. When Elera ran, she hadn’t just humiliated Xan. She had pulled the financial rug out from under her own father. He’d been free–falling, and he’d managed to grab what he thought was a rope–the Vex connection.

But a rope was useless if no one was on the other end pulling you up.

He’d called her. Dozens of times. Texts, emails, messages through the few old family friends he thought might still have her ear. Radio silence. It was as if she had vanished into that cliff house and ceased to exist.

He needed her. He needed her to stand beside him at a charity dinner, to smile for the cameras, to make the connection real. He needed a photo, a soundbite, anything to prove to the circling vultures that Kieran Nethys was not just connected, he was family.

A new, desperate idea began to form. One that didn’t require her cooperation. One that played on the one thing he knew about his daughter, even the new, hardened version of her that had looked at him with such cold eyes on the phone: she was a fixer. A solver of problems.

He picked up his phone and scrolled to a number he hadn’t dialed in years. His sister, Margaret. Elera’s aunt. The family hypochondriac. The woman who had a new, dramatic ailment every season and doctors on speed dial.

She answered on the second ring, her voice a fluttery whisper. “Kieran? Is everything alright?”

“Margaret,” he said, layering his voice with brotherly concern. “No, I’m afraid it’s not. It’s about Mother.”

He wouldn’t ask her to see him. Not directly. Just to look at some documents. To meet her aunt for tea to discuss it. Somewhere public, neutral. Somewhere he could just… happen to be.

Once she was out in the open, away from the fortress, he could talk to her. He could make her see reason. He was her father. She owed him this. She owed him everything.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the portrait of his own father over the fireplace. The old man had been a brute, but he’d never been ignored. He’d commanded respect through fear and force.

Kieran had tried charm, and it had gotten him a daughter who ran away and a society that was slowly shutting him out. Maybe it was time to try a little of the old ways. Not brute force. Just… a firm hand. A reminder of where she came from, and what she owed.

He looked at his phone again. Valdris was moving against him in the business world. Fine. Let them play their financial games. He was playing a deeper game. A family game.

And his piece was about to be lured out onto the board.