ADRIEN clicked the remote for the thousandth time, watching the simulated window switch from a red desert scene to the waves of the ocean, frothing on the shore. God, she wanted to be in Greece right now―on a beach just like the pixelated one before her.

    Instead, she swivelled around on a chair in her father's office. She clicked the remote again. The beach scene transitioned into a rainforest, glistening trees and green vines. 

    It had been a long day already, and it wasn't even noon. She hadn't slept at all. Instead, after returning to her apartment with Muse, she'd written the note with instructions, waited for Muse to fall asleep, and left. 

    Now, the door burst open, accompanied by the sound of Julien Vitale's irritated voice: "Patricia, why are all the lights in my office open? You're my secretary! What the hell do I pay you for if not to close the―"

    His eyes fell on Adrien.

    The words stuttered to a stop. Patricia's answer―"I'm sorry, sir, next time I'll . . ."―was silenced by the door's swift closing. 

    As a child, Adrien had hoped she'd grow up to look like her mother, who had softer features, a more feminine mouth and a cute upturned nose. 

     She remembered being ten years old. Burying her face into a pillow and praying to God for a face like her mother's. 

    Not just for its beauty―so that, whenever she looked in the mirror, she would carry on the memory. A piece of Mom that would last as long as she lived.

    Instead, she looked just like her father. The spitting image of him in female form. Five eleven. The small bump in her nose that one woman had once said gave her the appearance of a Roman general, or god. Pitch-black eyes that appeared to almost swallow light, and sleek dark hair that couldn't hold a curl. A sharp enough face and jaw that, most days, she felt more masculine than feminine. 

     Now, as Adrien and Julien surveyed each other from across the room, she wondered if that was why nothing she did could ever be quite good enough for him. 

     For Julien, it must have been almost like looking in the mirror. Seeing himself embodied in a woman. Seeing his own eyes, reflected back at him. 

      Pinning him with the same stare. Punishing him.

     "I assume," he said, after the eternal silence, "that there is a reason you are here."

     Adrien clicked the remote one last time, and the simulated window flickered off into the office wall.

     "Don't you ever," she said, "just feel like saying hello first?"

     "I don't understand why I would waste formalities on my own daughter."

     "I don't know, Dad. You went through the formality of asking my wife to spy on my business records. My financial information."

     Julien's jaw clenched. "Don't you forget, Adrien, that she is only your wife because of me. Because of the deal we made. What would be to happen if I told her that this was all for your reputation?"

      Adrien couldn't help it. A laugh escaped her. "Really, Dad? More blackmail? Save it. Muse knows about that."

     "Muse knows too much, then. She cannot be trusted." He paced from end to end of the enormous office, his salt-and-pepper hair gleaming in the slivers of sunlight between the closed curtains. "I will have to―"

      "Hey, Dad?" 

      He turned, mouth pursed into a sour line.

      Adrien grinned. "My turn."

     She switched on her father's projector―brand-new, after she'd smashed the last one―and white light exploded on the wall behind Julien. He raised his arms to cover his eyes, blinking at its harshness. 

     "What the hell, Adrien―"

     Grainy footage of a woman in a lacy lingerie set appeared. She held the camera at arm's length, filming herself. She giggled, cheeks flushed, mid-sentence: "Oh, Jules, that's so naughty of you―"

      Adrien had cringed watching this video for the first time, and she cringed again now. Her private investigator had cautioned her, but even that amount of preparation hadn't been enough for this. 

      Julien spun around and squinted at the projection that spanned the entire wall. "What is this?"

     The angle of the camera changed, revealing a younger version of Julien, sitting in bed with sweatpants and his abs flexed. 

     "That's what you like about me, though, isn't it, Kiara?"

     Adrien paused the video. "You know when this was filmed?"

     Julien stared at her like he'd seen a ghost. Even in the hospital, IV in his wrist and breathing tubes up his nose, recovering from a heart attack, he had never looked this fragile. This afraid.

     "This was filmed," said Adrien, fighting to keep a tremor out of her voice, "before Mom died."

     She had believed her parents were in love.

     She had believed her father had never recovered from the one true love of his life.

     When she'd asked her private investigator to find something on Julien she could use, she had expected embezzlement. Off-shore bank accounts. Tax fraud. Something like that. Not this. Not this. 

     "Not only is it before Mom died," Adrien continued, feeling her eyes prick, "this was filmed while she was dying."

      She'd seen this video the first time less than an hour ago. The date stamp had aligned with a time when her mother was in the hospital, weeks into chemotherapy. Sunken cheeks. Bruised eyes. Adrien had only been a kid, but she remembered how her mother had leaned over the edge of the bed after taking a bite of the hospital pudding. She'd clutched her stomach. Wrist bones so sharp they protruded beneath her white skin. Clumps of hair on her pillow. She had retched. Dry heaving into a bucket by her bed, what little she had left in her stomach. Rotting, almost, before their very eyes.

     Worst of all, she remembered her father during this time. How he had kissed his wife's temple, stroked her back. Held her while she puked, murmuring, "It's okay, honey, let it out, let it all out. I'm here for you, I love you."

      A lie. It had been a lie.

     Adrien unpaused the video. Flash-forwarded it to this woman―Kiara―and her father in bed, pressed against each other. Camera once again at arm's length. Julien whispered something in her ear. She giggled.

    "While Mom was in the hospital, puking up her guts, this was what you spent your spare time doing? Mom was fighting for her life, to be with us, and you―"

     Julien slammed his fist against the wall. "You don't fucking understand!"

     "That was your job," Adrien said, barely a whisper. Fighting to keep herself stone-cold. "You were supposed to love her, sickness and health, all that shit. She loved you."

     "She knew it was terminal. We both knew it was terminal. You don't know what it's like to watch―someone you love―so slowly, so fucking slowly―watch her turn into a shell of herself. Cave in on herself. The chemo was never a solution―she was just buying time―"

      "To be with you, to be with us," Adrien said softly. "And you couldn't keep it in your fucking pants." Her voice cracked. "Even while she lay dying."

      She supposed she knew most couples, after a certain point in their marriage, let the love dissipate. She knew most people in long-term relationships started resenting each other. But not her parents―not her father, who had worshipped the ground her mother walked on. Who, upon once hearing she had wanted to be a princess as a child, built her a castle in France for the summers.

      How could a man who loved a woman that much do something like that to her? 

      And Adrien, who now finally understood what it was like to be in love, to love a woman, would never understand. Would never sympathize. Because since falling for Muse, she didn't care to look at other women that way. Wouldn't even dream of fucking someone else. If she could steal the very sun and moon and stars from the sky, she'd find a way to give them to Muse. If she could bottle the sound of Muse's laughter, she'd keep it in a nightstand by her bed so she could listen to it before falling asleep. Nothing could possibly possess her to cheat, and her relationship with Muse wasn't even real―was built on a contract and a million dollars and a mutually beneficial outcome.

      "What are you intending to do with this video?" said Julien.

      "You know," said Adrien, swivelling in the desk chair. "You're a big fan of blackmail. Like, I become a family woman or I don't inherit your company. I think it's your time to shine."

     "Shine," repeated Julien, lit by the glare of the projector. The video continued on behind him, filled with the woman's giggling and the rustle of bedsheets.

     "Yeah, shine." Adrien let it show at last: the side of herself she used for business deals with sociopathic corporation owners―all bloodthirsty desire and ruthless ambition, a drive to win even if it meant cutting a few throats. "You're going to give me the company. You're going to leave everything in your fucking will to me, and me alone. You're not gonna hold this family woman shit over my head, and you know why?"

     At last, Julien's face revealed a hint of horror.

     Like Adrien, he was able to control his expressions at will. He had an even better grasp of it than she did, honed by decades. So, if only a hint of his true feelings were showing, it meant he was hiding a whole fucking lot of fear.

     This filled Adrien with something more satisfying than rage. A kind of delicious, blood-wet satisfaction. "Because if the press finds out you were fucking some woman on the side as your wife battled with cancer, you're going to lose everything, Dad." She uttered the last word like she'd utter something vile, something bitter. Dad, like a curse word. "And if you don't stop blackmailing me and Muse, if you don't obey my wishes, I'm going to publicize this video. I'm going to put it on every corner and nook of the Internet, the dark web. I'm going to make sure everyone knows. Even, you know, Joe who thinks the government is brainwashing us through technology, and Granny Linda from the south, who's scared of Wi-Fi and thinks phones are the devil incarnate. Everyone will know what you've done. No more business deals. No more church. Do you know what it's like to be ostracized by the whole world?"

      Julien's eyes had become so dark, almost soulless in the shadowed light of the empty office. "You really are my daughter."

      "You underestimated me. Your mistake." 

      "Fine," he spat. "I'll do it. I'll do all of it. Just―just get rid of this shit. I can't look at it anymore." He squeezed his eyes shut. And, at last, another hint: of the broken man beneath the stony facade. His voice weak, as dim as the early morning sunlight. "Please."

      Adrien clicked off the projector.

      "Happy to do business with you."

***

I hope you guys are ready. Happy New Year's Eve.

From the moon and back,
Sarai