Chapter 2: The Confrontation

When I found Zoe, she was laughing with a boy.

The way she leaned over the keyboard, giggling, looked straight out of an after-school sitcom where the shy girl finally comes alive—except this was my daughter, who’d barely smiled at home in years. The guy she was with had that mop of hair you only get from skipping showers and a hoodie zipped up to his chin.

Usually cold as ice to everyone, my daughter was now twirling her hair and giggling in front of some stranger.

“Really? This is the first time someone’s told me I’m pretty. My dad always says I’m still a kid, shouldn’t wear skirts, shouldn’t go out and have fun, shouldn’t do anything. In that house, I just feel suffocated.”

Her words hit like a bucket of ice water. My throat tightened. I was standing there, the parent who’d dropped everything—skipped an international Zoom meeting, left a boardroom full of frowning execs, all because the school said my kid was missing—and this was how she saw me? Just another warden in her personal jail?

I felt my breath catch, and for a split second, my mind flashed back: tucking Zoe in when she was five, staying up all night through her fever, holding her hand while she whimpered about monsters under the bed. Now, I was just the jailer in her story.

When the school called to say Zoe had skipped class, I didn’t even care about the big international conference—I risked a major project falling through and rushed out to find her. But to my daughter, I’m really just the guy she wants to escape from?

Anger burned in my chest. Just as I was about to step forward and lay into her, another volley of intrusive thoughts came:

No, this is the meet-cute! Villain dad, get lost. Don’t break up the couple.

God, when will this guy finally die? Don’t delay our heroine’s big comeback!

He’s not even worthy of the mom—let him burn out and make room for the dream guy.

It was like a heckler in my head, relentless. I swallowed my frustration, my hand curling into a fist so tight my nails dug little half-moons into my palm.

Villain dad? Heroine and heroine mom? I could piece together the whole story from these jabs.

This world is some kind of group-pampering novel, and Zoe is the big heroine who’ll eventually end up with the boy in front of her and become everyone’s darling.

And me? I’ll die of overwork.

These invisible critics will never see how hard I work to keep this family afloat. They’ll never understand what I’ve given up.

Zoe is still a kid, reckless. Jenny never cared about her daughter’s education—completely indifferent. If not for me, Zoe would have gone off the rails a long time ago. But no one ever tries to understand me.

“You have no idea. With a dad like that, I’d rather never have been born.”

The words stabbed right through me, needles to the heart. My breath went shallow, my forehead clammy.

The chorus in my mind blared:

That’s our heroine! So brave. With a villain dad like that, she’s got every right to rebel.

How could the writer give her such a twisted dad? Poor thing.

Even the mom hates the villain dad. He should just disappear already.

That last line made my head buzz.

So Jenny has always hated me too.

I hid my disappointment. If my efforts are worthless to them, and I’m just an obstacle, then fine—I won’t care anymore.