Page 90 of In Love With Mr. Wrong

“You’re supposed to be resting,” he says.

“I’m multitasking. It’s different.”

“You’re eight months pregnant and coordinating a media defense strategy.”

“Which makes me extremely efficient.”

He sighs and sits beside me, gently pulling my feet into his lap. “You know I’m proud of you, right?”

I blink at him. “Where did that come from?”

“Just… watching you. Carry all this. Still lead. Still fight.”

I smile softly, my heart squeezing in my chest. “I had a good teacher.”

He lifts my foot and kisses my ankle. “She’s going to be unstoppable.”

“She already is,” I whisper.

***

Night falls slowly, the city lights below flickering to life in scattered clusters. From the penthouse, the view is endless, skyscrapers like frozen fire, the Hudson River catching the last embers of daylight, the world stretched wide and waiting.

I’m drafting the beginning of a public statement, something that might work as an open letter or a monologue. Something true. Something raw. Something that doesn’t make me feel like I’m trying to sell love while forgetting how to hold onto it myself.

I don’t know how to end it yet, and I don’t have to, because just then, my phone buzzes with a message from Olivia:We may have another leak.

The air around me shifts, cooler, tighter, sharper. Because even from the top of the world, the walls are never quite high enough.

49

GRAYSON

The moment Olivia’s message flashes across Margot’s phone screen, I know it’s more than noise:We may have another leak.Just seven words, but they cut straight through the fragile calm we’ve spent the last forty-eight hours trying to preserve.

Margot’s in the shower, steam curling beneath the crack of the bathroom door. She’s humming something low, off-key, probably the lullaby she’s been quietly rehearsing without realizing it. The sound tugs at something inside me. But the phone in my hand is heavier.

I grab mine from the counter and tap into our encrypted thread. Olivia answers immediately, her voice crisp and cool.

“It’s not confirmed,” she says. “But something’s off. The finance team flagged a media ping from one of our draft statements. It was never sent externally, but it matchesPulseMatch’slatest language almost word for word.”

“Timing?”

“About ten hours ago.”

“Internal or external?”

“Internal. Has to be.”

I close my eyes for a beat, feeling the frustration coil low in my gut. This isn’t just sabotage. This is a game being played from the inside, and someone wants us too distracted to fight clean.

“I want you to flag every person who had access to the campaign files in the last twenty-four hours,” I say. “And bring the legal team into a separate room. Don’t loop in the board. Not yet.”

“Already started,” she replies. “But Grayson… there’s something else. Someone reached out.”

I freeze. “Who?”

“Your father.”

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