Page 152 of My Big, Fat, Secret Billionaire Baby

She’s back. I hear her moving down the hall, the gentle murmur of her voice as she settles Mia in the nursery.

Then her footsteps approach the gym.

She appears in the doorway, still in her street clothes. A soft, dark sweater and jeans. That sweater clings seductively to her curves, and fuck me, my body is already reacting.

She looks tired, but there’s a tension in her shoulders that wasn’t there this morning. She doesn’t say anything, just watches me.

“Security tells me you were at the Rossi residence?” I ask, my voice rougher than I intend.

She still doesn’t answer. Her silence is a fucking indictment.

She just lets the tension simmer.

Finally I can’t take it.

“You saw the video,” I say, pushing myself up offthe bench. “The quarry jump.”

Those expressive dark eyes that usually betray every thought are unreadable. “Yes, Leo. I saw it.”

She sounds defeated.

“And?” I challenge, taking a step towards her. “Got something to say?”

“You lied to me,” she says, her voice quiet. “You told me you were working all week. Instead, you’ve been jumping all week, haven’t you? Is that what ‘going to the office’ means now?”

“No,” I snap. “It was just that one day. When Luca called with the ‘emergency.’ It was a way to clear my head. I’m... I...” But I can’t find the words.

Does she think she owns me?

I can do what the fuck I want.

Spoken like a truly spoiled child. Nice, Leo.

“It wasonejump,” I finish.

“Onelie,” she counters.

I don’t have anything to say to that.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice is laced with a pain that, for a second, almost cuts through my anger. “Why couldn’t you just be honest with me?”

“Because you wouldn’t understand!” I practically shout, the frustration boiling over. “Because you’d look at me with those fucking judgmental eyes, just like you’re doing now! Because you’d try to talk me out of it, and frankly, Sabrina, it’s none of your goddamn business what I do to blow off steam!”

“None of my business?” Her voice trembles, but there’s steel in it now. “Leo, what if you had died? And then what? What about Mia? What aboutme?”

I laugh harshly, a sound that even I recognize as a shitty defense mechanism. “It was an easy run, Sabrina. Impossible to die.”

But deep down her words hit a nerve.There’s a razor-thin margin between flight and fucking oblivion. A wing could collapse. A parachute could fail. A thousand small things could go wrong, even on an ‘easy run.’

I know that better than anyone.

“If you say so, Leo,” she continues. “But what’s worse is the position you’ve put me in. Professionally. I’ve been telling everyone... investors, bloggers, the goddamn Wall Street Journal... that you’re focused on recovery, on the firm, on being a responsible father. I’ve been spinning this narrative, trying to make you look good, trying to protect Maxwell & Briggs. And now this? This video? It makes me look like a liar, Leo. Or worse, a fool. Now I have to start all over again, PR-wise. You’re not making my job easy. Not at all.”

“You knew when I hired you that it wasn’t going to be easy,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.

That’s the old Leo talking.

The asshole.

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