Page 175 of My Big, Fat, Secret Billionaire Baby

The feeling of being truly, terrifyingly alive.

It used to be the only thing that mattered. Escape. Control.

Control.

That’s the key, isn’t it?

As I stand there, holding the suit, I suddenly see with blinding clarity.

My obsession with the edge, with pushing limits, with wingsuiting… it wasn’t just about the adrenaline. It was about control. The razor-thin control required to navigate the chaos of the jump.

The antithesis of my childhood. My father’s drinking, the instability, the fear… I had no control over any of it.

So I found an arena where I did. Where precision and focus meant survival, and one wrong move meant oblivion.

And it’s not just control that drove me to wingsuiting, but also... the fear of failure.

My father drank himself into oblivion. Failed utterly. In life. And as a father.

Was I terrified of becoming him? Of failing Mia? Of failing the firm? All three?

Chamonix, the comeback, was just another desperate attempt to prove I wasn’t him. To prove I was still Leo Fucking Maxwell, invincible, untouchable, and nota failure.

Fuck.

All this time I thought I was chasing freedom.

But maybe I was just running from the past, dressed up in Kevlar and carbon fiber.

I look from the wingsuit in my hands to the empty nursery down the hall.

Two different worlds.

Two different Leos.

The man who jumps off cliffs, and the man who changes diapers.

The man defined by risk, and the man defined by… Mia. By Sabrina.

Can they coexist? Dom asked if that guy, the father, was so terrifying I needed to jump off a cliff to escape him.

Maybe he was right.

Vulnerability.

Connection.

Love.

Those things feel way fucking scarier than Chamonix ever did.

I carefully fold the wingsuit, placing it back in the closet. Not throwing it away. Not yet. Maybe never.

It’s a part of me.

But it’s notallof me.

Not anymore.

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