Page 40 of My Big, Fat, Secret Billionaire Baby

Pull the fucking handle, Maxwell!

I fight through the pain, through the Gs, through the encroaching darkness. My fingers brush the fabric of the rig… searching… fumbling…

And then, inexplicably, ridiculously, a face flashes behind my eyes.

Green eyes.

Dark hair.

A ghost of a memory from Vegas.

Sabrina.

Why the fuck am I thinking ofhernow? Of all the women, all the deals, all the wins… why her face in the split second before oblivion?

My fingers close around the handle. Cold metal. Solid. Real.

But before I can pull, the black tunnel filling my vision shrinks to a pinpoint, and the world dissolves into absolute darkness.

Silence rushes in, swallowing the roar, the pain.

Swallowing everything.

13

Sabrina

Eleven months later...

Mia Grace Taylor is currently conducting a high-level symposium on the structural integrity of her Sophie la Girafe toy in her playpen. The symposium mostly involves enthusiastic drooling and intermittent shrieks that could shatter glass.

Or my concentration.

Whichever comes first.

Almost twenty months since Vegas. Twenty months since…

Nope, not going there.

My apartment, now officially Taylor Strategic Communications, Global HQ (and daycare center, and laundromat, and occasional cereal-for-dinner bistro), feels… cozy. That’s the polite PR spin. The reality is, my ergonomic office chair is currently wedged between a laundry basket overflowing with tiny onesies and a bookshelf threatening structural collapse under the weight of both marketing textbooks and ‘Goodnight Moon.’

The glamour is, frankly, underwhelming. Or overwhelming, depending on how you look at it.

Remember that sleek downtown office? Floor-to-ceiling windows? Actual colleagues? Yeah, that’s now filed under ‘Pre-Baby Fantasies’ along with ‘uninterrupted sleep’ and ‘wearing non-stretch fabrics.’

Needless to say, running a PR firm while simultaneously keeping a tiny human alive is a lot more work than I ever imagined.

Client meetings are still exclusively Zoom, a carefully curated head-and-shoulders view that strategically hides the baby gate, the explosion of primary-colored toys, and the faint but persistent smell of diaper cream.

Professionalism, thy name is a well-angled webcam and aggressive air freshener.

Whenever I’m on the phone, half the time I’m frantically prayer that Mia’s nap lasts longer than the call, or at least that her inevitable shrieks sound vaguely like enthusiastic agreement.

It’s exhausting, honestly.

Not pregnancy-exhausting anymore, but the bone-deep, soul-crushing exhaustion of chronic sleep deprivation layered with the constant mental gymnastics of managing client crises while simultaneously preventing a tiny human from ingesting floor fuzz or mastering the art of unplugging the wifi router at critical moments.

It’s a miracle my entire operation hasn’t imploded like a poorly handled damage control campaign.

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