Page 12 of Daddy's Accidental Babies

I didn’t answer right away because I wasn’t sure how to respond. My pulse was still too loud in my ears, and the idea of my dad finding out and being furious only complicated things.

My eyes rose to meet his and he smirked at me. “Because I’d like to bend you over a few other pieces of furniture sometime…” There was that spark—the twinkle in his eye of mischief I’d grown to understand was his heart being vulnerable.

I laughed under my breath, not because it was funny, but because it was easier than admitting how much it got to me. I reached for the mouse to shake my screen awake and turned back toward my desk.

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “The whole thing.”

Dominic didn’t press me. He gave a single nod and stepped back toward the door.

“Let me know,” he said, and then he was gone.

I leaned back in my chair, heart pounding, caught between two impossible urges—to protect the life I’d built or to surrender to whatever this was becoming. I stared at the blinking cursor on my screen, willing myself to focus, but all I could think about was him. And the way it already felt too late to turn back.

I wasn’t ready to decide. Not yet.

6

DOMINIC

Ispent most of the evening in my study, surrounded by backlit screens. My tie was slung over the arm of the leather club chair across the room, my sleeves rolled past my elbows, and my focus held together by little more than habit. I sifted through legal briefs, board memos, projections, and fallout timelines—the merger was a beast that demanded constant feeding.

But Savannah kept pulling my attention.

She disrupted everything—static cutting through a clear signal. I could still feel the presence she left behind, hear her breath catch when I touched her neck. The sounds she made lingered in my memory, etched into places I hadn’t let anyone reach in years. I should’ve been moving on to the next task, hammering out the remaining pieces of the investor pitch, but instead, I clicked open her employee profile and sat back in my chair.

The photo was pure corporate polish—clean lines, a fitted blazer, minimal makeup. But all I could think about was how she had looked with me between her thighs, and it made mestart to swell. She knew how to create the perfect package, and I wondered if her voodoo was to blame for my lack of self-control.

I exhaled sharply and forced the thought aside, grounding myself with the cool edge of the desk beneath my palms.

The resume was solid—a few internships, brand campaigns, a marketing degree with honors. But there was a gap. While I was in Zurich. There was no explanation—not even a placeholder. No mention of family leave or made-up consulting work to patch the hole. It was a clean blank space that said nothing on paper but hinted to me that something had happened, even though my conversations with David offered no hints.

I stared at it longer than I should have. Something about that gap didn’t sit right. If it’d been a sabbatical, she would’ve said so. If it had been illness, maybe not—but then why come back now? Why this job, this company, this timing?

My phone buzzed with a reminder about the strategy call I’d pushed from earlier in the day. I stood for the call, pacing in front of the tall windows that overlooked the quiet stretch of street outside. The conversation began as expected—dry legal jargon and compliance protocol—but once I brought up the press leaks, the tone shifted.

“We traced the breach to an internal login,” Jennifer said. She was head of legal, sharp as hell, and not someone who wasted words.

“When?” I asked as I maneuvered around my desk and sat down at my computer.

“Tuesday. Midmorning. Someone accessed restricted folders tied to Knight Holdings’ pre-acquisition financials. Not enough to do real damage, but enough to stir early speculation.”

“How far did it spread?” My fingers were working, pulling up the exact files Jennifer mentioned.

“Local business blogs. Two national columnists. Nothing major—yet.”

I stopped typing and scowled. “Whose login?”

“It belongs to a junior strategist from the PR floor, a woman named Marla Renner.”

I frowned. I didn’t know her. “Can we be sure it wasn’t stolen credentials?”

“We’re looking into it. But the time stamp matches her working hours, and the device ID lines up with her workstation.”

“So she either did it, or someone used her terminal.” Massaging the bridge of my nose, I sighed hard and thought of any reason why employees within Raven & Rhodes wouldn’t want this merger to go through.

“Exactly.”

I switched to rubbing the back of my neck, feeling the tight pull of tension creeping in. “Keep this close. No noise until we know for sure what’s going on.”

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