Page 32 of Daddy's Accidental Babies

Before I hit send, I glanced down the hall. The boys’ door was shut. The apartment was finally quiet, but I needed some advice on this.

“Thea?” I called softly.

A moment later, she appeared in the doorway of her room, rubbing her eyes, her hair pulled into a messy topknot. “Everything okay?”

I turned the screen toward her. “Look at this. Someone changed my memo. The final version went out with my nameon it, but it’s not what I wrote. It’s been edited—gutted, really—and passed along to legal like I signed off on it. But I didn’t. And when I went back to my drafts, the original was still there, untouched. Whoever did this used internal access and submitted the final version through someone else’s login. I only found out because I happened to check the attachments in my shared folder.”

She padded over and sat beside me, scanning the document with a frown. “I don’t even know what I’m looking at, but this doesn’t sound like you.”

“Because it’s not.” I didn’t even try to soften it. My chest felt too raw. It wasn’t just that someone had altered my work—it was that they did it so confidently, as if I wouldn’t notice.

Thea leaned closer, her brow furrowing. “Why would they make these changes?”

“I don’t know.” I pressed my lips together as I stopped to think about it. The only reason those specific changes would be made is to make adjustments to the PR cycle for campaigns surrounding the merger. It didn’t make sense why anyone would be messing with the PDF either, when everyone would be able to see the changes that’d been made. It wasn’t even my signature. “I’m gonna send it to legal,” I told her.

“You should,” she said, still reading. “Because this feels targeted.” She covered her mouth and yawned, then stood and stretched her arms high over her head.

I hated that she was right, but whatever this was seemed serious. If I didn’t turn it in, it’d be pinned back on me, and I wasn’t going to take the heat from that mess. “You heading to bed?”

Thea groaned and started shuffling toward the hall. “Yeah. But wake me if anything else happens, okay?”

“Will do.” I offered a tired smile before turning my laptop back around. Thea gave me a look—half concern, half warning—but didn’t press. As soon as her door clicked shut behind her, the quiet crept in again.

I stared at the screen for another minute before sending it on to legal. I needed a distraction, something brainless, but I didn’t want to pick up my phone and be reminded of my father’s opinions. So, I opened a new tab and scrolled through social media, liking a few posts without thinking.

I skimmed past a carousel of engagement photos, paused on a reel of a beachside proposal, then scrolled through a makeup tutorial someone had reposted for the third time. It was background noise. Nothing important. But it kept my mind from spiraling—until it didn’t.

Then a single post buried beneath engagement photos and promotional reels caught me off guard. A headline that looked innocent enough at first glance, but which sent a current of unease racing along my spine. I clicked without thinking, already knowing it wouldn’t end well.

A gossip blog I recognized from last week’s trending tab had swiped a picture from the photoshoot. The headline was benign—Merger Watch: PR Strategist Linked to CEO—but the photo underneath made my mouth go dry. I clicked the link to open the full article and felt my anxiety spike.

It was me and Dominic at the shoot. His hand was on my back. My laugh was caught mid-frame. There was nothing explicit about the image, but it was intimate enough that anyone could read into it. And the caption underneath was even worse. It read:Mommy’s secret might derail her dating dreams.

I scrolled down. Each swipe came with more torture than the last. My breath caught as the next photo came onto my screen, and it stopped my heart.

It was me, outside the apartment building. I recognized the coat I’d been wearing, the tote bag I always carried on school days. The angle wasn’t very good, but it was clear enough. Andwhat disturbed me most wasn’t that someone had been watching long enough to capture it—it was the image.

Cal was in my arms. His face was tucked into my shoulder, his legs wrapped loosely around my waist. He’d been tired that day, I remembered, cranky from skipping his nap. I had no idea anyone was following me or taking a picture. His face was partially obscured by my hair, but if Dominic saw this, it was over. Anyone with two eyes in their head could see Cal was my son.

I slammed the laptop shut. My pulse pounded in my ears, hands frozen over the device like I could somehow reverse what I saw. But the screen had gone black, and the silence that followed felt deafening. That photo was out there circulating, spreading, inching its way toward the very secret I had built my entire life around keeping safe.

Too late …

The words pulsed through my mind like the sound of a canon being fired. There was no way to undo what had been posted, no way to rewind the exposure. The damage was already unfolding—and it was completely out of my control.

16

DOMINIC

Isat behind my desk reviewing the briefings from the last forty-eight hours, half listening to the early office movement outside the door. The leaks weren’t slowing down, and every report that landed on my desk made the patterns harder to ignore. The first leak involved a draft budget, followed closely by one containing internal messaging documents. While neither release had caused irreparable damage, the timing and sequence made it clear that someone was orchestrating the drops with a purpose.

Each time I thought we’d patched the holes, something new found its way into the press. Either someone on the inside had a vendetta, or they were careless enough to be exploited. Both scenarios were a problem. And either way, it needed to end today.

Graham stood at the edge of the conference table, holding a flash drive between two fingers like it might bite. His mouth was tight, and he avoided my eyes. “It’s confirmed. The breach came through Marla’s login.”

I leaned back in my chair and studied his expression. “Was it her?” None of the information they had leaked was damningon its own, but laced together like this, it had the potential to scare off shareholders and turn the board away in disgust. My company would want nothing to do with Raven & Rhodes if the CEO couldn’t keep a handle on his employees.

He shook his head and crossed his arms, the flash drive now tucked tightly into his fist. “The IP address traces back to a remote location, not her condo. Whoever did this routed it through three international servers. They masked their trail with a virtual machine or cloned her credentials with a keylogger. Or it could be here. There’s no real way of telling.”

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