Page 54 of Daddy's Accidental Babies

One of the directors opened his mouth, then closed it again. Another cleared her throat but said nothing. The room remained still, but a sense of being judged lodged itself in my chest so deep I had to clear my throat before I continued.

“You also deserve to know why David Bennett has been pushing so hard to control this narrative and divide Knight Holdings from Raven & Rhodes. It’s not about company reputation; it’s all been about his image, which he is trying desperately to protect.

“I feel the need to tell you this openly so that if or when it comes out, it’s not damning to this merger or your confidence in me.” I opened the folder and spread out the documents. “Years ago, after an evening of drinking and entertaining investors in Montauk, I was behind the wheel. David was in the passenger seat, too drunk to drive, and I’d had a few drinks. Something ran in front of the car. I hit it. We thought it was a person. Someone we recognized from the party.”

A few heads snapped up. I kept going. “We stopped for a few seconds but didn’t see anything in the road. David told me to keep driving and reached for his phone. He made a call and told me to stay quiet, that it would be handled. And somehow, it was. Nothing ever came of it.” I tapped the documents now spread before them.

“It wasn’t a person like we feared at all, it was an animal. This analysis I had Graham pull up proves that. There was never a body—never a missing person. But I have carried this guilt my whole life. I was just twenty-two years old.”

Silence stretched as tight as my chest, and I kept talking to avoid letting them react without thinking it through. I wasn’t controlling the narrative, but I had to have the whole truth out or I’d torture myself.

“He’s holding it over my head, threatening to go public with it on his own to protect his campaign. I don’t know how he will spin the narrative, but I wanted to tell you all first in case he paints it in a different light…”

It felt good to get it all off my chest despite feeling the heat of their annoyed stares. Some board members looked away. A few stared at the pages on the table, lips pressed tight, but no one interrupted me. And no one asked any questions either, which shocked me.

Rebecca White stood and met my gaze as she said, “Thank you, Mr. Knight, for bringing this to our attention. That’s a lot to process. Please leave this assessment with us to discuss.” She reached for the files as I took a step away from the table. “You did the right thing by coming to us.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. It didn’t feel like the right thing but it was done, and I couldn’t take it back. At least now if David tried to pull any more crap with me or Savannah, I could tell him I had already exposed my dark secret to anyone who could be affected by it.

Well, almost anyone. I still had to tell Savannah. But now with Graham’s research done, I felt confident that she would understand and not be scared of me or think of me as a horrible person.

“Thank you,” I told the board members as I backed away another step then turned toward the door. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and as soon as I got into the hallway, I pulled it out to see one message from Savannah.

Savannah: 12:57 PM:We need to talk. Dad told me everything.

29

SAVANNAH

Istood on the balcony, one hand wrapped around a cooling cup of tea, staring out over Seattle’s skyline, which was partially obscured by other buildings. The street below pulsed with weekend traffic, a mix of horns and late sunlight casting long shadows across the pavement. I checked my phone again but there was nothing.

Dominic was late. He’d told me he would come by to meet the boys at exactly seven, but he wasn’t here yet. When I got the flash drive from my father, I’d gone straight to my office to see what was in the files, and I was discouraged to see the truth—not angry really, just hurt that he would keep something like this from me. I couldn’t be angry. I had kept something much more important from him.

And Dad’s behavior had merit, though I doubted he’d given me that drive to protect me. I could see right through the politics. He was protecting himself. Still, I could be grateful to him for allowing this door to Dominic’s heart to be open to me, to let me see inside and try to understand him better. But the roiling emotion was sure to come out as fear or anger when we talked.

Which was why I’d sent Thea to the park with the boys. They wouldn’t be back for a few hours, and that meant Dominic and I would have plenty of time to talk.

His knock was soft, and I opened the door to see his tense expression. He didn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes told me he felt like he’d been through a war. I stepped aside as he walked in.

“You saw him,” he said. I nodded at him as I quietly shut the door and set my tea mug on the nearby table. “What did he say?”

“Enough,” I answered, keeping my tone level. “He let me know what happened in Montauk—the accident, the call he made, and how it all unfolded. It was all on a flash drive—he said I needed to see what was on it for myself.”

Dominic didn’t flinch. He dropped his keys on the side table and turned to face me fully. “He gave you a flash drive?”

“He did. I plugged it into my laptop as soon as I got back to my office and watched everything. The footage, the reports…Dominic, you never told me?” For a second, I hoped he would deny it. Not because I wanted a lie, but because the truth that he didn’t feel safe telling me was a hard bullet to chew. But he didn’t deny anything.

“It was after an event,” he said. “I had a few drinks; your dad had more than a few. Something crossed the road, I hit it. We thought it was someone from the party. We stopped for a second and didn’t see anyone, but he said to keep going. Said he’d take care of it.”

I didn’t move. “And you never checked? You didn’t stay there and call an ambulance just in case?” My question was with a level tone, but the way his jaw clenched I could see how he was upset by that, probably defensive too.

His jaw tensed. “I wanted to believe him. I needed to.”

“So you lived with that guilt, let it change you, let it make you lie to me?” The words slipped out before I could stop them, andI felt like a horrible person for saying anything. Shame clamped my mouth shut, but anger started to simmer in my gut.

“I thought I was protecting you,” he said, his voice low.

“That’s not what protecting someone is,” I snapped. “You don’t protect someone by holding on to secrets and?—”

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