Page 6 of Bossh*le Daddy
"You took everything I threw at you today." The words were measured, careful. "The meeting. The impossible coffee order.The contract emergency I manufactured just to see if you'd panic." My eyes widened at that admission. "Most don't make it past lunch. The last one was crying in the bathroom by ten a.m."
I didn't know what to say to that. Part of me wanted to point out that I'd definitely considered crying in the bathroom. Multiple times. But admitting that felt like handing him ammunition.
"You're soft," he continued, and I flinched. But then: "That's not necessarily a weakness. Not if you learn to use it right. To bend without breaking."
His eyes dropped to my bag, where the bunny's ear was still slightly visible. Something shifted in his expression, so quickly I might have imagined it. When he looked back at me, there was an intensity there that made my stomach flip.
"Seven sharp tomorrow," he said, but the tone was different now. Not the harsh bark of this morning. Something almost . . . protective? "Don't be late, little one."
Little one.
The words landed like a physical touch, unexpected and strangely intimate. My breath caught, heart doing something complicated in my chest. It should have been condescending. Should have been insulting. But the way he said it, low and careful, made it feel like something else entirely.
He turned before I could respond—not that I had any idea what to say—and headed back to his office. At the door, he paused, glancing back over his shoulder. The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile but closer than anything I'd seen all day.
"And bring the bunny if you need to," he added, so quietly I almost missed it. "Just keep her hidden better. I run a Fortune 500 company, not a daycare."
The door closed, leaving me alone with my racing heart and burning cheeks. I sat frozen, replaying the last minute in myhead. Had that really happened? Had Damian Stone, corporate destroyer and nightmare boss, just given me permission to bring my stuffie to work?
Chapter 2
Thursdayarrivedwrappedinthe same pre-dawn anxiety that had become my constant companion. The executive elevator climbed toward the sixtieth floor while I pressed my thumb against the worn ear of my rabbit, hidden deep in my bag. Half an hour until seven sharp—enough time to brew his coffee exactly right, organize the chaos of yesterday's files, and pretend my hands weren't still shaking from the memory of his voice saying "little one."
Two weeks. It had only been two weeks. Somehow, I felt like I’d been here two years.
The office was tomb-quiet at this hour, just the hum of sleeping computers and the distant rumble of the city waking sixty floors below. The coffee maker on fifty-eight had become my morning ritual—temperature gun in hand, testing and retesting until the digital display showed exactly 140 degrees.
By the time his private elevator chimed at seven, I had everything ready. Coffee positioned precisely six inches from the right edge of his desk. Morning emails sorted into color-coded folders—red for urgent, blue for financial, green for legal. TheWall Street Journal folded to the business section, because he always started there before moving to international markets.
"Good morning, Mr. Stone." The words came out steadier now, though my pulse still jumped when he swept past my desk in a cloud of expensive cologne and controlled power.
He never responded to the greeting. Just collected his coffee with those elegant fingers that made everything look effortless. But I was learning his language—the slight pause when the coffee was the right temperature, the way his shoulders dropped a fraction when his inbox was perfectly organized. These tiny victories sustained me.
The rhythm emerged slowly, painfully. How to translate his clipped, brutal dictation into emails his executives could stomach. When "Tell Henderson he's an incompetent fool who couldn't manage a lemonade stand" became "Mr. Stone has concerns about your department's performance metrics and would like to schedule a meeting to discuss improvement strategies." How to gauge his mood by the way he rolled his sleeves—neat folds meant a good day, harsh yanks meant someone was about to bleed.
But learning his patterns didn't make the days easier. Each evening, I'd stumble out of the building feeling like I'd been put through a corporate wood chipper. The subway ride home became a blur of exhaustion so complete that twice I missed my stop. My tiny apartment welcomed me with the same cracked mirror and peeling wallpaper, but now it felt like a sanctuary.
I'd collapse on my bed still wearing my work clothes, too tired to change, too wired to sleep. My rabbit became my confessor, absorbing the day's humiliations into her threadbare fur. "He called me an imbecile today," I'd whisper into her ear. "Because I knocked over a pen. A pen." But even as I catalogued his cruelties, that traitorous flutter would start in my stomach. The way he'd looked at me when he said it, those gray eyes holdingmine a beat too long. The way "imbecile" had sounded almost fond.
The morning flew by in a blur of controlled efficiency. When he dictated the company-wide memo about the quarterly restructuring, I kept pace with every word. My pen moved smoothly across the page, capturing his vision for the Berlin expansion, the staffing changes, his expectations for the next fiscal quarter. He'd paused mid-sentence to take a call, muttering something vicious about Morrison from Legal as he grabbed his phone.
"Useless fucking lawyer thinks billable hours mean sitting on his ass contemplating his navel. Should have fired him last quarter when I had the chance."
I captured it all in my careful shorthand, planning to clean it up and take the edge off in the typed version. The call stretched on, his voice fading as he moved to the window. I gathered my notes and slipped out, eager to get the memo drafted while his words were fresh.
Back at my desk, I attacked the keyboard with something approaching confidence. The sentences flowed, professional and clear. I double-checked every figure against my notes. Spell-check caught two typos I fixed immediately. Reading it through, I felt that alien sensation again—pride. This was good work. Clean, professional, exactly his tone without the harsh edges.
The printer hummed, delivering crisp pages that I aligned perfectly before carrying them to his office. He was still on the call, pacing behind his desk like a caged predator. I set the memo in the center of his desk, precisely squared to the edge, and retreated.
For twenty minutes, I actually felt competent. I filed invoices with smooth efficiency, responded to scheduling requests without panic, even managed to book his lunch reservation at Le Bernardin without stuttering. The feeling was so foreign I almostdidn't trust it. But maybe, just maybe, I was getting the hang of this.
Then his voice cracked through the intercom like a whip. "Conference room. Now."
The tone froze my blood. Not the usual irritation or impatience, but something colder. Deadlier. I grabbed my planner with trembling hands and hurried to the executive conference room, where his senior team was already assembled around the massive table. They looked like mourners at a particularly tense funeral.
Damian stood at the head of the table, the memo in his hand. My memo. My stomach dropped somewhere around my ankles as I realized whatever was about to happen would be public and brutal.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, his voice carrying that particular tone that meant someone was about to be eviscerated. "I'd like to share with you all a fascinating piece of corporate communication. Drafted by my assistant. Distributed company-wide ten minutes ago."
