Page 60 of His Assistant

I look up at her sharply.

“Dominic told me. He’s never had an assistant last longer than a month, and he’s certainly never brought one home. I knew the night he brought you here that he was in love with you, and I finally got him to admit you were pregnant yesterday.”

My cheeks flame, and I’m sure they must be bright red. I’m grateful that the only light is coming from the pool lights.

“I don’t know about love,” I scoff.

“Trust me,” she says conspiratorially. “He has it bad for you. How could he not? I’ve known you for two weeks and I already love you like a sister. That was the one thing my parents were never able to give me.”

I lean over and give her a quick hug. That’s exactly what I needed to hear right now.

“Dominic also told me about your dad,” she says, squeezing me tighter. “I don’t know him, but I know that no good parent can cut their child out forever. Just have faith, Sofia. He’s going to come around. He has to.”

I nod and pull away, wiping away yet another round of tears.

“Thank you,” I tell her. “I already love you like a sister, too.”

“Good,” she smiles. “Because I have a lot of thoughts about my niece or nephew’s nursery.”

I feel better after that. The next day genuinely feels like a good one, which I didn’t think I was capable of anymore. Until my phone chimes and I look down to see a text from an unknown number.

Curious, I open it, and immediately wish that I hadn’t. It’s video footage of my father. He’s outside of a grocery store, carrying a few bags and completely unaware he’s being filmed. The angle is clearly not from a security camera. Someone took this with their phone.

As I’m watching it, the phone chimes again. I look down at the text, hoping it somehow justifies what I’m seeing.

You should have made a better choice.

The words turn my stomach, and I have to grab the trash can under my desk and vomit. Dominic steps out a moment later, which feels terribly inconvenient. The last thing I want is for him to see me like this.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Is it the baby?”

I shake my head and push the phone in his direction. He picks it up and stares at the screen for a moment. When I look up, his face is so furious I’m afraid he might snap my phone in two.

“We’re going home,” he tells me. “Right now. Grab your things.”

I don’t even try to argue. I don’t think I could stay for the rest of the day if my life depended on it. As we’re speeding back to the penthouse, Dominic barks instructions to Rafe. He wants to increase the security perimeter around my dad. Security my dad doesn’t even know about for a threat he’s unaware of.

My hands are shaking, twirling my phone between my hands as I consider calling him to warn him and knowing it would do no good. He wants nothing to do with me.

For the first time since he gave me the ultimatum, I’m not sad about his decision.

I’m terrified it’s going to get him killed.

24

DOMINIC

“We have an opportunity here,” I tell Rafe and Tomasso. “Whoever sent this to Sofia is clearly watching Marco. This is how we smoke them out.”

“Is all this really necessary?” Tomasso sighs heavily. “We’ve sent plenty of messages like that in the past. It’s just a warning.”

“It’s not about what they could do to Marco,” I remind him tensely. “Whoever grabbed this footage slipped past our security undetected.”

“Assuming it wasn’t one of our security,” Rafe suggests.

“That’s possible.” I nod. “The point is, protecting Marco is only half the plan. The other half is to find the damn mole. Once we do, we can stop reacting and start cutting this problem out at the root.”

Tomasso leans back in his chair, looking bored. It irritates me more than it should, but almost everything he does irritates me lately.