Page 10 of Secret Baby Daddy

“I need a full forensic team,” Calder says immediately. “I need to sweep this building, seize all devices, and move Sloane to a secure location.”

“If you move Sloane to a bunker, the press will assume she is hiding from the police.”

I glare at him.

“You cannot treat a CEO like a fugitive. I need her visible. I need her doing charity work. We need a counter-narrative in place before the video drops.”

“If she is visible, she is a target. Someone has our floor plans. You are asking to put a target on her back for a photo opportunity.”

“I am asking to save her company!”

“Stop it.”

Cordelia hits her cane against the marble, and the crack echoes.

“You will work together. Every statement Ms. Vale releases must be cleared by Mr. Calder for security risks. Every movement Mr. Calder orders must be cleared by Ms. Vale for media optics.”

She is trapping us in the same room.

We cannot make a single move without the other’s permission.

“Mrs. Merrick,” I start carefully. “With respect, Mr. Calder and I have fundamentally different approaches to crisis management.”

“I am well aware of your history, Ms. Vale.”

Cordelia’s eyes are cold.

“I hired you both because I need exactly what you both provide. You will figure out how to manage each other, or you will forfeit your retainers and I will find people who can.”

She stands slowly.

“The scandal is not your only problem. From now on, you are also managing Mr. Calder. Do not disappoint me.”

She walks out, and the doors click shut behind her.

The silence that follows has weight, the density of a room built for people who have never had to raise their voices to be obeyed.

I look at Calder.

He looks at me.

Managing Mr. Calder, I think, testing the phrase the way I test every headline before I let it near a client.

It sounds like a threat.

It sounds, infuriatingly, like something else too, something I do not have the time to examine, not with a twelve-year-old death sitting unresolved on the table between us.

I open my laptop.

My reflection stares back from the dark screen for half a second, hair still perfect, mouth set in the flat line I wear for war.

Whatever this becomes, I am not losing it.

Not to this extortion, not to a manipulated video, and certainly not to six foot three of humorless concrete watching me with an expression I refuse to decipher.

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DOMINIC