Page 68 of Secret Heir For The Billionaire Twin

Martin nods. “Done.”

Vivian Cross closes the folder in front of her. “Then unless Legal has suddenly developed an interest in server latency, I think my contribution here is complete.”

“You never know,” I reply.

“I do, actually.”

She stands, collecting her notes, and several of the others follow her lead. Martin remains behind long enough to confirm that I want the revised projection sent directly to me.

“Yes,” I tell him.

He hesitates.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.”

“Martin.”

He gives me the reluctant expression of a man deciding whether twelve years of employment entitle him to honesty.

“You usually don’t want these.”

“These what?”

“The revised projections. Not at this stage.”

He is right.

“I want them this time.”

“All right.”

He leaves without pressing further.

When the door closes, I remain beside the conference table and look at the abandoned presentation still glowing against the wall.

Three percent.

No client impact.

No material exposure.

I have spent an entire morning solving a problem that was already solved before I arrived. I pick up my tablet and return to my office. Boston ended two days ago. Yet that fact has been remarkably useless. I have treated the intervening hours as though enough work might alter what happened there. Meetings began earlier. Calls ran later. I reviewed reports that did not require my review and answered emails that Daniel would usually filter before they reached me.

None of it has prevented Sophie from appearing without warning in the spaces between one thought and the next.

I sit behind my desk and open the revised infrastructure report. For several pages, numbers cooperate with me. Then one sentence loses its meaning halfway through.

Her hair is wrapped around my fist.

The image arrives so cleanly that my hand stills against the page. Another follows before I can shut it down: Sophie beneath me, her face flushed, blue eyes fixed on mine as the composure she wears so easily everywhere else disappears.

Heat pulls low through my body, and my cock twitches in my pants. I lean back and close my eyes for a second.

“Jesus Christ.”

The empty office offers no response. I open the report again. There is no regret attached to the memory. That would be easier. Regret can be categorized. It can be examined, corrected, and avoided the next time. But I would do it again—and therein lies the problem.