Page 17 of Secret Baby Daddy

She sits perfectly still in a velvet wingback chair, watching us with the cold calculation of a judge, and takes a slow sip of her tea.

“The press has the video,” I tell her, sitting up straight. “We have less than twenty minutes before this breaks.”

My phone buzzes once against the marble, Wren, three words: anything I can do?

I turn it face-down.

There will be time to delegate the parts of this that can be delegated.

The actual thinking has to happen in my own head first.

“Then I suggest you stop lecturing each other on philosophy and start working.”

Cordelia sets her teacup down, and the porcelain clinks against the saucer.

“You’re wasting my time. I hired you to solve this, not to debate the ethics of video editing.”

“Mrs. Merrick,” I start, shifting into my professional cadence. “Mr. Calder insists on treating manipulated footage as absolute truth. I need to attack the credibility of the video itself before the news cycle anchors around Sloane’s guilt.”

Cordelia rises without assistance, waving off the cane for a moment as though to remind us both that frailty is a costume she wears only when it is useful.

I have negotiated with heads of state who possessed less raw authority than this seventy-year-old woman in a white suit deciding she has heard enough.

“Figure it out,” she says.

Her cane taps a dismissive rhythm on the hardwood until the door clicks shut behind her.

My jaw aches.

Calder steps away from my chair and paces toward the far window to call his security team.

He doesn’t look back at me.

Managing Mr. Calder.

I pull my laptop closer, open my master directory, and, out of sheer, unadulterated spite, create a new folder.

Managing Mr. Calder.

I hit enter.

I should delete it; it is petty, unprofessional, the kind of detail that would read badly in a deposition.

I leave it exactly where it is, glowing faintly on my desktop, a small private rebellion against a man who has never once, in a full year of knowing me, admitted that I might be right about anything.

Rain starts against the window behind me.

I do not look up.

4

DOMINIC

I sit alone in the Merrick family’s private study, the mahogany door locked from the inside.

A server array dominates the corner, blowing warm air against my ankles.

The room smells of hot metal and ozone.