Page 20 of Secret Baby Daddy

Roman Vasseur wears a navy bespoke suit cut with lethal precision.

His hair is completely silver, brushed back from a face lined with decades of manufactured charm.

He holds a crystal tumbler of bourbon, the amber liquid swirling as he turns.

My pulse does something I have not felt it do in years, not fear, exactly, and not quite fury, but a cold, precise alertness that used to mean I was about to make a serious mistake.

I catalogue him the way I catalogue any threat.

Height, reach, the placement of his hands, the exits he has already mapped without appearing to look at them.

Some of those habits Roman taught me himself.

It is a special kind of insult, using his own training against him.

“Dominic.”

Roman smiles, wide, familiar, paternal.

“It has been far too long, my boy.”

Piper glances sideways at me and reads the shift in my posture.

I stop walking and plant my feet in the Persian rug.

“Vasseur,” I say, flat. “You are trespassing.”

Roman chuckles and takes a slow sip of the bourbon before setting the glass on the mantelpiece.

“I am saving an empire. Northbridge Capital sent me to offer Mrs. Merrick a highly lucrative exit strategy before this unfortunate video destroys her company’s stock.”

He steps forward, extending his hand.

He smells of expensive cigars and aged liquor, the exact scent he wore twelve years ago when he placed a hand on my shoulder and told me Jonah Reed was just a paranoid liability.

I look at his outstretched hand and keep my arms at my sides.

“You should leave,” I tell him. “Before I throw you through the window.”

Roman slowly lowers his hand.

The warm smile remains, but his dark eyes sharpen into calculating points, and for a fraction of a second the paternal mask slips to show the predator underneath.

“You always were too emotional for this line of work, Dominic,” he says quietly.

He turns his attention to Piper, sweeping his gaze over her blazer and her defiant posture.

“And you must be Piper Vale. A storyteller who does not know when a story is over.”

Piper steps forward, placing herself almost imperceptibly between Roman and me.

“I know exactly when a story is over, Mr. Vasseur. It ends when I say it does.”

Something in Roman’s expression sharpens further at that, approval, maybe, or the calculation of a man revising a plan to account for an unexpected variable.

I do not like either interpretation.

Roman meets my eyes over Piper’s shoulder, and for one unguarded instant something almost like pride flickers across his face, the poisonous pride of a man admiring a weapon he built and no longer controls.