Page 6 of Secret Baby Daddy

I know his methods are draconian.

Cordelia Merrick is not in the room yet.

Calder steps away from the window with the quiet, deliberate grace that always irritates me.

Average men make noise when they walk.

Calder stalks.

“Your reality management usually involves ignoring the actual danger. We have a data breach, Piper. Someone is threatening this family with stolen assets. A press release will not stop a leak.”

“You have no idea what my strategy is.”

I cross my arms, digging my fingernails into my sleeves.

“But I do know yours. You will lock down the building, confiscate everyone’s phones, and make the family look incredibly guilty to the media. Panic is not a strategy.”

“Facts are a strategy.”

He stops three feet away, using his height to make me look up.

I keep my neck perfectly straight and lift my eyes.

“Facts are malleable.”

I smile sharply.

“I thought you would have learned that by now.”

“I learned plenty during the Aurelius incident.”

His voice is flat.

My nails dig harder.

Three months ago, Margaret Aurelius had a logistics failure that turned into a security breach, and the Consortium hired us both to fix it.

I stayed awake for forty-eight hours.

I tore through thousands of pages of consultant records, matching timelines and cross-referencing vendor payments.

I ruined a pair of shoes pacing the floor of my office.

I found the embedded consultant leaking the information at six in the morning and called the Consortium board to deliver my victory.

They thanked me politely and informed me that Dominic Calder had found the leak at midnight.

He opened a single logistics spreadsheet, sorted the financial data by an obscure security code, and quietly handled the problem.

He beat me by exactly six hours.

There was no public showdown, no humiliation in the press.

It was a quiet, effortless defeat.

That is exactly why I despise him.

He makes the hardest things in the world look easy.