Page 78 of Secret Baby Daddy

Timeline: subject confirmed target identity shortly after first physical intimacy between subjects.

Test message sent to Piper Vale’s personal device at 4:12 a.m., cross-referenced against Cassandra reply timestamp at 4:12:30 a.m., confirmation method attached, page 9.

I read the timestamp match a third time, unable to find a single flaw in the methodology, which is somehow worse than if I could have.

There’s a technical appendix at the end, clinical and precise, explaining exactly how it was done: malware embedded in a compromised contractor’s device, the same badge-cloned access that got a man within twenty feet of Sloane at the gala, sitting quietly on the property’s supposedly secure network, harvesting Blackline session data, and the full message archive the platform syncs to every device on login, each time either of us signed in from inside the estate.

Roman didn’t need to hack anything sophisticated.

He just needed patience, and the same physical access he’d been quietly buying for over a decade.

He didn’t know before that first night.

Somehow, that should make it better.

For one brief, desperate second, I want it to.

But then I keep reading.

The test message.

The timestamp.

Every Blackline conversation that came after it.

Every time I talked to Atlas about Dominic without knowing I was talking to Dominic himself.

Every time I admitted I was confused, or scared, or falling for two different men while one of those men sat silently on both sides of the confession.

He knew then.

And he said nothing.

Atlas asking how I felt.

Atlas giving me space.

Atlas telling me not to rush a decision.

Dominic standing beside me the next morning, carrying all of that knowledge behind a face I thought I was finally learning to trust.

The first night between us wasn’t built on this lie.

Everything after his discovery was.

That distinction matters.

It just doesn’t make the betrayal disappear.

Because once he knew, the choice should have become mine.

He should have told me who he was and let me decide what happened next.

Instead, he decided for me.

He decided what I could handle.

He decided when I was allowed to know.