Page 33 of Bossh*le Daddy
"Any breach of this confidentiality agreement will result in immediate forfeiture of severance benefits and potential legal action seeking damages not less than $500,000 . . ."
Five hundred thousand dollars. More than I'd see in a decade. Enough to ensure complete, terrified silence. Enough to make Rebecca flee to Connecticut and Melissa hide in Chicago and whatever came before them scatter to the winds without a whisper of what they'd been to him.
My vision blurred, and I blinked hard, but the tears came anyway. They splashed onto my hands, still poised uselessly over the keyboard. Through the watery haze, I saw Damian's office door, still firmly closed. The Singapore call should have ended thirty-seven minutes ago—I knew his schedule like my own heartbeat—but he hadn't emerged. Hadn't buzzed for his coffee. Hadn't sent one of his terse messages demanding to know where I was.
Maybe he was in there interviewing my replacement. Maybe he'd already found the next desperate girl to play dress-up in his carefully constructed fantasy. Someone younger, prettier, more naive. Someone who wouldn't piece together the pattern until it was too late.
My hands found the ribbon in my hair, fingers tangling in the silk. I pulled it free with movements that felt violent, the silk catching on bobby pins, pulling strands of hair with it. Theribbon pooled on my desk beside the cold coffee, gold against the dark wood, beautiful and meaningless.
The employment contract still glowed on my screen, cursor blinking patiently at the end of that devastating confidentiality clause. I minimized it with a click that felt like accepting defeat, but the words remained burned into my retinas.
My mascara was running. I could feel it tracking down my cheeks, probably making me look exactly like what I was—a silly girl who'd thought she was special.
The sound of his office door opening hit me like a gunshot. I'd been so lost in my spiral of self-pity that I'd missed the telltale sounds of him ending his call—the final "We'll proceed as discussed," the soft thud of his phone hitting the desk, the particular rhythm of his footsteps that meant someone had disappointed him.
Damian emerged like a storm system moving in from the Atlantic—controlled power and imminent destruction. His jacket was gone, abandoned somewhere in the wake of whatever had gone wrong with Singapore. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled to his elbows with military precision, revealing those forearms that had no business looking like weapons. That muscle in his jaw—the one I'd learned to read like a barometer—ticked out a rhythm that spelled danger for whoever had failed him.
I sat frozen, hands still poised over my keyboard like I'd been working instead of drowning in revelations about my expendability. Maybe if I stayed perfectly still, he wouldn't notice me. Maybe he'd sweep past to terrorize some other department, leave me to my misery and mascara-stained cheeks and the growing certainty that I was just another soon-to-be casualty of his business requirements.
But this was Damian Stone. He noticed everything.
His stride broke at my desk, those gray eyes taking in the scene with the same surgical precision he used to dissect quarterly reports. The cold americano, condensation pooled around its base like a coffee crime scene. The minimized windows on my computer screen, because of course he'd notice that too. And there, damning as a confession—the gold ribbon crumpled beside my keyboard, a silk surrender flag marking the exact moment I'd stopped believing in fairy tales.
The frown that carved itself between his brows wasn't his usual expression of corporate displeasure. This was something different, something that made my already fragile composure crack like safety glass. Without a word, he reached for the abandoned coffee cup, lifting it with two fingers like evidence. The liquid sloshed, cold and accusatory.
I couldn't watch him catalog my failures. Couldn't sit there while he compared me to his mental files on Rebecca and Melissa and found me equally lacking. My legs moved without permission, carrying me away from his inspection with the kind of panicked energy that belonged to prey animals and terminated employees.
The supply closet had never been my refuge before, but that didn’t stop me. I slipped inside and pulled the door nearly closed, leaving just a crack because full darkness felt too much like admitting defeat. My hands found the nearest stack of paper, aligning already perfect edges with movements that might pass for productivity if anyone looked.
If he looked.
The tears came harder now that I was hidden, silent sobs that shook my shoulders and made the paper blur into white nothing. I pressed my forehead against the metal shelf, cool against my overheated skin, and tried to breathe through the truth that Silas had laid on me.
Temporary.
Replaceable.
Just another in a line of convenient women who'd believed his perfect performance.
I heard him before I saw him. Those deliberate footsteps that turned the supply closet into a trap I'd built myself. The door opened wider, spilling light across my pathetic attempt at invisibility.
"You didn't bring my coffee."
His voice held that careful neutrality he used during hostile takeover negotiations. Not angry, not yet, but weighted with something that could tip either direction. I kept my back to him, fingers still uselessly straightening paper that would never be straight enough to fix this.
"The Singapore call ran long," I managed, the lie tasting worse than the truth would have.
"Don't."
One word, soft but commanding. His hand touched my shoulder—just a brush of fingers, barely there, but I flinched away like he'd struck me. Like his touch burned. Like I couldn't bear to feel those hands that had mapped my body with such devastating precision, knowing they'd done the same to Rebecca. To Melissa. To however many came before.
The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything I couldn't say. That I knew about his pattern. That I'd read my contract's termination clause. That I understood now why he'd been so perfect at playing Daddy—practice made perfect, after all.
"Look at me, little one."
The endearment shattered something inside me. That name—little one—that had rewritten my entire identity, now revealed as recycled goods. A sob escaped before I could swallow it, ugly and raw and echoing in the small space. My shoulders shook harder,and I gripped the shelf like it might keep me from flying apart entirely.
When I finally turned, I knew I looked destroyed. Mascara had given up any pretense of staying where it belonged, tracking down my cheeks in black rivers. My nose was running. My carefully pressed blouse was wrinkled from pressing against the shelves.
