Page 20 of Daddy's Little Fighter
“Unacceptable,” Daddy muttered.
“Daddy.” Frankie looked up at him.
Was she a little frustrated that he had purposefully done that? Yes, she was. But they didn’t know she was going to get scared. Frankie should have kept a better eye out to see if anyone was coming.
But she had been enjoying the cookies.
“No, Little One. None of that should have happened.” Daddy looked down at her.
“But it did,” she whispered.
She couldn’t go back in time to change it. If she could, she would have gone back a long time ago and never gone to the store to get butter. But everyone had to live with the consequences of their own actions. Dominic was probably feeling worse than any of them.
“No, it is my fault. I never should have done any of this,” Dominic chimed in. “I am willing to take any punishment for what I did. If you want to fire me, I understand.”
Her mouth fell open as he said those words. Was he really saying that?
“Whoa—“ Michael started.
“You can’t fire him,” Frankie interrupted.
Everyone looked at her, making her shrink into Daddy’s chest. She didn’t think she was going to speak so loudly.
“No one is going to get fired.” Michael’s voice boomed in the office.
Frankie’s eyes moved over to Michael. He was breathing heavily as he stood next to Dominic, his eyes trailing around the room and looking at everyone.
“Noah, calm down. Yes, you have every right to be mad, but you also knew she was leaving your office when we were working,” Michael pointed out.
It was her turn to look at Daddy, shocked. He had watched her over the camera to see what she was doing?
“And you two, yes, what you did wasn’t the best. But we can’t change the past. We can only learn from it and hope we don’t do something in the future,” Michael continued, “but no one is going to get fired over this. We knew Frank went down to the kitchen and decided to carry on with our work.”
Daddy looked down at her. “Yes, we did see you coming down the stairs with the blanket covering you. Very cute, but you are in trouble for doing that. Do you know how dangerous that was?”
Just like she called it. She was going to get in trouble for leaving the office.
“But I am proud of you for going out,” he quietly said to her. “I bet that took a lot of courage.”
She nodded. It did. She had been clutching the blanket so hard the whole time.
Daddy looked away from her. “Like Michael said, you two aren’t going to get fired. You aren’t going to get punished in any other way either. Let’s all take this as a learning opportunity and never do it again.”
“They don’t get in trouble, but I am going to get spanked because I went down the stairs in my blanket?” She looked at Daddy, clearly annoyed. “That’s not fair at all. If they aren’t going to get punished, then I shouldn’t get in trouble either.”
Chuckles rang out around the room.
Frankie flinched. Right. She kept forgetting that people were in the room with them.
“I don’t think she should get in trouble either,” Michael chuckled. “Let’s all just wipe the slate clean and move on. Nothing too serious happened. We are all learning.”
“I agree,” Trent finally spoke up. “We are all sorry for what happened, but it got her out of the office. We won’t do it again.”
Silence filled the room once again, and Frankie didn’t dare look around this time. She was exhausted and wanted to go to sleep.
“Let’s all go back to work and let them be,” Michael quietly said. “We can talk to them later.”
Daddy guided her head back to his chest, and she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and allowing her whole body to relax against his as everyone left.
