chapter 16

Louis’s POV

The morning sun hit my desk but brought no warmth. My eyes burned from staring at screens all night. Financial reports, wire transfers, shell company maps. The skeleton of Victor Hale’s empire was laid bare before me, and I was preparing the hammer.

But my mind kept drifting upstairs. To the small room where my daughter slept. To the woman down the hall who had trusted me with the truth.

A soft knock pulled me from the numbers. Marcus entered, holding a plain manila envelope. His face was unreadable, but his eyes held a weight.

“The results,” he said, placing the envelope on the desk between us.

I stared at it. A simple piece of paper that held my future. I had wanted it for legal armor, for undeniable proof. Now that it was here, my hand froze over it. What if some cosmic mistake had been made? What if this beautiful dream was just that?

“Leave it,” I said, my voice rough.

Marcus nodded and turned to go. He paused at the door. “The team is ready. The first leaks go to the press at nine AM. His stock will begin to tumble by lunch.”

“Good.” The word was a cold stone. Victor had chosen this war when he targeted a child. My child.

After Marcus left, I picked up the envelope. It was light. Too light for what it carried. I slid my finger under the flap and tore it open.

A single sheet of paper. Clinical language. Percentages.

**Probability of Paternity: 99.99%**

The air left my lungs in a rush. I sagged back into my chair, the paper trembling in my hand. There it was. In black and white. A fact. A truth.

Katie Savalini was my daughter.

A laugh, raw and choked, escaped me. It was part relief, part awe, part crushing regret for all the lost time. I had a daughter. I was a father.

I looked at the silver picture frame on my desk, the one I had been holding last night. I turned it over. It was empty. I had put a photo in it this morning. A picture I took on my phone last night of Katie asleep in the pillow fort, her cheek smushed against a cushion. I’d had it printed before dawn.

She was now the only photo on my desk.

The door creaked open again. I looked up, expecting Marcus.

It was Sierra.

She stood there in soft looking pajamas, her hair a messy halo around her worried face. She saw the paper in my hand, saw the open envelope. Her eyes went wide.

“Is that…”

“Yes,” I said. I held it out to her.

She walked over slowly, as if approaching a wild animal. She took the paper and read it. Her face went pale, then flushed. Her hands shook as badly as mine had.

“I didn’t need this,” she whispered. “I knew.”

“I know you did,” I said gently. “But I did. And now the world will have it too, when the time comes.”

She placed the paper back on the desk with great care, as if it might explode. She wrapped her arms around herself. “What happens now?”

“Now,” I said, standing up. I came around the desk and stopped in front of her. “Now, I am going to make sure no one can ever hurt my family again.” I reached out and took her hand, pulling it gently away from her body. I held it between both of mine. “And now, I am going to ask you something.”

She looked up at me, her blue eyes full of stormy confusion. “What?”

“Have breakfast with me. Not as an employee. Not as the mother of my child. Just as Sierra. With me. Just Louis.”

A small, reluctant smile touched her lips. “Just us?”

“Just us. Katie is still asleep. We have maybe an hour before the fort demands its king and queen.”

She nodded, her smile growing. “Okay. Just us.”

I led her not to the formal dining room, but to the small breakfast nook in the kitchen, sun drenched and intimate. I pulled out a chair for her. I made coffee. I scrambled eggs, something I hadn’t done for myself in years.

We ate in a comfortable quiet, a world away from the tense dinner party just nights before. She told me about Katie’s obsession with astronauts. I told her about my sister, Nia, who was an actual aerospace engineer.

“She’d love to meet Katie,” I said, then immediately regretted it. Too fast, too much.

But Sierra just nodded. “I’d like that. Katie needs… more family.”

The way she said it, so wistfully, cracked something open in my chest. She had been so alone.

“She has it now,” I said firmly. “She has me. And she has my entire family, who will adore her. And you.”

Our eyes met over the table. The air shifted, grew heavier, warmer. The easy companionship simmered into something else. Something that had been building since she stepped out of the car, since five years ago in a red lit room.

I saw her gaze drop to my mouth, then flutter away. A blush crept up her neck.

I pushed my plate aside. “Sierra.”

“Hmm?”

“Look at me.”

She did. Her breath hitched.

“I want to kiss you,” I said, the words blunt and honest. “I have wanted to kiss you since you walked into my kitchen smelling of vanilla and fear. But I need to know you want it too. Not because I’m Katie’s father. Not because you’re living in my house. Because you feel this… this impossible thing between us that even five years couldn’t kill.”

Her lips parted. She didn’t speak for a long moment. She just looked at me, searching my face.

Then, slowly, she stood up from her chair.

She walked around the small table until she was standing beside me. She placed one hand on my cheek, her touch cool and soft.

“I have always felt it, Louis,” she whispered. “Even when I was running from you. It never went away.”

That was all the permission I needed.

I stood, my chair scraping back. I cupped her face in my hands and finally, finally brought my mouth to hers.

The first touch was soft, a question. Her lips were sweet, yielding. Then she made a small, desperate sound in the back of her throat and her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer.

The kiss deepened, turning hungry, urgent. Five years of missing, of wondering, of secret longing poured into it. My tongue swept into her mouth, tasting her, claiming her. She met me with equal fire, her body arching into mine.

I backed her against the kitchen counter, my hands sliding down to her hips, lifting her to sit on the edge. She wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling me into the cradle of her thighs. The thin layer of her pajamas was nothing. I could feel her heat through the fabric, and I groaned against her mouth.

My hands moved under her top, skimming over the smooth skin of her back. She shuddered, her nails digging into my shoulders. I broke the kiss to trail my lips down her neck, tasting the frantic pulse there.

“Louis,” she breathed, her head falling back.

“I remember,” I murmured against her skin, my voice thick with desire. “I remember the way you sigh my name. Just like that.”

I captured her mouth again, one hand tangling in her hair, the other sliding around to cup her breast through her top. She gasped into my mouth, her hips rocking against me in a slow, torturous rhythm that made me see stars.

We were lost in it, in the heat and the need, the past and present colliding. It was forgiveness and claiming, apology and promise, all without words.

A sudden, loud clatter from upstairs made us freeze.

We broke apart, breathing ragged. Our foreheads rested together.

“Katie,” Sierra whispered, her eyes wide.

Reality crashed back in, cold and sobering. We were in a sunlit kitchen, our daughter was awake, and a man was trying to destroy us.

I smoothed her hair back from her flushed face. My thumb traced her swollen lips. “This isn’t over,” I promised, my voice low and rough.

She nodded, her own breath still unsteady. “I know.”

We heard little footsteps on the stairs. Sierra quickly hopped off the counter, straightening her clothes. I ran a hand through my hair, trying to look less like a man who had just been thoroughly kissed.

Katie appeared in the doorway, her stuffed bunny dangling from one hand. She rubbed her eyes. “I’m hungry.”

Sierra shot me a look, a secret, heated smile playing on her lips. “Well,” she said, her voice only slightly shaky. “It just so happens the chef is in.”

As she moved to get Katie cereal, our eyes met again over our daughter’s head.

The game had changed. The walls were down.

And Victor Hale had no idea what was coming for him.