chapter 17

Sierra’s POV

My lips still tingled. An hour later, sitting across from Katie as she diligently spooned Cheerios, I could still feel the pressure of his mouth, the scrape of his stubble, the dizzying heat of his hands on my skin. Every time I glanced at him leaning against the counter, sipping his coffee like a man who hadn’t just turned my world inside out, a fresh wave of warmth flooded my chest.

It was different now. The secret was out. The truth was on paper. And the kiss… the kiss had rewritten every rule.

“Daddy Louis, are you coming to my school play?” Katie asked, milk dribbling down her chin.

Louis’s eyes, which had been watching me with a dark, knowing intensity, softened as he looked at her. “When is it?”

“Next Friday! I’m a talking tree!”

“A talking tree,” he repeated solemnly. “That is a very important role. I wouldn’t miss it.”

The ease of it, the domestic normalcy, was surreal. My daughter was asking her billionaire father about a school play while I tried to remember how to form coherent sentences.

My phone vibrated on the table, breaking the spell. It was a news alert.

*FINANCIAL TIMES: Hale Holdings Stock Plummets 15% in Early Trading Amid Fraud Allegations.

I looked up at Louis. He was watching me, his expression unreadable. He gave a single, slight nod.

He had started. The war was public.

A cold thread of fear wound through the warmth in my belly. This was the other side of his power. Not just luxurious houses and gentle hands. This was destruction on a galactic scale.

“Everything okay, Mommy?” Katie asked, sensing my shift.

“Yes, bug. Just grown up stuff.” I forced a smile.

After breakfast, Louis had to go to his office downtown. “Security is doubled,” he told me quietly at the door. His hand came up, his fingers brushing a strand of hair behind my ear in a gesture that was becoming familiar. Possessive. “Don’t leave the grounds. If you need anything, tell Marcus. He’s here for you.”

“I’m not used to having people ‘here for me,’” I admitted.

“Get used to it.” His thumb stroked my cheekbone. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and for a heartbeat, I thought he might kiss me again, with Katie watching cartoons in the next room. But he just leaned in, his lips brushing my forehead once more. “I’ll be back by dinner.”

The day passed in a strange, suspended bubble. Katie explored the garden with a security detail discreetly shadowing her from ten feet away. I tried to plan a menu, but my mind was a riot of sensation and fear.

In the late afternoon, Jasmine video-called.

“Okay, spill. You have that look.”

“What look?”

“The ‘I just got thoroughly kissed by a Greek god and also someone might be trying to kill me’ look. It’s very specific.”

I laughed, the tension breaking a little. I told her about the paternity test, the breakfast, the kiss. I left out the stock market crash. Some things felt too big to say out loud.

“Holy hell, Sierra,” Jasmine breathed, her eyes wide. “So he’s all in. Like, *all* in.”

“It feels that way.”

“And how do *you* feel?”

I looked out the kitchen window at Katie trying to do a cartwheel on the lawn, a guard subtly moving a garden ornament out of her way. “Terrified. Hopeful. Like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff and I’ve already jumped.”

“That’s love, baby,” she said softly.

The word hung between us, silent and huge on my end of the line. I couldn’t say it. Not yet. It was too tangled up with gratitude, with lust, with the sheer relief of not being alone anymore.

Love felt like a luxury we hadn’t earned yet.

After the call, I put Katie down for a nap. The silence of the big house pressed in on me. I wandered, ending up in Louis’s study. It still smelled like him, like coffee and clean, expensive soap.

My eyes fell on the silver picture frame. The photo of Katie sleeping. Next to it, facedown, was the paternity result. I flipped it over, reading the conclusive numbers again.

Next to that was a legal pad. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. It was a list, in his sharp, slanted handwriting.

*1. Security upgrade – panic room – DONE.*

*2. Discredit Hale in media – IN PROGRESS.*

*3. Freeze offshore assets – PENDING.*

*4. Custody agreement – DRAFT.*

*5. Will update – URGENT.*

My heart stopped at number four. *Custody agreement.*

The warmth from the morning vanished, replaced by a cold, sinking dread. Of course. This was the reality. The kisses were one thing, but legally tying himself to his daughter was another. What would it say? Would it limit my rights? Would it try to take her from me if he decided I was unfit?

The old fear, the one that had made me run five years ago, rose up like a monster, choking me.

I heard the front door open, his voice murmuring to Marcus. I quickly put the pad down and turned, trying to compose my face.

He walked into the study, shrugging off his suit jacket. He looked tired but energized, like a general after a successful first battle.

“Hey,” he said, his eyes lighting up when he saw me. He came over, his hand coming up to my waist, pulling me gently toward him. “Miss me?”

I stiffened.

He felt it immediately. His smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

I stepped back, out of his reach. My eyes flicked to the legal pad.

He followed my gaze. Understanding dawned on his face, followed by a flash of frustration. “Sierra.”

“Custody agreement,” I said, the words tasting like ash.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “It’s not what you think.”

“Then what is it? A fun little document to commemorate our new family?”

“It’s to protect you!” he said, his voice low but intense. “If anything happens to me, I need it legally established that you are her mother, that you have full rights, that my entire estate flows to you and her without contest. Do you have any idea what kind of vultures would come out of the woodwork? My family, my board, everyone would try to cut you out. That pad is a list of how I keep you safe, not how I control you.”

The anger drained out of me, leaving me shaky. “You… you’d do that?”

He closed the distance between us, but didn’t touch me. “I told you. You are mine to protect. Both of you. That includes from the fallout of my own life, my own death. The agreement gives you power. It makes you untouchable.”

Tears blurred my vision. I had been so ready to assume the worst. To see the billionaire, not the man.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Old habits.”

His expression softened. He reached out, wiping a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “I know. And we will move at your speed. The lawyer can explain it all to you. You can change anything you want. It’s yours.”

He pulled me into his arms then, and I went willingly, burying my face in his chest, breathing him in. His heart beat strong and steady under my ear.

“The stock drop today,” I mumbled into his shirt. “That was you.”

“That was the opening move,” he corrected, his voice a low rumble. “He’ll be scrambling today. Lying to investors. Selling assets. He’ll be too busy to look at you or Katie.”

He said it like it was a simple strategy. And maybe to him it was.

Later, after a family dinner where Katie talked nonstop about tree costumes, he put her to bed. I was in the kitchen, cleaning up, when he came back down.

The atmosphere shifted again. The domestic chore faded, replaced by that heavy, magnetic pull. He leaned against the island, watching me dry a plate.

“She wants you to read tomorrow night,” I said, just to say something.

“I will.” His gaze was hot on my skin. “Sierra.”

I put the plate down. Turned to face him. “Yes?”

“I don’t want to sleep in my room tonight,” he said, his voice raw. “I want to sleep in yours. I want to hold you. Just hold you. No expectations. I just… need to know you’re there.”

It was the most vulnerable thing he had ever said to me. It wasn’t a command. It was a request.

My body answered before my mind could. A flush of heat, a deep, aching yes.

I nodded. “Okay.”

His eyes darkened with relief and something fiercer. He took the towel from my hand and tossed it aside. Then he laced his fingers through mine and led me upstairs, past his empty bedroom, to mine.

He didn’t kiss me. He just pulled back the covers and guided me into bed, then climbed in beside me. He wore only his trousers, his chest bare and warm. He turned off the light and pulled me back against him, his chest to my back, his arm a solid weight around my waist.

His lips brushed the sensitive skin behind my ear. “Sleep,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”

Surrounded by his heat, his scent, his strength, I felt the last of my resistance melt away. The fear of the outside world, the ghosts of the past, they were locked outside this door.

For the first time in five years, I felt truly safe.

And as I drifted to sleep in his arms, I knew one thing.

Victor Hale had no idea what he had awakened.