ALPHA DOM AND HIS HUMAN SURROGATE의 모든 챕터: 챕터 1 - 챕터 9

Nobody moves.That's the thing I notice first. Dr. Maddox has stopped breathing. His assistant, who was typing something in the corner when I walked in, has her fingers frozen above her keyboard. Even the air feels like it's waiting for something.Dominic Sinclair steps fully into the room and closes the door behind him. The click of it is very soft and somehow very loud.I turn back to Dr. Maddox because looking at the other man feels like a problem I'm not ready to solve yet. "You called him before you called me."It isn't a question. Dr. Maddox's silence confirms it anyway."His team contacted us first," he says carefully. "Mr. Sinclair was already aware of the situation before we reached out to you this morning."I let that sit for exactly three seconds."So he knew before I did," I say. "About my body. About my pregnancy. He knew first.""Ms. Navarro—""I'm going to need a minute." I stand up. My legs are steady, which surprises me. "Where's your bathroom?"He points. I walk to i

He doesn't sign it.Not yet.He reads through every page again, slowly, and I sit across from him and wait because I've learned that the people who can't handle silence are always at a disadvantage in negotiations. I learned that from Marco, actually. He could never stand quiet. He'd fill it with words until he'd talked himself into whatever the other person wanted.I can sit in silence all day.Dominic turns to page nine. He reads my crossed-out clauses. He reads the margin notes I made in small red print. His expression doesn't change exactly, but something in it shifts the way a room shifts when a window opens somewhere. Not dramatic. Just a change in pressure."The security arrangements," he says, without looking up. "You struck the entire section.""I don't need a security detail.""That's not your assessment to make.""It's absolutely my assessment to make. It's my life."He looks up then. "You're carrying my child. That makes your safety relevant to more than just you.""Your c

His building is not what I expected.I expected glass and steel and a lobby designed to make ordinary people feel small. I got that part right. What I didn't expect was how fast the elevator moves, or the way the security guard at the front desk knew my name before I said it, or the fact that at eleven-fifteen on a Tuesday night there are still four people working in the open office on the thirty-eighth floor when I step out of the elevator.Dominic Sinclair's world doesn't sleep. I file that away.His assistant, a composed man named Holt who is not the same Gerald Holt who called me, leads me to a conference room and offers me water and tea with the practiced calm of someone who regularly manages crises at midnight. I take the water. I sit down. I wait while taking in my surroundings. Dominic walks in three minutes later.He's in a different suit than this morning, which means he either changed or he never went home, and looking at the set of his shoulders I'm guessing the second on

The room doesn't change.People are still talking, still clinking glasses, still doing all the things people do at expensive dinners. Nobody stops. Nobody looks over. The moment is completely invisible to everyone in that room except the three of us.But something shifts.Dominic goes from still to something I don't have a word for yet. Not angry. Beyond angry. The kind of thing that happens before anger, underneath it, the place anger comes from. I feel it more than I see it, like a change in temperature beside me.I put my hand on his arm.Not because I planned to. Because it was instinct, the same instinct that makes me step between a frightened patient and a loud orderly before anything can escalate. I feel the muscle under my palm and it is locked tight as stone.I look at Aldric Vane and I smile."I'm Ella Navarro," I say. "And you are?"He blinks. He must have expected something else. Confusion maybe, or discomfort, or the flustered retreat of someone who's been caught off guar