All Chapters of Please Ruin Me, Daddy : Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

245 Chapters

171. His Undoing

SELENAThe cream coat had been gone for twenty minutes and Sienna was already rewriting history.“She was here for four minutes,” she told the bicycle, “and then the birthday ate her.”“That is not what happened,” Kael said from the doorway.“It is the official version,” Sienna replied. “Dragon voted.”I bit the inside of my cheek and stacked plates. The house still smelled like frosting and balloon rubber. Outside, the guards had resumed their ordinary distance. Inside, the residual tension of Clara’s visit clung to the walls like steam after a too-hot shower. Kael looked like a man who had paid a bill under protest and was still checking the receipt.Which, of course, made him impossible not to tease.“You let her in,” I said mildly.His eyes cut to me. “Because of you.”“I know. It was very mature. Very flexible. Almost human.”“Selena.”“I’m just saying. First pancakes shaped like dragons. Then a paper crown. Then a perimeter exception for a cream coat. If this continues, people

172. Touch My Family

KEALThe list arrived within the hour.Three board names. Two quiet account freezes that should not have been possible without internal pathway knowledge. One supplier contract “delayed” by a compliance concern that had not existed on Friday. Separately, each item could be explained away by markets, nerves, coincidence.Together, they formed a signature.My signature, once. Taught, drilled, handed down to a son I had shaped for rooms like these. Watching that shape turn and bite the structure that made it did not surprise me as much as it should have. Betrayal only shocked men who believed blood guaranteed obedience. I had never believed that. I had believed control did.I closed the laptop.From the living room came the sound of Sienna arguing with a balloon about bedtime law. Selena answered her in the patient voice she reserved for chaos she still intended to love through. The birthday house continued, foolish and warm, a few meters away from the study where the empire had just r

173. Daddy’s Son

SELENA Sienna refused to spit for a full minute.“Toothbrush law requires a witness,” she said through foam, holding both sides of the sink like a person under siege. “Daddy said he would come.”“He’s coming,” I said.“People say that and then empire happens.”The accuracy of a five-year-old’s suspicion was getting harder to laugh off. I wiped a streak of toothpaste from her cheek and listened for Kael on the stairs. When he finally appeared in the bathroom doorway, he had already put the study face away, but not fully. Some of it remained around his eyes. Sienna saw it too. She inspected him in the mirror, foam dripping down her chin.“You have your bad phone face,” she said.Kael picked up the cup. “Rinse.”“Did someone touch the company?”My hand stilled on the towel. Kael’s reflection did not look at me.“Rinse,” he said again.Sienna rinsed, spat with theatrical tragedy, and turned to him. “If someone touched the company, do we still have birthday cake for breakfast?”“Yes.”“Ok

174. The Pressure Point

SELENA Kael had his keys in his hand before the baby monitor finished crackling. “You’re leaving?” I asked. “He walked into my building.” “And if you walk into a public floor and put him through glass, Sienna’s next specialist report writes itself.” Kael turned on me in the living room with the full force of that cold, focused fury that still made my stomach dip even after months of learning its weather. “He used an override from when he still belonged there. That is not a message. That is a hand on my property.” “I’m not talking about property. I’m talking about the five-year-old upstairs who just asked you to be less sharp and then fell asleep believing the house could manage that.” The reminder landed and did not soften him. It only made the choice uglier. He looked at the stairs, then at the phone photo, then at me. For a second I thought pure possession would win. It almost did. I saw the version of him that would drive downtown, cross a lobby, and turn a blood proble

175. The Monster’s Wife

SELENA“Put her on the phone,” I said.Kael still had Liam pinned to the glass. The city glittered behind them like it had no stake in any of this. On the other end of the line, the nanny hesitated only long enough to shift the phone, and then Sienna’s crying came in close and wet and immediate.“Mummy…”“I’m here.”“You’re not on the camera. Daddy’s not on the camera. The company ate you…”“No one ate us.” I turned away from the glass wall and pressed my finger into my other ear, making her the only room I was standing in. “Listen to me. We are coming home. Not later. Now. Are you in your bed?”“No. Hallway. Dragon came too.”“Good. Sit down against the wall. Can you do that for me?”A shuffling, a small broken breath. “Okay.”“Breathe with my count. In. One. Two. Out. One. Two.” I did it with her until the sobs stopped climbing. Kael’s eyes were on me. Liam’s too. I did not give either of them my face yet. “You had a bad wake-up. That’s all. The bad car did not come. Grandma did not

176. Wife Privileges

SELENA Sienna checked our faces like a doctor.First mine, then Kael’s, then mine again. She had both hands on his jaw, squishing his cheeks until his mouth looked ridiculous.“Less sharp?” she asked.Kael’s voice came out flattened by her palms. “Less sharp.”“Promise?”He pinky-promised without argument. She accepted it, climbed into my lap on the couch, and fell asleep ten minutes later with her foot hooked around his wrist like a tether. Dragon was on the left. The house finally exhaledKael carried her upstairs. I followed as far as her doorway and watched him tuck the blanket around her with a precision that made my chest hurt. When he turned, I was still there. He closed her door softly and stopped in front of me in the hallway.“Why did you do that?” he asked.“Do what?”“In the glass room. You had every reason to stay out of it. You didn’t.”I started toward the bedroom. He followed. The door clicked shut behind us, not locked, just closed. Lamp light. Messy sheets from a mo

177. Before Selena

SELENA I took his wrist before he could turn the night back into strategy.“Sit.”Kael looked at my hand on him like it was a minor security breach. “Selena.”“Sit.”I dragged him the last two steps to the bed and pushed. He sat, more out of curiosity than obedience, legs apart, shoulders still carrying the conference room and the phone call and Liam’s face against glass. I stayed standing between his knees long enough to make the position obvious, then climbed up and sat beside him, close enough that our arms touched through fabric.“You’re managing me,” he said.“I’m seating you. Different department.”His eyes cut sideways. “You’re in a mood.”“I’m in a marriage. It overlaps.”That got nothing from his mouth, but something in his face loosened by a millimeter. I took it as material.“Do that again,” I said.“Do what?”“Almost react. It makes you look less like a building.”Kael exhaled through his nose. “If you spent half this energy on sleeping, the house would be quieter.”“The

178. The pattern

SELENA The stillness in him was worse than shouting. “What happened with your ex-wife, Kael?” For a second he didn’t breathe. Then he stood up from the bed so fast the mattress shifted under me. Not toward the door. Toward the open space of the room, like he needed distance from the question itself before he decided what to do with the woman who had asked it. “No,” he said. “That’s not an answer.” “It’s the only one you’re getting on a night that already had enough blood in it.” I stayed on the bed, bare feet on the duvet, and watched his back. “Liam made it my business when he asked if you hit me and used his mother’s crying as the example.” Kael turned. The look on his face was not the conference-room cold and not the gated cold. It was closer to the kitchen. Closer to the version of him that made the air feel too small. My body recognized it before my pride did. I slid backward on the bed without standing, creating space, palms against the sheets. He saw the move

179. Scared to Want Him

SELENA I woke to my name and a hand not quite touching my shoulder.“Selena.”For a second the room was only dark and lamp-spill and the disoriented heat of interrupted sleep. Then the evening came back in one ugly piece: the chair slamming, the word yes, the width of mattress I had put between us. I was still on my side of it. He was closer than before, sitting up against the headboard in the half-dark, watching.“What?” My voice came out rough. “What time is it?”“Midnight.”“Then why am I awake?”“I need to talk to you.”I stared at him, anger arriving faster than fear. “You need to talk to me at midnight after I finally fell asleep? No. Lie down. Or leave. Do not practice confession as an overnight activity.”“Selena.”“I’m serious.” I pushed up onto one elbow, hair in my face, irritated all the way through my bones. “You don’t get to detonate a marriage conversation, go silent, and then shake me awake because your thoughts got loud. Some of us were using sleep as a coping mechan

180. The Succession Game

SELENAMorning started with Sienna standing beside the bed, Dragon under one arm, studying the gap between us like a crime scene.“You slept far,” she said.Kael opened one eye. “Go brush your teeth.”“You usually sleep like a fence. Now you’re like two fences.” She pointed from my pillow to his. “Is this because of the midnight talking?”My head lifted. “How do you know about midnight talking?”“You said ‘what time is it’ very loud. Then Daddy said ‘are you scared of me.’ Then I went back to bed because that is adult soup.” She climbed onto the mattress anyway and sat in the literal empty space we had left between our bodies. “I am a bridge.”Kael stared at the ceiling. “Out of this room.”“Bridge first.” Sienna took my hand, then his, and slapped them together on top of the duvet with bureaucratic force. “There. Fixed. No more far sleeping. Far sleeping makes the house weird.”I laughed under my breath before I could stop it. Kael’s fingers tensed against mine, then extracted themse

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