241. Burn with me

KEAL The emergency session smelled like carpet cleaner and fear.I walked in late enough to make them look at the door, early enough that no one could claim I’d flinched. Screens already lit. The alley clip looping on mute in one corner like a decoration someone had chosen for spite. My own fist rising and falling without sound. A couple of directors couldn’t stop glancing at it. Liam sat two chairs off-center with his phone face-down, tie perfect, expression arranged into concern. The concern almost looked real if you didn’t know his mouth.“Kael,” the chairwoman began, “given the gravity… ”“You’ve all seen the video,” I said, taking my seat. “We’re not going to narrate it like a children’s book.”A few mouths tightened.They started with soft knives. Fitness. Stability. Exposure. The company’s duty to partners. I let the first wave pass while I watched hands; who took notes, who didn’t, who looked at Liam before they looked at me. The room had already tilted. Liam spoke when he

242. He still ruins me

SELENAI found out Liam was losing when I got back, the same way everyone else did, too fast, through other people’s mouths.First the house changed temperature. Staff stopped doing the careful quiet of crisis and started doing the sharper quiet of listening. Then Kael’s counsel arrived without a jacket, went into the study with a tablet, and left the door half open like secrecy had become less useful than speed. I walked past with laundry that wasn’t mine to fold and caught three words from a man who didn’t see me:“…suspended… trail is real… hospital…”Hospital.Alley.The van.My hands went cold on the fabric.By late afternoon the news wasn’t news anymore inside these walls. It was weather. I fed Sienna noodles, cut them too small, watched her narrate an entire cartoon universe into her bowl. She asked if Daddy was winning. I told her Daddy was working. She accepted that because working was a shape she understood.Kael didn’t come to the table.I found him after I put her in fro

243. I stopped fighting it

SELENA He didn’t move from the desk when I came in.That helped. If he had stood and reached, my body might have done something cheaper than what I was actually here to do. Instead Kael watched me cross the carpet like a man tracking a blade, hands flat on the wood, the screens behind him still spitting quiet catastrophe. Close up, he looked worse; sleepless, charged, the kind of handsome that felt unfair in a room full of consequences.I closed the study door.“Sienna’s with staff,” I said.“I know.”Of course he knew. He always knew where she was. The difference was he didn’t put her name on the table between us like a coin.I stood on the opposite side of the desk because chairs made things look like meetings. My hands wanted something to do and got nothing. The bruise under my sleeve pulsed once, a stupid reminder of vans and wet brick and the way his violence had looked on a phone screen while men in suits argued about fitness.“I’m not here to decorate your crisis,” I said.Hi

244. Don’t Make Me Hunt You

KAELThree nights should have taught my body she was staying. Selena slept angled toward the window, one arm thrown over the edge, mouth soft in a way she never allowed when conscious. Every morning I watched her for a second too long before getting up, as if looking could pin her to the mattress. Possessive. Unreformed. She knew. She caught me doing it on the second morning and stared straight through the hunger until I looked away first.That was the new shape of the house: I had her, and I did not own her ease.Sienna took the change with the brutal adaptability of children. Thursday breakfast was cereal arguments and missing socks. Selena poured milk in my kitchen without performing gratitude. I signed two succession memos in the study with counsel’s voice in my ear, Liam’s counsel requesting delay, board scheduling formal review, interim language dead, and hung up when Sienna ran in demanding I look at a drawing of a horse that might have been a dog. Selena leaned in the doorwa

245. His, Again

SELENA He kissed me like I’d committed a crime by coming home at 8:51.I laughed into his mouth and he made a low offended sound, as if humor during his jealousy was illegal. His hand tightened under my thigh and I hooked my other leg around him on purpose, slow, watching his eyes go darker when he realized I was choosing the climb.“You’re still not going to tell me,” he said against my lips.“Tell you what.”“Selena.”“Ohhh. That.” I nipped his bottom lip. “No.”He dropped his forehead to my shoulder and breathed like a man counting to ten in a burning building. I took mercy on him in the only way I felt like taking mercy: I dragged his shirt up. He stepped back just long enough to yank it off, then came straight back in, mouth at my throat, my jaw, the corner of my smile. Kisses with no patience. Kisses with teeth. I got my hands on his belt and he cursed when my knuckles brushed him through the fabric.“You’re doing that on purpose.”“Yes,” I said, and did it again.We moved fro

All Chapters of Please Ruin Me, Daddy : Chapter 241 - Chapter 245

241. Burn with me

242. He still ruins me

243. I stopped fighting it

244. Don’t Make Me Hunt You

245. His, Again