Alle Kapitel von Oops! I Had the CEO’s Quadruplets : Kapitel 31 – Kapitel 40

The quads turned two on a Tuesday, and I celebrated by looking at a map of the country and deciding to stop being afraid of it.We kept the party small this time. Just us. Clara and Grace baked together, which meant Clara baked and Grace supervised and ate the batter. Oliver sent video messages from LA of himself badly singing happy birthday four separate times, once per child, each in a different accent. Ella watched all four with the expression of a music critic at a very disappointing concert.They were two. Walking, talking, destroying things at twice the speed and with twice the intention. Elijah had learned the word "again" and applied it to everything, especially the things you most wanted him to stop doing. Evan had learned the word "why" and used it until adults ran out of answers. Ella had expanded her vocabulary from "no" and "mine" to include "actually," which she deployed with devastating precision. Ethan spoke least and watched most, and when he did speak, the other thre

He opened his mouth and nothing came out.That was the first thing. Damien Blackwood, who had never in his life been at a loss for words, who had delivered a divorce and a replacement in the same breath without stammering, stood in front of me at an industry summit and could not produce a single syllable.I let him hang there for three full seconds. It was the most satisfying silence of my life."You look well," he said finally. The words came out careful, controlled, reassembled from whatever wreckage was happening behind his eyes."It's Bennett now," I said. "And yes. I do."A flicker. He heard the correction and felt it land, I could see the impact travel through him the way a crack travels through glass, fast, contained, invisible to anyone who wasn't watching for it.I was watching for it."I didn't know you were in the industry," he said."You didn't know a lot of things."Grace stood three feet behind me, radiating protective fury like a space heater. Damien's eyes moved to her

I made four phone calls in twelve minutes.The first to Clara: lock the doors, don't open them for anyone, take the children to Grace's shop neighbor Mrs. Pak until I say otherwise. The second to Oliver in LA: get to San Diego now, tonight, I don't care how. The third to Noah: hire private security for the building, real security, someone who checks IDs and doesn't let strangers with fake insurance surveys walk through rooms where my children sleep. The fourth to Nathan's assistant: I need five minutes with Mr. Hale before the morning panel.Then I put the phone down, went into the hotel bathroom, and threw up.Grace held my hair. She didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. My children were five hundred miles away and someone had been inside their home while I was at a summit wearing a blazer and drinking champagne and playing CEO."You can't go back," Grace said quietly, when I was done. "If you leave now, you lose the prequalification. You lose the panel. You lose Meridian's

I flew home the morning after the rooftop.Not because of Nathan. Because of Evan's voice on the phone saying "how many sleeps" and Ella's face on the screen demanding my return with the fury of a two-year-old who does not accept that the laws of physics apply to her mother.Grace flew back with me. She'd closed the shop for three days and stayed five, and the assistant she'd left in charge had texted seventeen times with increasing urgency about a shipment of organza that had arrived in the wrong color."Go save your organza," I told her at the San Diego terminal. "I'll save the children.""You'll save the world, is what you'll do. Just make sure you come home to it."She went back to her shop. I went back to my kids. And standing in the doorway of the room above the shop with four small bodies climbing me like I was a tree, I made the rule that would govern every week from here.The children do not come to LA. The children do not appear in any photo, any interview, any public docume

Damien’s POVThree days after the summit, I was still hearing the applause.Not mine. Hers.I closed the laptop where I'd been reviewing the panel footage for the third time and leaned back in my chair. The Meridian woman, my ex-wife, had stood in front of three hundred industry leaders and taken a sledgehammer to everything Blackwood Group had built in the last decade. Politely. With data. And the room loved it.That bothered me more than the argument itself."Ross." I hit the intercom. "The competitor profile I asked for Monday. It's Thursday."The door opened before I finished the sentence, which meant the file had been sitting on his desk since Tuesday and he'd been waiting for me to stop pretending I didn't want it."Meridian Group," Ross said, setting a folder on my desk. Slim. Too slim. "Public filings, press history, corporate structure. Everything accessible without a subpoena.""Sit down."He sat.I opened the folder. The first page was a company snapshot. Meridian Group, LL