Claimed By My CEO Stepdad

Chapter Eleven

First Person Point of View – Alexander)*

The phone felt heavier than it should have in my hand.

I glanced at the screen only long enough to confirm the number. The same number that had followed me across time zones and late-night negotiations. The man who held the fifty-million-dollar note that could pull the entire company under if he decided the terms had changed. My secretary stood waiting, expression carefully blank, the way she always looked when she knew the call was not ordinary.

I turned to Victoria and Aria.

“Excuse me for a moment.”

Victoria gave a small, understanding nod. Aria kept her eyes lowered, but I felt the weight of her presence the same way I had felt it in the car, the same way I had felt it across the breakfast table. The night in the hotel was still too close to the surface. I locked it down and walked into my office, closing the glass door behind me.

The city stretched out beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, bright and indifferent. I did not sit. I remained standing as I raised the phone to my ear.

“Hello. Good day.”

There was a short pause on the other end, then the thick, unhurried voice I had come to recognize.

“How are you?”

The question was not polite. It was a reminder that he could afford to ask it.

“I’m well,” I answered.

“So when are you making the payment?”

No greeting beyond the first. No unnecessary words. Just the demand, delivered in that same heavy tone that always managed to sound both patient and threatening at once.

I kept my own voice even. “I will make the payment. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

I ended the call before he could press further. The silence that followed inside the office was absolute. I set the phone down on the desk and stood still for several long seconds, breathing through the tight band of pressure that had settled across my chest. Fifty million. The number had not changed. The risk had not lessened. One delayed transfer, one public rumor, one loss of confidence, and the structure I had spent years building would begin to crack in ways that could not be hidden.

I straightened my cuffs, smoothed the front of my jacket, and forced the tension back under control. Outward calm was non-negotiable. Especially today.

When I stepped back out of the office, Victoria and Aria were still standing where I had left them. Victoria was speaking quietly to my secretary, smiling in that open, trusting way she always did. Aria stood a half-step apart, hands folded in front of her, eyes fixed somewhere on the far wall. She looked composed. She did not look at me. The bruise on her cheek was almost invisible under makeup, but I still saw it. I still remembered exactly how it had felt under my fingers the night before when I had asked who put it there.

The memory tried to rise. I shut it down.

I addressed my secretary without a preamble.

“Direct Aria to her office. Show her where everything is and explain her responsibilities. She starts immediately as my personal assistant.”

The secretary nodded once. “Yes, sir.”

Victoria beamed, clearly pleased. Aria finally glanced up, just long enough for our eyes to meet again. There was nothing soft in the look. Only the same careful distance she had worn in the car, the same refusal to acknowledge what already existed between us. I held her gaze for a fraction of a second longer than necessary, then turned away first.

I had a company to keep standing and a debt that would not wait. Whatever had happened in that hotel room belonged to the night. In the daylight, under the eyes of employees and the woman who legally carried my name, there was no room for it.

I walked back toward my office, already calculating the next move with the creditor, already locking every unnecessary thought behind the same iron control that had kept me alive this long. Behind me I heard the soft sound of the secretary beginning to speak to Aria, guiding her away down the corridor.

I did not look back.