THE CEO SECRET HEIR

Chapter 12: Damage Control

Mia's hands were still shaking when she called him. She didn't sit down first, didn't take a breath to steady herself — just stood in her kitchen doorway with the letter crumpled in one fist and dialed before she could talk herself into waiting until she'd calmed down enough to sound reasonable.

He picked up on the first ring.

"Mia—"

"You promised." Her voice came out low and furious, cutting straight through whatever he'd been about to say. "Last night, standing in my living room, you looked me in the eye and promised you wouldn't move faster than I was ready for. And by six in the morning your lawyers are threatening me with custody proceedings."

"I didn't send that." His voice was fast, urgent, none of the smooth composure she'd heard on stage last night. "Mia, listen to me — I didn't authorize that letter. I need you to believe me."

"Then who did?"

"My general counsel. Standard protocol whenever a paternity claim comes up in relation to the family — it's automatic, it's been that way since before I even ran the company, some outdated procedure my father set up decades ago to protect against exactly this kind of situation. I didn't know it would trigger until I saw the copy on my desk twenty minutes ago." He exhaled hard, and she could hear him moving, could hear the low hum of a car engine underneath his voice. "I'm already on my way to the office to shut it down personally."

"Standard protocol." Mia's laugh came out sharp and humorless. "So the first official record of my son's existence in your company's files is a legal threat."

"I'm fixing it. I swear to you, I'm fixing it right now." A pause, and when he spoke again his voice had dropped, quieter, something almost pleading underneath the urgency. "You have to believe I would never do that to you. Not after last night. Not after what I saw with him."

Mia pressed the heel of her hand against her eyes, exhaustion and fury tangled together into something that made her whole chest ache. "I have a shift in twenty minutes. I don't have time for this."

"Then let me come to you. After your shift. I'll bring the retraction myself, signed, whatever you need to see to believe it's actually stopped." His voice had steadied now, resolve settling back into it. "I am not going to let a piece of paper from an outdated legal policy undo one single thing I promised you last night."

She wanted to hang up. Wanted to tell him this was exactly the kind of thing she'd feared from the very first moment she recognized him on that stage — that a man with that much money, that much machinery behind him, could never truly move at anyone's pace but his own, no matter what he promised in the quiet of a living room at midnight.

But some smaller, more tired part of her also heard the genuine panic in his voice, and found she believed him anyway, against her own better judgment.

"Fine," she said finally. "My shift ends at two. Don't come to the bakery. Meet me at the park two blocks from Kian's daycare instead. Four o'clock."

"I'll be there."

She hung up without saying goodbye, shoved the crumpled letter into her bag, and left for her shift with her jaw set and her hands still not quite steady.

The bakery was slow that morning, which gave her too much time to think between customers — replaying the letter's cold language over and over, replaying Damian's voice on the phone, trying to decide which version of him was real. The man who'd carried her feverish son to bed with such careful tenderness, or the man whose company machinery moved to threaten her with lawyers before the sun had even fully risen.

She was elbow-deep in flour, only half paying attention to the small radio playing behind the counter, when a name cut through the background noise sharp enough to make her freeze.

"—and in other news, speculation continues to swirl around Cole Enterprises CEO Damian Cole, who abruptly left his own company's anniversary gala last night without explanation. Sources close to the event describe him leaving with an unidentified woman in catering staff uniform. Cole's representatives have declined to comment, though insiders suggest this comes at a sensitive time, given his upcoming engagement to socialite Selene Voss—"

Mia's hands went still over the dough.

Catering staff uniform.

It wasn't her name. Not yet. But it was close enough, specific enough, that her stomach dropped straight through the floor of the small kitchen. Someone at that gala had seen more than a distant, grainy photo. Someone had noticed exactly what she'd been wearing.

Her phone buzzed in her apron pocket. She wiped her hands hastily on her apron and checked it, dread already curdling in her chest before she'd even unlocked the screen.

A text from an unknown number, no name attached, sent to a phone line she'd had for less than a year and given to almost no one outside her closest circle.

UNKNOWN: I know who you are. I know about the boy. We should talk before this gets out of hand — for everyone's sake. — S.