THE CEO SECRET HEIR

Chapter 6 The Fire Alarm and the Phone Call

"Tomorrow," Mia repeated, like the word itself was ridiculous. "You want to meet a five-year-old you've never spoken to, tomorrow, like it's a business meeting you can just schedule in."

"I don't know how else to do this." For the first time all night, something almost helpless crossed Damian's face — the CEO mask slipping to reveal a man who genuinely had no template for this conversation, no board memo, no quarterly strategy to fall back on. "I've negotiated hostile takeovers with less fear than I feel right now, and I don't know the first thing about kids."

Despite everything, despite the anger and the exhaustion and the sheer unfairness of having this conversation in a floral alcove while balancing a tray of canapés, something in her almost wanted to laugh.

That helplessness. She remembered it. She hadn't expected to find it still in there somewhere, buried under twenty-five years of excellence and a banner with his real name on it.

It hit her sideways, unbidden — a memory she hadn't let herself visit in a long time, not really, not on purpose. A cramped noodle shop above a night market, plastic stools, steam fogging the one window that faced the street. Alex — just Alex then, no surname, no company, nothing but a crooked grin and forearms dusted with flour because he'd insisted, against her explicit warning, that he could make noodles from scratch.

"You're going to burn the whole building down," she'd told him, laughing, watching him hunch over a pot that had already started smoking faintly at the edges.

"Have a little faith," he'd said, not even looking up, sleeves rolled to the elbow, utterly unbothered by the smoke alarm that chose that exact moment to start shrieking.

They'd eaten instant noodles instead, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his rented room because the shop's one table was too small, and he'd looked at her over the rim of a chipped bowl and said, completely serious, "I'm going to marry someone exactly like you one day. Someone who laughs at me like that."

She hadn't taken it seriously. Not really. Not the way she wished, later, she hadn't taken any of it seriously — the easy laughter, the way his hand found hers under tables without seeming to think about it, the six weeks that felt like the only real thing that had ever happened to her.

Six weeks, and then a phone that stopped ringing.

The memory dissolved as fast as it had risen, snapped shut by the present the way it always did — the ballroom noise pressing back in, the tray growing heavy in her hands, the man standing in front of her now who bore almost no resemblance to the one hunched over a smoking pot of noodles, except in the very specific, very devastating way his eyes still crinkled at the corners when something genuinely surprised him.

"You used to burn everything you cooked," she said quietly, before she could stop herself.

Something shifted across his face — surprise, and underneath it, something almost like hope, like she'd handed him a piece of proof that the man he used to be hadn't been entirely erased by the one he'd become. "I still can't cook," he admitted. "Some things don't change."

For one unguarded second, standing behind a floral display at his own company's anniversary gala, the five years between them seemed to fold up small enough to fit in the palm of a hand — and Mia felt the old pull of him tug at something she'd spent a very long time convincing herself was dead.

Then her phone buzzed.

Not the soft, single vibration of a text. The insistent, escalating buzz of an incoming call, and Mia's whole body went cold before she'd even looked at the screen, five years of single motherhood having trained her nervous system to treat every unexpected call after nine at night as a potential emergency.

She fumbled the tray onto the small table beside the floral display without asking permission, phone already out of her apron pocket, and the name on the screen made her stomach drop straight through the floor.

MRS. OKOYE.

The babysitter never called this late. A text, sometimes, if Kian couldn't sleep and wanted to hear his mother's voice for thirty seconds. Never a call. Not once in five years, not even the night Kian had a fever that scared them both.

"Hello?" Mia's voice came out sharp, already bracing.

"Mia, honey, I'm so sorry to call so late—" Mrs. Okoye's voice, usually warm and unhurried, had a thin, worried edge to it that made every hair on Mia's arms stand up. "Kian's running a fever, and I gave him the medicine you left, but it's not coming down, and he's asking for you, and I just — I didn't want to wait until it got worse to call."

"How high?" Mia's free hand had already gone white-knuckled around the phone. Somewhere at the edge of her vision she was aware of Damian going very still, watching her face with sharp, focused attention.

"A hundred and two when I checked ten minutes ago."

"I'm coming right now." Mia was already moving, tray abandoned entirely, weaving toward the coat check with the phone still pressed hard against her ear. "Keep him cool, don't let him get under too many blankets, I'll be there in twenty minutes, I promise, just—"

"Take your time getting here safely, love. He's scared but he's okay, I've got him." Mrs. Okoye's voice softened, steadying now that the call had connected. "I'll see you soon."

The line went dead. Mia was already three steps toward the exit, heart hammering, uniform half-abandoned on a chair she didn't remember pulling out, when a hand closed around her arm again — not blocking her this time, just steadying, and when she turned, wild-eyed and already halfway into panic, Damian's face had lost every trace of the composed CEO from twenty minutes ago.

"What's wrong," he said. It wasn't a question. "Tell me what's wrong, right now."

"My son is sick." The words came out before she could think better of sharing anything else with him tonight. "I have to go."

"Then I'm driving you."