CRAVING DADDY'S BEST FRIEND

Chapter Thirty Three: The Alpinist

Abigail Macron

The paperweight felt like a block of solid ice in my palm, its heavy, polished brass catching the pale Swiss sunlight. I stared at the manila scrap, my thumb tracing the sharp, aggressive slant of Caleb’s handwriting until the edges crumpled under my grip.

The takeover has just begun.

"Miss Macron?"

Greta’s sharp voice cut through the room as she stepped into the doorway, her arms crossed over her crisp grey uniform. Her eyes darted instantly to the bed, tracking the movement of my hands as I instinctively shoved the note deep into the pocket of my black blazer.

"The kitchen has prepared a hot broth and local trout," she said, her posture completely rigid. "Your father expects a status confirmation from me within the hour. I will report that you have arrived and are resting."

"Tell him whatever you want, Greta," I said, my voice dropping into a cold, flat tone that surprised even me. I turned my back to her, looking back out the floor-to-ceiling glass at the dark pine valley. "Just leave the room."

A heavy, deliberate pause followed before the door clicked shut behind her.

The moment she was gone, I pulled the note back out. My brain was firing in a dozen different directions at a chaotic, blinding velocity. How had he gotten it here? The security detail my father employed at the Zurich estate was selected from retired Swiss military. The perimeter was monitored by thermal imaging, motion sensors, and an encrypted local server that didn't connect to the outside world. To put something on my pillow meant Caleb hadn't just bypassed the firm's security—he had broken inside the vault before I even landed.

I didn't touch the food they brought. I spent the next three hours pacing the perimeter of the master suite, watching the shadow of the mountain slowly crawl across the dark slate floorboards as the afternoon light began to bleed into a deep, freezing twilight.

By 9:00 PM, the brutalist fortress fell into a dead, suffocating silence. The external floodlights snapped on outside the glass, illuminating the sheer rock face and the first few rows of the dense pine forest in a stark, clinical white glare.

I didn't change out of my corporate clothes. I lay on top of the heavy duvet, my eyes wide, my ears tracking every creek of the concrete structure, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

At exactly midnight, the lights went black.

Not just the bedroom lamps—the massive external floodlights, the security monitors in the hallway, the low, ambient hum of the floor heating—everything died instantly, plunging the entire estate into an absolute, pitch-black mountain void.

A sharp, electronic clack echoed through the room as the magnetic locks on the heavy balcony doors deactivated, losing power.

I sat up, my heart striking a hysterical deafening beat against my ribs.

The heavy glass door slid open with a slow, silent smoothness. A sudden, violent gust of freezing alpine air rushed into the room, sending the sheer white curtains billowing into the dark like ghosts.

A massive, shadowed of a person stepped through the threshold, silhouetted against the dim, starlit snow of the mountain ridge.

It was Caleb.

He didn't look like the Chief Operating Officer anymore. The crisp white shirt and tailored vest were gone, replaced by a heavy, dark tactical jacket and dark trousers that melted completely into the shadows. His face was rugged, covered in a thick layer of dark stubble, and his silver-flecked hair was damp from the mountain mist. The scent of raw winter air, pine resin, and that heavy, familiar smoky leather hit my senses like a physical wave.

"Caleb," I breathed, the word a broken gasp as I jump off the bed.

He didn't say a word. He closed the distance between us in two long, predatory strides, his broad chest completely overwhelming me in the dark. His large, capable hands shot out, grabbing my waist with a brutal, bruising intensity that lifted me completely off my feet, pinning my back against the cold concrete pillar of the wall.

"Did you think I'd let him keep you in a cage, kiddo?" he rasped, his voice a low, gravelly growl that vibrated directly against my throat. His mouth grabbed down on mine before I could even draw breath.

It was a savage, lawless collision—a kiss driven by forty-eight hours of pure, unadulterated fury and absolute desperation. He didn't taste like the corporate floor anymore; he tasted of the freezing wind and a fierce, untamed madness. His tongue parted my lips with a rough, demanding sweep, drinking in my soft whimpers as his hands dug deep into my hips, asserting a ruthless, permanent claim that no security detail or international border could ever erase.

I groaned into his mouth, my fingers clawing desperately at the heavy fabric of his jacket, my legs wrapping instinctively around his waist as the sheer velocity of his presence sent a wave of liquid heat crashing straight down into my core.

Caleb broke the kiss, his ragged, heavy

breathing hot against my flushed skin as he buried his face in the hollow of my neck, his teeth nipping uncontrollablly at the sensitive skin right above my collarbone.

"The Chiyoda block is frozen, Abby," he hissed against my ear, his jaw clenched so hard I could hear the bone grind. "I spent the last thirty-six hours diverting the capital reserves from the Tokyo mainframe into the family trust accounts you signed off on this morning. Your father doesn't own the vanguard anymore. We own the liquidity."

He pulled back just enough to look down at me, his dark eyes entirely black in the alpine shadows, burning with a lethal, terminal devotion.

"We're taking the whole empire

down, Abby. Starting tonight.”