My Boss, My Babydaddy - Chapter #2 - by Tessa Kelwyn

Three days under Zayden Wolfe, and I've learned three things.

One: he never says please. Two words—"Ms. Hartwell"—and my entire nervous system goes on high alert.

Fix my calendar. Brief me on Johnson. Ten minutes.

Then the door slams.

Two: nothing I do is right.

Not my filing system, not my coffee, not the way I breathe in his general direction.

Three: I'm still here.

Still employed. Still getting paid while my daughter fights for her life twenty blocks away. That's the only thing that matters.

On day four, the upstairs printer explodes. I'm crouched behind the reception desk in a crime scene of black ink when a white Chanel jacket slams down right on top of the wet papers.

"Handle this," commands a voice dripping with superiority. "I'm late for lunch."

Platinum hair. Blood-red lips. Diamonds catching the light. She's already turning away, dismissing me like furniture.

"Wait—your jacket. It landed on wet ink."

Her expression detonates. "Are you kidding me? You ruined it! That jacket is worth more than your pathetic salary!"

The whole lobby goes silent.

"I didn't ruin anything. You threw it down without looking."

"Typical service-class mentality," she sneers. "Blame everyone else for your failures."

Something inside me snaps. "At least I work for my money instead of inheriting it from dead relatives."

Gasps ripple across the marble.

Patricia grabs my arm with steel fingers.

"That's Vivienne Ashford," she hisses. "Mr. Wolfe's fiancée. You just declared war on nuclear power."

The floor tilts beneath my feet. His… fiancée?

Then his office door opens.

"What," Zayden says with lethal quiet, "is happening here?"

"Zay, thank God." Vivienne's voice turns wounded. "Your little assistant destroyed my jacket and insulted me! You can't have employees treating your fiancée like she's nobody special."

His green eyes move between us. Then he steps closer to her.

"Everyone's nobody special when they're screaming at my employees over accidents."

Vivienne's mouth opens and closes without a sound.

"Ms. Hartwell. Send the jacket to the cleaner. Company account." He checks his watch. "Weren't you leaving, Vivienne?"

She storms toward the elevator in a cloud of perfume and wounded pride.

Silence. Then those green eyes land on me, and something like amusement flickers across his granite face.

"Next time someone throws valuables on wet surfaces, Ms. Hartwell—let physics teach its own lessons."

He disappears into his office, leaving me standing among the stares, my heart doing something it absolutely shouldn't.

Why did he just take my side over hers?

Two days later, my phone buzzes at 2:14 p.m.

Dr. Reeds. Mia's oncologist.

"Ms. Hartwell? Mia's blood work shows complications. We need emergency intervention. Four o'clock today."

The office tilts sideways.

Four o'clock. Right in the middle of the Yamamoto presentation Mr. Wolfe has been obsessing over for weeks.

I knock on his door with knuckles that belong to someone braver. "Mr. Wolfe, I need to leave early. Family emergency—"

"No." He doesn't even look up. "Forty-seven million dollars, Ms. Hartwell. Documents, projections, packets. Non-negotiable."

"Sir, my daughter's doctor…"

Finally, he looks at me. His eyes are colder than absolute zero.

"I don't pay you for personal problems. Your job comes first, or you don't have a job."

"My six-year-old daughter is fighting cancer," I whisper. "This isn't convenience. It's survival."

"Precisely the kind of distraction I mean."

Something inside me detonates.

"You know what? I will not abandon my dying daughter because some overpaid robot can't run a meeting without me." My voice shakes. "I'm exceptional at this job. Figure out your own presentation, you heartless man. Some things matter more than profit margins!"

I grab my purse and on my way, I see Patricia's jaw is on the floor.

The elevator doors close on Zayden standing motionless in his doorway, staring at me with an expression I've never seen before.

For the first time, Zayden Wolfe is speechless.

* * *

The hospital at 6 a.m. smells like disinfectant and twelve hours of medical drama. Mia sleeping now in a tangle of IV lines, breathing steady. Not a victory. But she's not dying today.

My job? I don't care. I probably don't have one anymore.

Then Nurse Jennifer hands me a cream-colored envelope.

"Someone left this for you at the front desk an hour ago. A very handsome gentleman with striking green eyes. Lisa at reception suggested he might be her father." She lowers her voice. "He asked about Mia's condition and treatment schedule."

My stomach drops. I escape to Mia's room and tear the envelope open with trembling fingers. A check falls into my lap.

Five thousand dollars. And in the memo line, in careful handwriting: ‘For Mia.’

The signature stops my heart.

Z. Wolfe.

Yesterday he was a heartless monster who valued spreadsheets over a sick child.

Today he's standing at her hospital at dawn, asking about her treatment.

I stare at the check until the numbers blur. Because I told him I have a sick daughter. I told him she has cancer.

But I never told him her name.

So how does he know it?

________________

I never cashed the check. I never asked him about it either.

Zayden walked into the office the next morning like nothing had happened. And somehow, I still had a job.

Then, two weeks later, the text comes through at 10:17 p.m. while I'm reading Mia a bedtime story about brave little mice who always find their way home.

Z. Wolfe: My penthouse. Now. Bring the Bowman contracts and Yamamoto proposals. Security will clear you.

"Mommy has to go to work, baby," I whisper, kissing Mia's forehead.

She's had a rough day. The new chemo is making her sick, and she hasn't kept food down since lunch.

"Will you be back before breakfast?" Her voice is small and tired, but those green eyes look at me with complete trust.

"Always, sweetheart. Always."

The penthouse elevator feels like ascending to my own execution. Security waves me through without a second look. Apparently late-night summons are routine.

"Mr. Wolfe?" I step into a living room that screams money and emotional unavailability. "I have the documents you requested."

Silence.

Then I hear it. Rhythmic impacts. Someone beating something with focused, brutal violence.

I follow the sound down a hallway lined with art that belongs in museums. The noise is coming from behind a half-open door.

I push it wider, ready to announce myself… And freeze.

Zayden is in the center of his private gym, attacking a heavy bag with a precision that would make professional fighters weep.

Completely shirtless. Sweat gleaming on skin carved like a Greek statue, every muscle rippling with each devastating punch.

But it's not his body that stops my heart.

It's the tiger tattoo.

Massive. Sprawling across his entire back, from his shoulder blades down to his waist.

Every stripe exactly as I remember it from seven years ago. When I traced those lines with trembling fingers in a dark hotel room before I ran into the night.

The documents crash to the floor.

Contracts scatter like my sanity. The world tilts, spins, implodes.

This is him.

The stranger from the masquerade gala. The man who made love to me like I was something precious instead of a scholarship kid in a borrowed dress.

Mia's father.

All this time—weeks of hostile tension, of inappropriate dreams, of fighting a pull I couldn't explain—I've been working for my daughter's father.

And he has no idea she exists.

Zayden spins at the sound. His green eyes flash with annoyance that shifts into something darker, more calculating, when he sees my face.

"Ms. Hartwell. I didn't hear you come in."

Those eyes. God, those are Mia's eyes.

The exact shade of green I've looked into every single day for six years.

How did I not see it? How did I work for this man for weeks and not recognize the eyes that light up my daughter's face?

"I'm sorry," I manage, dropping to my knees to gather the papers. "I called out, but you were… I should have waited in the living room."

Seven years of carefully built distance. Seven years of protecting my daughter from a world she doesn't belong in. Seven years of telling myself I made the right choice by running.

And here I am, on my hands and knees, picking up contracts while my daughter's father stands half-naked three feet away.

He moves toward me with that predatory grace, and I force myself not to remember how those same muscles felt under my hands. How he looked at me like I was the only woman in the universe worth seeing.

"You look like you've seen a ghost."

The irony hits like a physical blow.

I have. The ghost of the night that gave me the most precious thing in my life.

"Just tired," I lie, standing and stacking the contracts with professional efficiency. "The Bowman contracts need your signature by midnight. The Yamamoto proposals need review before the morning call."

He nods, but his eyes never leave my face. Studying. Analyzing. Like he's trying to solve a puzzle that keeps changing shape.

"Leave them on the desk in my study."

I turn to go, desperate to escape before he hears how hard my heart is pounding.

"Ms. Hartwell?"

I freeze, my hand on the door frame.

"Next time, don't hesitate to interrupt my workout. Business always comes first."

No recognition. No flicker of memory for the woman who ran from his hotel room seven years ago.

To him, I'm just his assistant.

And he's going to marry Vivienne Ashford—the ice queen who treats people like disposable accessories.

I hold it together until the elevator doors close. Then I fall apart.

My daughter's father just asked me to leave his contracts on his desk.

And I have no idea what I'm going to do.

________________