Two Little Secrets From My Boss

Chapter 229

Xander’s POV

The drive home starts in silence. Daphne holds Hope in the backseat—we have the car seat, but she insisted on holding her. I can see them in the rearview mirror: Daphne's face is blank, shock written in every line of her body.

We're about five minutes from the house when I hear it, a sound that makes my chest constrict.

Daphne's crying—full body-shaking sobs that she's trying to muffle against Hope's blanket.

I pull into an empty parking lot—some abandoned shopping center with weeds growing through the asphalt cracks. Put the car in park and turn around.

"Daphne…”

"It's my fault." Her voice breaks around the words. "My body failed her, Xander. I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to grow her perfectly, and instead I—"

She can't finish, just holds Hope tighter while tears stream down her face.

"I didn't rest enough during the pregnancy. I kept working when I should have stopped. I was so focused on fighting Eleanor, on keeping my company, on proving I could do everything…"

"That's not what caused this." I'm already unbuckling, climbing into the backseat beside her. "Dr. Chen said…"

"But what if she's wrong? What if I did something that damaged Hope's heart while she was forming? What if the stress of the high-risk pregnancy, the fighting with you, the fear after those threatening notes—what if all of that somehow hurt her?"

Daphne's looking at me now, and the devastation in her eyes mirrors what's tearing through my own chest. "My body was supposed to keep her safe. That's the one job a mother has during pregnancy. And I failed."

My throat closes. I reach for Hope, and Daphne lets me take her. Our daughter sleeps against my chest, her breathing still too fast, too labored, unaware that her entire life has just been rewritten by a diagnosis.

"You didn't fail," I tell Daphne, but my voice cracks on the words. "If anyone failed, it was me."

Daphne's eyes snap to mine. "What?"

"What if the hesitation, the seconds I took to make that decision, what if that caused damage to her heart? The doctors said they could only save one of you.”

I swallow hard.

“What if forcing them to wait while I decided, what if those critical moments without enough oxygen or blood flow or whatever she needed—what if my choice to save you is what broke Hope's heart?"

The thought has been circling in my mind since Dr. Chen explained the defects. Congenital means present from birth. But what if the trauma of the delivery, the complications, my impossible decision—what if that's when the damage happened?

What if I didn't just choose to let Hope die, but actually caused the condition that will define her entire life?

"Xander, that's not…"

"You don't know that." My hands are shaking. Hope stirs slightly against my chest, and I adjust my hold on her, careful of her fragile body. "Nobody knows that. Dr. Chen said the defects formed during early pregnancy, but what if she suffered because of my decision?"

Daphne's staring at me, and I watch understanding dawn across her face. We're both drowning in the same guilt. Both convinced we're the reason our daughter has a broken heart.

She reaches for my hand, and I take it. Our fingers lace together across the space between us, Hope sleeping between our bodies.

"We can't spend the rest of our lives blaming ourselves for something neither of us could control." Daphne says quietly.

"How do we stop?" The question comes out raw.

"I don't know." Daphne squeezes my hand tighter. "But maybe we figure it out together instead of drowning separately."

The guilt doesn't disappear, but it's not dividing us anymore. We're unified in our devastation instead of using it as a weapon against each other.

For the first time since the hospital, we're on the same side of the battlefield.

We sit in that abandoned parking lot for twenty minutes, holding hands, holding our daughter, letting ourselves fall apart together. When we finally drive home, Daphne stays in the backseat beside Hope.

I can see her in the rearview mirror, watching our daughter sleep, and I know she's memorizing every detail the way I am. Banking moments against whatever comes next.

That night, after Hope's first dose of medication—Daphne and I both standing over her bassinet, watching to make sure she swallows it, that her breathing doesn't change, that she's okay—we end up in bed together.

Our bed, not the guest room where I've been sleeping.

Daphne doesn't ask me to come back. I don't ask permission. We just gravitate toward each other naturally, exhausted and terrified and needing the comfort of familiar presence.

"I'm scared," Daphne admits at some point past midnight. "I'm terrified of losing her."

"Me too." I pull her closer, feel her head settle against my chest. "But we're not going to. We're going to fight for her. Whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes," Daphne echoes.

Eventually, her breathing evens out. She's asleep, one hand fisted in my shirt like she's afraid I'll disappear if she lets go.

I lie there for another hour, staring at the ceiling, replaying Dr. Chen's words.

Sleep is impossible. Around two AM, I give up trying. Slip out of bed carefully so I don't wake Daphne, and head to my office. Maybe work will distract me, maybe I can focus on something I can actually control.

But the numbers on the spreadsheet blur together. I read the same email three times without comprehending a single word. My mind keeps returning to Hope's labored breathing, the rapid rise and fall of her tiny chest, how small she looked on that examination table.

I need something else, some other task to occupy my brain before it spirals completely.

I pull up the security footage system, intending to check last week's gate logs—there was a delivery issue I wanted to verify.

But when the interface loads, I notice something odd in the recent alerts. Multiple triggers from my office over the past few weeks. All late at night. All times when I wasn't in there.

I scroll through the timestamps. Two AM on the fifteenth. One-thirty AM on the twenty-second. Three AM last week—that was the battery incident with Maya.

I click on the video from the fifteenth. The footage is grainy in night-vision mode, but clear enough.

Maya enters my office at 2:07 AM. Goes straight to my desk.

Opens the main drawer, sorts through files. Then tries the locked drawer—the one that triggered the alert the other night. She's searching for something specific.

The way she moves through my desk isn't casual browsing. This is methodical, practiced. Like she knows exactly what she's looking for.

I pull up the footage from the twenty-second. Same pattern. Maya in my office, going through my files, accessing my computer. The timestamp shows she's there for seventeen minutes.

I close the security footage interface and stare at my desk. Tomorrow. I'll ask Archie about it tomorrow. We'll figure out what Maya's been searching for and why she's been lying.