Two Little Secrets From My Boss

Chapter 106

Daphne’s POV

The paper is ordinary, white, slightly textured, the kind you'd find in any office supply store.

The handwriting is neat, almost elegant—someone took their time forming each letter. And the words burn into my retinas until they stop making sense and start making me sick.

‘How are your lovely twins doing?’

Six words that tell me someone knows exactly where my daughters sleep.

I don't scream. I don't cry. My body moves on autopilot, feet carrying me to the security panel in the hallway. Every lock is engaged, every camera recording, every sensor armed and blinking green.

The house is a fortress, and somehow, this piece of paper found its way inside anyway.

My fingers dial Xander's number. The phone rings once, twice, and then his voice—warm, distracted, mid-meeting.

"Daphne? Is everything…"

"Someone left a note." My voice doesn't shake. I'm impressed by that, somewhere in the part of my brain that's still functioning. "About the twins. Someone knows about them, Xander. Someone is watching."

His silence is more terrifying than any response could have been. I hear him breathing, hear the moment the air catches in his throat, and then nothing.

No questions, no reassurances—just the weight of understanding settling between us like a stone dropped into still water.

"I'm coming home." Three words, stripped of everything but purpose. "Don't move. Don't open the door for anyone."

"I know." I grip the phone tighter. "I know what to do."

"Twenty minutes." He makes it in eighteen.

The twins are watching cartoons in the living room when he walks through the door—Nina sprawled on the carpet with her chin in her hands, Lisa curled into the corner of the couch clutching her stuffed rabbit.

They don't notice their father's arrival, they don't see the way his eyes sweep the room, cataloging threats that aren't there, searching for danger in every shadow.

I meet him in the kitchen, close the door softly behind us and hand him the note.

I watch his face transform as he reads it. Watch the husband I love disappear behind something older, something I recognize from the worst moments of our history.

His jaw hardens, eyes go flat and cold, calculating angles I can't see. The dangerous man I first met in that bar years ago surfaces like a shark scenting blood.

"Gerald is in prison," I whisper, though we both know it doesn't matter.

"This isn't Gerald." Xander's voice is ice. "This is someone else, someone who slipped through."

He looks up from the note, and for a moment, the coldness cracks. Underneath it, I see fury so profound it steals my breath. "Someone who's been waiting."

He pulls out his phone, starts dialing. I watch him pace the kitchen, watch his free hand curl into a fist against his thigh. Archie first.

Then the head of his security team. Then someone whose name I don't recognize, someone who speaks in clipped tones about surveillance and threat assessment.

I make my decision before he finishes the first call.

"Xander." I wait until he's between conversations, until his eyes find mine. "The business can wait."

His thumb hovers over his phone screen. "What?"

"The expansion plans, the meetings next week, the empire I was building." I swallow hard against the ache rising in my throat. "None of it matters if Nina and Lisa aren't safe. I'm putting everything on hold."

He stares at me for a long moment. Then something shifts in his expression—grief, I realize.

He's looking at me with something like grief, because he knows exactly what I'm sacrificing.

He knows how hard I've worked, how many late nights, how many dreams I've poured into building something that was mine.

"Daphne…"

"Don't tell me I don't have to." I shake my head. "Don't tell me we can manage both. Our daughters come first, everything else is just... noise."

He crosses the kitchen in three strides, cups my face in his hands. His forehead presses against mine. "We'll find whoever did this," he breathes. "I swear to you. I will burn down everything they've ever loved."

"I know you will." I close my eyes. "But right now, I need you to help me give our girls their bath and read them their story and tuck them into bed like nothing is wrong. Can you do that?"

"Yes." His lips brush my temple. "Yes, I can do that."

We fill the bathtub with bubbles and listen to Nina's elaborate story about the dragon who lives in the drain.

We towel Lisa's hair dry while she counts the tiles on the bathroom floor. We read three bedtime stories instead of two because Nina negotiates like a tiny lawyer and Lisa's eyes go wide and pleading.

We kiss their foreheads, turn on their nightlights and close their door softly behind us.

And then I fall apart.

It happens in our bedroom, the door barely shut before my back hits the wall and my knees give out.

I slide down until I'm sitting on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, arms wrapped around myself like I'm trying to hold my own pieces together.

Xander finds me there. He doesn't speak—doesn't offer empty comfort or hollow promises.

He just sits beside me, his shoulder warm against mine, and pulls me into his arms. Holds on like I'm the only real thing in a world gone suddenly sideways.

When he kisses me, it's not to fix anything, but to remind me I'm not alone.

I kiss him back with five years of fear behind it—fear of raising my daughters alone, fear of losing them, fear of this life I've built crumbling to dust.

The kiss deepens into something desperate, something urgent, something necessary.

His hands find my skin. My fingers tangle in his hair. We come together on the bedroom floor like we're drowning and each other is air.

Later, in our bed, we do it again—not gentle, not slow. Fierce and claiming, fear transformed into need. Our bodies say what words can't: ‘This is what we're protecting. This is why we fight. This is ours, and no one takes it from us.’

Afterward, wrapped around each other in the dark, I press my lips to the hollow of his throat and whisper the truth we both know.

"We need help. Real help. Someone inside the house we can trust."

His arms tighten around me. "I know. We'll start looking tomorrow. Interviews, background checks, whatever it takes."

"Someone good with the girls," I murmur. "Someone who can help while we figure out who's doing this."

"We'll find them." His voice is rough with exhaustion and something deeper. "I promise you, Daphne. We'll find them, and we'll keep our family safe."