My Boss, My Babydaddy

Chapter 44

Zayden’s POV

The envelope arrives by courier at 9 AM. No return address, hand-delivered with instructions that I sign for it personally.

Landon stands in my office doorway. "You expecting something?"

I slice it open, a single photograph falls onto my desk. Mia and Eli leaving school yesterday. Jocelyn's hand on Eli's shoulder. All three of them captured in perfect focus from across the street.

The message is typed on cream cardstock, expensive enough to communicate exactly who's sending it.

‘We should talk about family obligations. Your father made promises. Time to honor them. Dante Caruso. Saturday, 8 PM. Pier 47.’

"Fuck." The word comes out flat.

Landon crosses the room, looks at the photo. His face drains. "The Carusos." He sets the photo down like it burned him. "Christ, Zayden. What did you do?"

I don't answer immediately. The words are there, have been there for eleven years, but saying them out loud makes them permanent.

"Zayden." Landon's voice drops. Lawyer voice gone, replaced by something closer to a friend bracing for impact. "What did you do?"

"Giuliana Caruso." The name comes out flat. "Eleven years ago."

Landon's eyes close. Opens them. "Dante's niece."

"Yes."

"Tell me you didn't get her pregnant."

The silence is its own answer.

"And you paid them off." Not a question anymore.

"Three million. Direct wire to offshore accounts, signed documents agreeing to zero contact." I slide the photo back into the envelope. "They took the child, raised her as a family."

Landon sinks into a chair. "Why are they contacting you now?"

"Because someone's been digging. Financial records, sealed NDAs. The Carusos don't appreciate people asking questions about their business arrangements."

"Jocelyn."

My phone buzzes. Thomas Reyes—the security consultant I keep on retainer for corporate espionage. His text is brief, clinical.

‘Client identified: Jocelyn Hartwell-Wolfe. Hired investigator nine days ago. Full financial audit, all sealed documents. Carusos are aware.’

"She hired a PI." I set the phone down carefully. "She's unraveling everything."

"Can you blame her?"

"No." The admission costs nothing because it's true. "But she doesn't understand what she's pulling on. The Carusos aren't a dormant legacy. Dante runs active operations. And Giuliana…"

"Was she really pregnant?"

"I don't know." The confession tastes like poison. "My father handled the situation, said Giuliana was a problem that needed solving. Three million bought silence and whatever happened to the child."

Landon's expression hardens. "Your father laundered money for them."

"For twenty years. Real estate acquisitions, construction contracts. Every Wolfe Holdings building project in Brooklyn went through Caruso-controlled unions."

I pull up files on my computer—records I've kept locked behind passwords that would take federal agents months to crack.

"Giuliana approached me at a gallery opening, interested in everything I said. We dated for two months."

"She was a plant."

"She was leverage." I open a photograph. Giuliana at twenty-three, wearing diamonds and smiling like she knew exactly what game she was playing. "The pregnancy test was positive, my father paid Dante directly. I never saw her again."

"Until Jocelyn started asking questions and Dante decided it was time to remind you that some debts don't expire." Landon finishes for me and stands. "You need to tell her before Dante decides to send a stronger message."

"Tell her what? That the woman I thought I got pregnant might have been faking it? That my father used mob connections to bury the situation? That there might be a ten-year-old girl in Brooklyn who thinks she's pure Caruso but carries Wolfe DNA?"

"Yes. All of it." Landon moves toward the door. "Because if you don't, and something happens to Jocelyn or the kids because you kept more secrets…"

He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to.

***

The penthouse is too quiet when I arrive at six.

No sounds from Mia's room. No Eli drawing at the kitchen table. Just silence that presses against my eardrums like accusation.

I find Jocelyn in my study.

She sits in my chair—the leather throne I've occupied for fifteen years. File folders spread across the desk like crime scene evidence. Each one labeled with a woman's name.

Rebecca Morrison.

Sofia Delgado.

Keiko Tanaka.

Natasha Reeves.

Giuliana Caruso.

She doesn't look up when I enter. Just keeps turning pages, absorbing details I'd buried under legal contracts and offshore wire transfers.

"Where are the kids?" My voice sounds foreign.

"At Helena's for the weekend." She finally meets my eyes. "I thought this conversation deserved privacy."

I move toward the desk. She raises one hand.

"Dante Caruso's niece." She taps the Giuliana file. "The one your PI friend called to warn you about." Her smile could cut glass. "Did you really think I wouldn't find out you were monitoring my investigation?"

"Jocelyn…"

"Five women, Zayden." She stands. "Seven. And that's just the ones with paper trails. How many others are there? How many children did you erase before I got pregnant?"

"It's not what you think."

"How many more secrets do I have to uncover myself?" She crosses her arms, but her voice cracks beneath the steel. "How many more files, how many more names am I going to find in boxes and folders and locked drawers—always from someone else, never from you?"

"Giuliana was different. My father…"

"Your dead father isn't here to blame." She moves around the desk. "You're forty-two years old. When do you start taking responsibility for your own choices?"

The truth sits in my throat like broken glass.

"I don't know if Lucia exists."

The statement stops her. "What?"

"Giuliana claimed she was pregnant, but I never saw proof—no medical records, no birth certificate. Just demands for money and threats if I didn't comply."

Jocelyn's expression shifts. "You think it was extortion."

"I think it was leverage. Dante wanted deeper ties to Wolfe Holdings. My father was already washing their money through construction deals. A pregnancy, real or fabricated, gave them permanent hooks into the family."

"So you paid three million for a child who might not exist."

"I paid three million to make the problem disappear. Whether Lucia is real or not, " I stop to start over. "I should have verified. Should have demanded proof. But I was twenty-six and terrified and my father convinced me it was better not to know."

Jocelyn studies me like I'm evidence she's cataloging. "The other women, the children. Are they real?"

"Yes. All verified through DNA tests after the NDAs were signed."

"Connor Morrison. Isabella Delgado. The Tanaka twins. Eli." She lists them with the precision of someone who's memorized ammunition. "Six confirmed children you've paid to ignore."

"Seven. Mia makes seven."

"You didn't pay me to disappear."

"I tried." The admission feels like falling. "You found the draft contracts. Four years ago. Before I realized I couldn't do it again, couldn't erase one more person I claimed to love."

Her face doesn't change, she picks up another file. This one thinner, marked URGENT in red ink. "Dante messaged you this morning. Pier 47. Saturday at eight. Something about family obligations and your father's promises."

"You can't be there."

"I'm already involved."

She slides the file across the desk. Inside—surveillance photos of me, her, the kids. Taken over the last week from distances that suggest professional stalking.

"The Carusos have been watching us. And according to Kovak's sources, Dante doesn't just want money."

"What does he want?"

She opens the file to the last page. A photo of a girl—ten years old, dark hair, green eyes that mirror mine with uncomfortable precision.

Lucia Caruso stands outside a Brooklyn private school, surrounded by men in expensive suits who radiate violence.

"He wants you to acknowledge her." Jocelyn's voice is frightently steady. "Publicly. As your daughter. And he wants the Wolfe name attached to her future."

"That's impossible."

"Then we have a problem." She closes the file. "Because if you refuse, Dante's message suggests he'll take what he wants through other channels." Her eyes meet mine. "Starting with Mia and Eli."

The world narrows to the photograph. Lucia Caruso—my daughter or Dante's greatest con—staring at the camera with an expression too calculating for ten years old.

Jocelyn moves toward the door. Stops with her hand on the frame, back still turned.

"Saturday. Pier 47. You're going to that meeting, and you're going to figure out what Dante actually wants. Not what your dead father promised him—what he wants from us, right now."

"And if what he wants is Mia?"

She turns. The look on her face is something I've never seen before—not fury, not grief. Something past both. The expression of a woman who's run out of patience for being the last person in the room to learn the truth.

"Then God help him." She leaves without closing the door.