After His Daughter Called Him Daddy, the CEO Lost Control

The divorce papers my ex-husband handed me came with exactly one extra clause: take eight million and never set foot in Ashford again.

I laid a hand over the belly that wasn't showing yet, signed, left the country, gave birth to my daughter, and spent the next five years finishing my doctorate.

The morning I brought her to register at preschool, I was standing in the line of parents when I looked up and saw Daryl Gilbert.

He glanced at me, then down at my daughter, held there for two seconds, and quickly looked away, his face blank, as if we were two strangers.

The next second, a few lines of half-transparent text came drifting past my eyes.

Keep it up! Keep pretending! He was crouched outside the preschool gate at five in the morning!

That enrollment spot for the daughter? He donated two academic buildings overnight to get it!

The child safety seat in his car? He had it installed three years ago!

I stared, stunned, for a long moment.

Was this... a stream of floating comments?

They seemed to be able to see our lives, even things I didn't know myself.

The teacher went through the files page by page. When she reached my daughter's page, it listed only my name; the space for the father was blank.

The air in front of me lit up at once.

He's afraid he doesn't have the right, he didn't even dare write his name!

Last week he went to learn how to tie little braids, ruined a whole drawer of hair ties practicing!

I took a deep breath, bent down, scooped up my daughter, crossed the few steps, and pushed her straight into his arms.

"Hold her. The parent-child craft project requires the father to make one too."

His whole body went rigid.

I didn't give him the chance to play dumb.

"You dare say you don't know her, and I'll transfer her out tomorrow."

"By then, you won't even have anywhere left to crouch."

...

"You... don't let her fall."

Daryl stood frozen, his two hands fumbling, not knowing where to go, until finally he had no choice but to hold her under the arms.

His throat bobbed, over and over.

A thin layer of sweat had already broken out on his forehead, and for the longest time he couldn't force out a second sentence.

"Giggle, giggle, giggle..."

My daughter wasn't shy at all. Her little hand shot out and grabbed the dark-patterned tie at his neck, then opened her mouth and stuffed it right in.

Glistening drool smeared all over Daryl, and the front of that expensive tailored suit was quickly soaked in a big patch, which was quite an eyesore to look at.

I reached out, meaning to take my daughter back.

Oh my god, he didn't even push her away! That tie is the lucky color he spent a whole week picking out just for today!

A string of bold red comments popped up again, blaring across my line of sight.

I pulled my half-extended hand back.

Lucky color?

The great CEO of Gilbert Group actually believed in that kind of superstitious nonsense, and picked it out over an entire week.

"Daryl, where'd this wild kid come from, getting your clothes all dirty!"

A shrill female voice cut in from the side, the pitch wound so high it made your ears ache.

Charging over in ten-centimeter pointed heels was Valerie Fox, Daryl's rumored girlfriend.

"Where's security? What kind of job is this preschool's security even doing!"

"Hurry up and get this trashy person out of here!"

Her nails were painted bright red. She curled all five fingers and shoved them straight at my daughter's thin little shoulder.

"Get off!"

My eyelid twitched. I snatched my daughter into my arms first, then backhanded Valerie's arm away and put the child completely behind me.

"Before you raise a hand, you'd better weigh what you actually are."

I stared at her, my voice cold and hard.

Valerie clutched the back of her hand, which was reddening fast, her eyes going wider and wider. She looked at me for a long time before she recognized me.

"Charlotte Simmons? You actually have the nerve to come back to Ashford!"

She crossed her arms over her chest, raked her eyes over me from head to toe, and pushed a cold snort out through her nose.

"Back then you signed the papers, took your eight-million breakup money, and got lost."

"Now the money's spent, so you've come back to sponge off him?"

I raised a hand to cover my daughter's ears and couldn't help letting out a laugh.

"Eight million, is that a lot?"

"Any random sports car in CEO Gilbert's garage costs more than that. Only someone like you would treat it like a treasure."

Choked silent by that one line, Valerie's face went green, then white, then green again.

"Don't play the noble act!"

"Everyone knows how loose your private life was overseas, the little bastard's probably some Black man's for all you know!"

She wasn't satisfied yet; her voice climbed higher and higher.

"Bringing some cheap thing with no known father to shake people down, and you don't even look at how high the Gilbert family's threshold is!"

"You, worthy of it?"

A lot of the parents around us turned to look, and the whispers, kept low, grew thicker and thicker.

My daughter was startled by that shrill voice. She buried her face in the crook of my neck, her little hands clutching me tight.

"Mommy, that lady's so scary, like the old witch in the fairy tales who eats children."

The corridor had gone quiet for a stretch, so my daughter's soft, milky little voice came through clear, and a few laughs that couldn't be held back quickly slipped out of the crowd.

"You little brat, who are you calling an old witch!"

Losing it completely, Valerie raised her hand and swung it down toward my daughter's face.

"You touch her, just try it."

My face darkened. I gripped the insulated bottle in my hand tight and was already swinging it at her forehead.

A gust of wind swept past my side.

"Who gave you permission to touch them?"

Daryl took a step forward, his tall frame putting himself right between them and me and my daughter.

He caught Valerie's wrist in one grip, and as his fingers slowly tightened, the color drained from her face along with it.

Then he flung her hard away.

"Let me hear half a dirty word again, and I'll make sure you don't walk out of this preschool's gate."

"Ow!"

Valerie stumbled back two steps, her back hitting the wall, rubbing her flushed wrist and shrieking loud enough to cut.

"Daryl, you shoved me for some castoff who had a bastard kid?"

Her eyes went red on the spot, wronged as if she'd suffered some terrible cruelty. Anyone who didn't know better would think Daryl had done her wrong.

"I'm your rightful fiance!"

"How could you help an outsider bully me?"

I raised an eyebrow and looked at Daryl's ramrod-straight back.

Satisfying, so satisfying! CEO Gilbert can't keep up the wife-protecting act anymore! Just last night he wrote in his diary that he wants to throw his ex-wife a redo wedding of the century!

The colorful comments flashed past fast, and I almost laughed out loud.

Writing a diary?

A business titan who was decisive and ruthless by day, and behind closed doors he had this sappy, sentimental little hobby.

Daryl pulled off the tie his daughter had messed up, didn't even glance at it, and tossed it into the trash can beside him.

For Valerie, not even a look.

"I signed up for the parent-child crafts class. Out of the way. Get lost."

Valerie clenched her back teeth so hard her face nearly twisted out of shape.

"Fine. Just fine!"

"Charlotte, you really think you've won?"

She pulled her phone from her bag, quickly dialed a number, and deliberately put it on speaker.

The moment the call connected, she switched her voice, syrupy and soft.

"Auntie, I ran into Charlotte at the preschool."

"She's got some kid from who knows where, and she's clinging to Daryl"

Kathy Gilbert's shrill scolding came through fast from the other end.

"What? That clingy jinx is back again!"

Valerie shot me a smug look and pushed the phone up to Daryl's ear.

"Daryl, bring Valerie back to the old house right now!"

"You'd better explain all of this to me!"

Kathy wasn't keeping her voice down, every word laced with command.

"The Gilbert family can't afford this kind of embarrassment. Get rid of that woman immediately!"

Daryl's brow furrowed, and just as he was about to speak, I took my daughter's little hand and turned toward the preschool gate.

"Since CEO Gilbert is busy dealing with family matters, he should give the spot to someone else."

"We're just ordinary people. We wouldn't dare hold up CEO Gilbert's wonderful match."

I dropped the words and didn't look back.

Hurried footsteps sounded behind me right away.

"Stop."

Daryl caught up in a few strides and blocked our path, broad shoulders and long legs sealing the way completely.

Kathy, still shouting through the phone, was left hanging entirely.

He bent down and lifted my daughter up with one arm.

"The spot is mine. It's not for you to decide."

Holding the child, he strode toward the crafts classroom, giving me no room to refuse.

My daughter draped over his shoulder, grinning and waving at me, still gripping a fancy gold-nibbed fountain pen she'd somehow filched from his pocket at some point.

"Mommy, come on, Daddy's taking us to do crafts!"

The mood in the crafts room was hard to describe.

Daryl Gilbert, six-foot-three, was crammed miserably into a tiny plastic chair, his long legs folded up with nowhere to go. He looked, frankly, a little pitiful.

A pair of blunt-tipped children's scissors in his hand, he cut slowly along a sheet of pink paper, as focused as if he were signing a billion-dollar contract.

"Daddy, you have to fold on the dotted line."

"Otherwise the paper crane comes out really, really ugly."

His daughter stood beside him with her hands behind her back, directing him with complete seriousness.

Daryl's jaw was clenched tight, the vein at his temple jumping twice, but he pressed the crease down again exactly the way she told him to.

Can you believe this? The great CEO of Gilbert Group secretly signed up for thirty origami classes, just so he wouldn't embarrass himself today!

And it still turned out like a moth that got run over by a car. I'm dying!

The comments streamed across the top of his head like a party.

I held my water cup and looked at the hopeless, lopsided crane in his hands, not sure whether to laugh or ask him what the point of all this was.

Then a mess of footsteps came from outside the room.

"Where is that little fox, Charlotte Simmons?"

Kathy Gilbert came storming in, a pair of imperial-green jade earrings at her ears, one hand on Valerie Fox for support.

She spotted Daryl the moment she stepped in, huddled in the plastic chair, and her chest heaved several times before she jabbed a finger at him, shaking with anger.

"Daryl, you're supposed to be closing a deal worth hundreds of millions!"

"And instead you run off to play house with this woman?"

Done with her son, her finger swung around to me.

"You took the money and walked out back then, and now you drag some girl of unknown origin back here to bleed us dry?"

"Let me tell you, the door to the Gilbert house is one you will never set foot through, not in your entire life!"

The shrill voice made my daughter shrink her neck down, her two little hands twisting into Daryl's shirt collar.

Daryl's face darkened, and he braced a hand on the little table to stand.

But my daughter poked her head out from his arms first, still clutching the pink crane she'd just folded, the one that had come out ridiculously crooked.

She worked up her courage and walked right over to Kathy, tipping her soft little face up and studying her for a long moment.

"Grandma, your green stones are so pretty. You look like the fairy lady on TV."

She stood on her toes and held out the crane.

"Daddy and I folded it together. It's for you, pretty Grandma."

"Please don't be angry anymore, okay?"

Kathy's hand froze in midair.

And her eyes, once they landed on the little girl's face, couldn't pull away.

The child already looked so much like Daryl had as a boy, and with a few more blinks of those innocent big eyes, most of the anger drained out of Kathy.

"This child"

She murmured it, her hand reaching out on its own to take the crane.

"Ma'am, don't let her fool you!"

Seeing which way this was going, Valerie suddenly slapped the crane out of my daughter's hand and raised her voice to a screech.

"Charlotte Simmons slept around while she was overseas. Who even knows whose bastard that is!"

"And she coached the kid on purpose to butter you up!"

"She's trying to use the child to worm her way in. You can't fall for it!"

The crane hit the floor, and Valerie pinned it under her foot, grinding it hard twice with the toe of her shoe.

"Who gave you permission to step on what's mine?"

Daryl spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but it was cold enough to shut every mouth in the room.

"Valerie, watch your mouth!"

Daryl stood, kicked Valerie aside, then bent down and picked up the crushed paper crane.

He pulled his daughter behind him, shielding her completely.

The look he leveled at Valerie made her shiver.

Valerie hit the floor hard, her face twisting with pain, but she still wouldn't back down.

"Daryl, I'm helping you see the truth!"

"You can't let this woman fool you again!"

A few words from her, and the softness that had just come into Kathy's face hardened all over again.

"Charlotte Simmons, you say the child is Daryl's."

"Fine. We go get a paternity test right now. Do you dare?"

She looked at me and spoke fast.

"If it's not a Gilbert child, you get out of Ashford immediately!"

I didn't hesitate. I took a bank card out of my bag and slapped it down on the table.

"No need to wait. I can leave right now."

"There's ten million on that card. The eight million from back then, principal and interest, paid back in full."

I met Kathy's eyes and said every word clearly.

"After the test proves the child's identity, we go our separate ways."

"From now on, nobody bothers anybody."

[Don't! Mr. Gilbert's going out of his mind, he doesn't care about that stupid money at all!]

[He's already written his will, everything under his name goes to his daughter, all he wants is his wife and kid and a warm home!]

The comments scrolled fast, a fresh wave every few seconds, the whole screen full of Daryl about to lose it.

Valerie braced herself on the table to stand, brushed the dust off her dress, then hooked her arm through Kathy's.

"Auntie, a test would just be a waste of time."

"Actually, I came today to give you the best news."

She drew a lab report out of her limited-edition bag, unfolded it slowly, and made a point of holding it up a little higher.

"Auntie, I'm pregnant."

Kathy snatched the report, and the moment she saw the result, her fingers started to tremble.

"Two months?"

"Valerie, you're really carrying the Gilbert family's first grandchild?"

She was so worked up her voice cracked.

"Wonderful, the Gilbert family finally has an heir!"

Tears welled in Kathy's eyes as she stroked Valerie's belly over and over, murmuring again and again that the Gilberts had an heir now.

The cold crept from my fingertips up to my shoulders. Five years of holding on, and all at once it seemed a little ridiculous.

I took a deep breath, bent down and picked up my daughter. I didn't want to stay here any longer.

"Daryl, I wish the three of you a long and happy life together."

"And may you have a child soon."

I forced the sting behind my eyes back down, took my daughter's hand, and turned to leave.

"Stop."

Daryl suddenly caught my wrist, five fingers clamped so tight the bones ached.

Then he turned his face toward Valerie and smiled, a very cold smile.

"Pregnant?"

A cold laugh forced its way out of his throat, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

"Three years ago I had a vasectomy, one side removed and permanently tied off."

"Valerie, whatever's in your belly, exactly whose first grandchild is that supposed to be?"