Page 80 of Filthy Rich Daddies

I give her the real answer. “Because you saw me at my worst,” I say. “And you still came looking.”

She doesn’t reply right away. But she stands, walks over, and kisses me slow and lingering. Then she whispers, “That goes both ways.”

Before she goes, I check my phone. “We’re being paged to the office. Some big thing. You good to go?”

“It’s late.”

“The big things never care about the time.”

She yawns. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s go.”

29

THALASSA

I have officially been kidnappedby billionaires.

Okay, fine, not kidnapped. More like gently escorted. I didn’t even get a chance to argue before I was in Colin’s car with a bottle of water in one hand and a seat warmer doing wonders for my lower back.

“What’s this all about?”

“We’ve got some unfinished business.” That was all he said.

So now I’m sitting in a leather chair in Colin’s corner office on the top floor of Copeland headquarters, sipping a decaf coffee that costs more than my weekly grocery budget and trying not to look like I don’t belong here.

Spoiler: I absolutely do not belong here.

Not in my day-old hoodie and leggings, not with my hair in every direction from the sex on his couch. I’m still processing everything that’s happened in the past few days, and now, I’m in a monument to corporate life.

The office is ridiculous. There’s a whole wall of glass looking out over the city, a conference table that could seat the entire UN Security Council, and some kind of kinetic sculpture thing on his desk that keeps flipping metal pieces in endless motion. The couch I’m on costs more than my parents’ cottage.

Colin lounges behind his desk like he owns the place—which, I guess, he kind of does. He changed before we left his server hovel. Apparently, he keeps decent clothes there for just such an emergency. He’s wearing black slacks, an open-collar shirt, and a barely there grin that tells me something’s up.

He looks good. A little too good. And I’m still not totally sure how I feel about that.

The truth is, I’m still weird about all of this.

The stalking thing? Not great. Like, romantically charged or not, I don’t think “I watched you from the second floor and ghosted before you saw me” is going to win any relationship health awards. The prosthetic thing? Complicated. I’m grateful—obviously I’m grateful. My dad’s quality of life is better now, and that means everything to me.

But also?

It’s weird knowing these men have been reaching into the most private corners of my life before I even knew them. They do it because they care. I know that. But sometimes it feels like they don’t trust me to handle my own problems.

So I’m making my peace with it. Or at least…working on it. They like to fix things. They’re used to power. I get it. We’re fine as long as they keep their tracking software off my phone and stop showing up uninvited.

Mostly.

I glance at Tic, who’s standing near the window in full black as always, arms crossed, face unreadable. He hasn’t stalked me or done things behind the scenes. At least one of them understands how to have boundaries.

Dean’s seated in one of the chairs across from me, flipping through something on a tablet. Every now and then, he glances up at me like he wants to say something but hasn’t decided how. Probably still brooding about our conversation.

Which is fair. I’m still brooding about it too.

“You good?” Colin asks, kicking his feet up on the corner of the desk.

“Sure. Just contemplating the absurdity of my life.”

“Be more specific.”