The silence between us stretched painfully, each second feeling like an eternity.
I could see Xander's mind working behind those dark eyes. Calculating dates. Connecting dots. Considering possibilities. But I can’t let him form the thought finally.
"Don't worry, they were already born when we met," I said quickly, forcing my voice to stay steady despite the terror clawing at my chest. "I had them young. Six months old that night."
The lie tasted bitter on my tongue, sharp and wrong. But I thought of Nina's bright smile, Lisa's shy sweetness, the life I'd built for them brick by fragile brick. Their safety. Their stability.
The guilt became bearable when weighed against everything I had to protect.
Xander's eyes narrowed. He studied my face with that piercing intensity I remembered from our first meeting in his office—searching for cracks, for any sign that I was lying.
I held his gaze and willed myself not to flinch. Not to look away. Not to give him anything he could use.
"Six months old…" he repeated slowly. His tone was flat, skeptical. "You never mentioned them."
I shrugged, aiming for casual even as my heart threatened to pound out of my chest. "We weren't exactly sharing life stories. It was one night in a bar. Small talk and drinks."
"You talked about wanting to be a writer. About feeling stuck. That seems fairly personal."
"Dreams are easy to share with strangers. Children aren't." I paused, then added with a hint of edge I couldn't quite suppress, "Besides, you weren't exactly honest with me either, Alex."
The name landed like a slap. Xander's jaw tightened, and something shifted in his expression—guilt, maybe, or frustration at having his own deception thrown back at him.
He held my stare for a long moment, and I braced myself for more questions. For him to push harder, to demand proof, to call me out on the lie I was barely holding together.
But the questions didn't come.
He simply nodded once, curtly, and stepped back. "Get them home. Take the rest of the morning if you need it."
His voice was clipped, professional, but his eyes lingered on the twins one last time.
Nina had lost interest in the conversation and was trying to peek around the corner at the fish tank again. Lisa still clung to my leg, her feverish cheek pressed against my thigh.
Then he turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing against the marble floor until he disappeared around the corner.
I exhaled shakily, the breath leaving my body in a rush that made my knees weak. "Come on, girls. Let's go."
It took me forty-five minutes to find a sitter willing to take a sick child. I dropped both girls off with detailed instructions about Lisa's medication and Nina's tendency to convince caretakers she was allowed unlimited screen time.
I was back at my desk within two hours, slightly disheveled but present. Professional. Reliable.
I thought maybe the worst was over. I was wrong.
For the rest of the day, Xander watched me. Not obviously—he was too controlled for that. Too aware of appearances, of propriety, of the invisible lines that separated boss from employee.
But I felt his gaze like a physical weight, like sunlight through a magnifying glass, focused and burning.
Every time I looked up from my desk, he was glancing away a moment too late. I'd catch the tail end of his attention, the slight turn of his head, the tension in his shoulders that said he'd been staring.
When I delivered documents to his office, his eyes followed my movements with unsettling focus. I set the papers on his desk, explained what needed approval, kept my voice steady and professional.
He nodded in all the right places, responded appropriately, but his gaze never quite settled where it should. It kept drifting to my face, my hands.
He didn't say anything. Didn't ask more questions. But the suspicion radiated off him in waves, filling every interaction with unspoken tension.
The afternoon meeting was the worst.
A quarterly review, department heads presenting reports in the large conference room. I sat in the corner as instructed, tablet in hand, taking notes on action items and follow-up tasks.
Invisible. That was my role—to document and support, to fade into the background while the important people discussed important things.
Xander sat at the head of the table, where his attention should have been fixed on the speaker—a finance director discussing profit margins and growth projections with the help of a dense PowerPoint presentation.
Instead, his eyes kept drifting to me.
Once. I told myself it was a coincidence.
Twice. Maybe he was looking at something near me.
A dozen times. There was no denying it.
I felt heat creep up my neck every time our gazes accidentally met. I stared at my notebook, pen moving mechanically across the page, heart pounding so loud I was certain the person beside me could hear it.
The speaker droned on about market trends and quarterly targets, but Xander wasn't listening. His focus was locked on me like I was a puzzle he was determined to solve, a code he couldn't quite crack.
What was he seeing? What connections was he making? Did he notice Nina's eyes were the same shape as his? Did he see his own bone structure in Lisa's features?
By the time the meeting ended, my nerves were shredded.
I gathered my things quickly and headed for the door. Escape was so close. Just a few more steps and I'd be out, back at my desk, able to breathe again.
"Daphne." His voice stopped me cold.
I turned, pulse spiking. Xander stood at the table, gathering his papers, not looking at me. Everyone else was filing out, conversations already shifting to other topics, other priorities. We were almost alone.
"Yes, Mr. Hale?"
A pause.
I watched his shoulders tense beneath the expensive fabric of his suit. Watched him wrestle with something, a question, an accusation, a demand for truth, and ultimately decide to swallow it.
His hands stilled on the papers. He swallows quietly, choosing his words..
"Good work today," he said finally.
The words were stiff. Almost reluctant. Like he'd meant to say something else entirely and forced himself to change course at the last moment.
I nodded, not trusting my voice, and left before he could change his mind.
The elevator doors closed behind me, and I slumped against the wall, pressing my palms against my eyes.
He didn't believe me. I could see it in every glance, every loaded silence, every question he didn't ask. But he hadn't called me out. Hadn't demanded a DNA test or accused me of lying.
Not yet.
The thread was still holding. Barely. But I could feel it fraying with every passing hour, every suspicious look, every moment those dark eyes studied me like I held secrets he was determined to uncover.
And the worst part was that I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep lying to his face.