Chapter 3: Daddy Devious: Chapter 2

I need to quit my job. Like, yesterday.

There’s no way I can take another two weeks of this. Of constantly jumping at the sound of my name, of tensing up every time those damn elevator doors open, expecting to see uniformed guards marching toward me.

Or worse, Maxwell Stone himself.

All morning he’s been on my mind. That little half-smile, like he knew something I didn’t. The fact that he knows my name. My face.

What else does he know about me?

I will be seeing you around.

Those words have lived in my head for four solid hours. Replaying over and over until I want to scream. Or march myself right up to his office and demand to know what he’s playing at.

But I know I won’t do that. Even if I hadn’t embezzled all that money, I would never have the nerve to demand anything from a man like Maxwell Stone.

I do have some sense of self-preservation, after all.

By the time my lunch hour rolls around, I’m wishing I hadn’t touched even a single penny of that money. It isn’t, I’ve decided, worth the ulcer all this stress is certainly giving me.

The second I get home, I’m going to find the smallest, most remote little town in America and book myself a flight. Or maybe I’ll just buy a cheap used car. Would that be harder to track? Possibly, if I took out some cash and paid for some cheap roadside motel rooms along the way instead of using my debit card.

I can find a cute little house somewhere. Pay cash, maybe get a little fixer-upper so I have a project to work on. Get myself a part-time job at the local hardware store, both to help stretch my savings and to help pay for the repairs. I bet the store will be owned by some grizzled old man with a big white beard and two names. Billy Bob or Joe Bob or something like that. He’ll show me how to use all the tools, while shaking his head and muttering about city girls not knowing a damn thing.

Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Just as soon as I escape my current hell.

I’m lost in that fantasy when my phone rings, jolting me back to the present. Heart pounding yet again, I reach for the handset. “This is Victoria.”

“Hello, Ms. Finch. This is Angelique, Mr. Stone’s admin. He asked me to call and tell you to come up to his office as soon as possible, please.”

The world spins around me as I clutch my desk, desperate to keep myself from simply falling out of my chair. “Mr. Stone?”

“Yes. His office is on the top floor. Just come up and I’ll let him know when you arrive.”

“I, um. May I ask what this is about?”

“I don’t make it a habit to question Mr. Stone.” Angelique’s tone is dry, with just a hint of amusement. “You will have to ask him yourself. Should I let him know you are on your way?”

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

This is what I’ve been dreading all day, and now that it’s here the fear threatens to choke me. “Ah, sure. Sure. Yeah, I’m on my way.”

“Perfect. I’ll let him know.”

I return the handset to its cradle, the roaring in my ears drowning out the chatter of my coworkers as I rise slowly to my feet. Grabbing my purse from the hook on my cubicle wall, I casually, oh so casually, sling it over my shoulder and make my way toward the elevators.

“Vicky?”

I ignore the concerned voice of Stan, my next-door neighbor in our little cubicle farm and continue my trek, deliberately keeping my steps slow and steady despite everything in me screaming at me to run.

“Hey, Vicky! Are you okay?”

At the last second, I turn right, heading toward the stairs instead of the elevator. The stairs are faster, especially in the middle of the day with everyone coming and going for lunch.

And if my worst fears actually have come true, they’ll be watching the elevators. They might be watching the stairwells, too, but I have to take my chances. I have to do something, anything, other than simply accept my fate.

The second my feet hit the metal landing, I’m off. Tears blur my vision as I race down the stairs as fast as I dare in my heels. Silently, I curse myself for not taking the thirty seconds to change into the flats I usually wear for my commute.

My calves are aching by the time I hit the fifth floor, and by the second my breaths are coming in deep, ragged pants. Almost there, almost there, almost there.

But when I turn the last corner halfway between the second floor and the first, I see him. Waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, with that little taunting smile on his face.

I try to stop, to turn back. Instead I stumble, my heel catching on the stair and propelling me forward. A shriek pierces the air, my shriek, and then I’m flying.

Straight into a wall of muscle.

Fuck.

“Are you all right?”

The concern in his voice baffles me even more than the actual question, distracting me from my panic. “I-I think so. You can put me down now.”

I don’t actually expect him to let go of me. Not when he has me right where he wants me, trapped and unable to escape. But to my never-ending surprise, he does set me on my feet.

He does not, however, release me. Instead, he turns me to the side, one hand gripping my upper arm, while the other swats my ass with fast, sharp spanks. “Little girls do not run on the stairs.”

Little girls? I haven’t been a little girl in a very long time. And yet, here I am, getting spanked like one in the stairwell of my office building. By the man who owns said office building.

What the actual fuck is happening right now?

“Ow, ow, ow!” Yelping at the shocking pain, I dance in place as he continues to spank me. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I don’t know what I’m apologizing for, exactly, but it seems like the appropriate response and I’m willing to do or say anything to end this humiliating punishment.

He ends the spanking with two extra hard swats before turning me back to face him. The lines of his face appear to be etched in stone, and there’s a cold fury radiating from him that makes me want to shrink away. “Where are you supposed to be right now, Ms. Finch?”

Something about the dichotomy of being called by my more formal name while my bottom is still burning from being spanked like a naughty child is so patently absurd, I do the only thing I can think to do at that moment.

I laugh.

And once I start laughing, I can’t seem to stop. Some rational part of my brain is screaming at me to stop, to just shut up, but every time I try to get my howling under control, I catch sight of Mr. Stone’s stunned expression and I lose it all over again.

Still gripping my arm, he shoves open the door to the stairwell with his free hand, dragging me along beside him toward the elevators. By now the lobby is full of employees and clients, and every single one of them stops to stare at us. Gripped by some form of hysteria, I wave to them, still giggling uncontrollably as we bypass the usual elevators and head past the guard station.

My laughter fades, giving way to fascination when Mr. Stone uses his badge to unlock a hidden door. That door leads us to a hallway, and another set of elevators.

“Where are we?” I ask, twisting in his grip to get a better look at our surroundings. Not that it matters, since I won’t ever see this section of the building again, seeing as how I am very definitely about to get fired.

And, you know, since I’m probably going to jail.

That single thought instantly sobers me as reality sets in. I’ve been caught, and there’s absolutely no escape now. Nothing to save me from the punishment I deserve.

In complete silence, we step onto the elevator when it arrives. The panic I’d felt back at my cubicle rises up again, choking me, and no matter how many deep breaths I try to take, nothing eases the grip it has on me.

At the top floor, the elevators whisk open again, depositing us directly into a spacious office overlooking the city.

“Sit,” Mr. Stone commands, giving me a gentle nudge toward the visitors’ chairs facing his desk.

Unable to speak past the tightness in my throat, I nod and hurry over to perch on the edge of one of the chairs.

Mr. Stone, moving at a much more languid pace, retrieves two bottles of water from a small fridge and hands me one before taking his rightful place behind his desk. “Drink.”

How can I drink when I can’t swallow? Still unable to force out any actual words, I shake my head.

Impossibly, his expression hardens even further than the stone—haha—mask he was already wearing, and I shrink back in my chair. “If you insist on arguing with me at every turn, Ms. Finch, you are going to find sitting comfortably to be nothing more than a fond memory.”

Heat floods my face at the memory of the spanking in the stairwell, and I yank the bottle from his hand, twisting the top off with such force the contents spill all over my hand and my skirt.

Fresh tears well in my eyes as the mess threatens to overwhelm my already overburdened nervous system, but before I can ask for a paper towel, Mr. Stone is kneeling in front of me, patting at the water soaking my skin and my clothes with a handkerchief. “It’s all right, little one. Accidents happen.”

Little one? What the hell is happening? Did I hit my head when I fell on the stairs and this is all some weird coma dream?

If it is, my subconscious and I need to have a very long chat with an actual therapist. Lorelai isn’t going to help us with this one.

Gently, far more gently than I would have expected from a man like him, Mr. Stone takes the bottle from my hand and carries it to a gleaming silver cart beside his desk. I watch as he pours the water into a cup and fastens a lid on the top before bringing the cup over to me.

“Here you go. Spill proof.”

“Th-thank you.” There’s a built-in straw of some kind on the top, and I force myself to wrap my lips around it and suck under his watchful eye.

“Good girl.”

At his words, the knots in my stomach loosen, and a warmth spreads through me. For just a moment, I forget that I’m a thief, waiting for my sentence to be handed down. I almost feel… cared for. Cherished.

But that’s ridiculous. Even if I hadn’t just embezzled a million dollars from his company, there’s no way a man like Maxwell Stone would ever pay me a lick of attention.

Right?

Instead of returning to his spot behind his desk, Mr. Stone leans back against it, his arms folded across his chest as he stares down at me. Butterflies flutter in my stomach, making me feel less like a white-collar criminal and more like a naughty little girl about to be scolded by her Daddy.

“I assume you know why I asked to speak with you today, Ms. Finch.”

Of course I do. But my mouth refuses to form the words, so I just shrug instead. “Not really.”

Deny, deny, deny. Isn’t that what a lawyer would advise in this situation?

Judging by the way Mr. Stone’s eyebrows raise, he isn’t impressed with my legal prowess. “Allow me to lay it out for you, then.” Pushing away from the desk, he circles around to his chair, picking up a thick manilla folder. “For the past six months, you have been moving small sums of money from several company accounts to a bank account in your name. Testing the waters, if I had to guess, for your ultimate betrayal.”

Again my throat is tight with fear, but I shake my head, still unwilling to actually admit to my wrongdoing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really?” Surprise colors his tone, but it’s dripping with insincerity. “So you know nothing of the thousands of dollars that have made their way into your account over the past few months? Am I to assume that means you are equally as oblivious to the seven-figure sum that was deposited into your bank account this morning?”

“Yup. Totally lost here.”

Snapping the folder shut, he heaves a deep sigh that makes my insides tremble. “Ms. Finch, if you aren’t going to cooperate with me, then you leave me no choice but to call the police. Once I make that call, this is entirely out of my hands. You will be charged, and you will face your day in court. Prison is unlikely to be kind to a woman as beautiful as yourself.”

Surprise has me blinking up at him. “Did you just call me beautiful?”

Not the point, dumbass. Jesus.

The look Mr. Stone sends me is the definition of unamused. “Don’t play coy, Ms. Finch. It doesn’t suit you. We both know you are a very beautiful woman.”

“Well, maybe, but wasn’t your last girlfriend a literal supermodel? I look like Ms. Trunchbull next to someone like that.”

His brows draw together in clear confusion. “Who?”

“Never mind.” Another wave of embarrassed heat rushes to my face. “I just mean, I’m definitely not your type.”

“You would be surprised to learn what my type actually is. But that’s a point for later. Right now, you have a decision to make.” Leaning forward, he places both hands on his desk, pinning me with those dark, lord-of-all-he-purveys eyes. “Would you prefer we deal with this… indiscretion quietly, or would you prefer to have your day in court?”

The absolute last thing I want is to go to prison. But I’m not stupid enough to leap at an offer without knowing what the terms are, first. “Hypothetically, say I did confess to what you’re accusing me of. How, exactly, would we ‘deal with it’?”

A smile curves his lips, and I would swear I see the light of approval in his eyes. “Good girl, asking the important questions first. I can’t, and won’t give you all of the details until the paperwork has been signed, including the airtight NDA my lawyers have drafted. But I can give you the basic gist.”

Straightening again, he tugs at the cuffs of his jacket as he rounds the desk again to stand in front of me. “I have a home. Consider it a vacation house. If you choose to deal directly with me rather than the police, we will leave straight from here to my island. You will spend a month with me there, atoning for your sins.”

“Atoning, how?”

His smile turns smug. “Not until you sign, Ms. Finch. But if you think hard enough, I’m sure you can fill in some of the blanks. I’ll give you a hint: What happened in the stairwell when you displeased me?”

I probably shouldn’t be shocked by that revelation. After all, he has already spanked me.

But shocked, I am. “You can’t be serious. You want to beat me for stealing from you?”

“What I have planned is a bit more nuanced than that.” Pulling his phone from his pocket, he taps on the screen, then sets it down on the desk beside him, the screen facing up. I watch, helpless as the numbers on the screen count down to… something.

“You have five minutes to decide, Ms. Finch. Take the deal, or we can handle this the more conventional way. I’ll give you some space to make up your mind.”

He steps forward, as if to leave the office as he said, but he pauses beside me. “For what it’s worth, I am very much hoping you will take my deal, Ms. Finch. I believe we will both be very… satisfied with the resolution.”

With that cryptic message, he exits the office.

Leaving me alone to ponder my fate.