Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 41

Chapter 41

Emma’s expression softened.

“But you can’t tell anyone,” I said, sharper now. “Seriously. I know what it looks like. All it would take is one

photo of me walking out of his suite at the wrong hour and suddenly I’m some girl who slept her way into a

promotion, and he’s-”

I didn’t finish that thought. I didn’t need to.

“I’m not judging,” Emma said gently. “And I won’t say a word. You’ve got my silence.”

I nodded, throat tight.

I hadn’t meant to tell her. But I needed someone to know-someone I trusted. And even though we hadn’t

known each other long, Emma had proved over and over that she saw through things without making a show of

1. She knew how to hold a secret without making it feel like a burden.

After a pause, she leaned over and tapped the laptop screen. “Alright then. Back to the broken database.”

I tried to focus. But my thoughts kept circling. I’d heard all the stories-the ones about bonds and fate and

magnetic pull.

But this wasn’t that. It couldn’t be.

I wasn’t someone destined for a fairytale ending. I was practical. Grounded. Whatever was happening with

Richard-whatever weird, biology-driven proximity healing nonsense this was-it didn’t mean anything. Not

like that.

Still, it was getting harder to pretend I didn’t feel something whenever he walked into a room. Something

sharp. Something impossible to ignore.

I finished updating the broken database entries, but my hands moved on autopilot. The room felt smaller,

tighter somehow. I could still hear his voice in my head.

That afternoon, he stopped by my desk. I was still staring at the same screen, pretending to be productive, when I sensed him before I saw him-like the air shifted. He placed a folder in front of me without a word, and I glanced up.

“You didn’t eat lunch,” he said.

1/3

I blinked. “You’re watching me again?”

He didn’t flinch. “Only when you forget to take care of yourself.”

Something in his tone tugged at my chest, but I didn’t let it show. I just nodded and murmured a thank you, eyes dropping back to my work even though I hadn’t absorbed a single word on the page.

That evening, we had a logistics walkthrough-another round of emergency route verification for the summit,

this time in the west corridor. The others slowly filtered out as the tour ended, and somehow, it was just the two

of us, walking in quiet sync through the long hallway.

We paused near the portrait gallery, where the faded, dusty eyes of past leaders stared down at us like they

knew too much. I turned to a painting just as Richard spoke.

“During a past summit, someone accidentally locked a foreign dignitary in the catering freezer for two hours.

Caused a minor international incident.”

I snorted, then laughed. It burst out of me unexpectedly, light and real.

He watched me closely. Not just amused. Like he was memorizing the sound.

“You’re good at this,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. “At not locking diplomats in freezers?”

“At everything,” he said. “You belong here.”

The words settled somewhere deep inside me.

We walked back toward our wing together, the halls quiet in that early-evening lull. Neither of us said much.

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