My Ex’s Dad’s Secret Heir (Forbidden Daddies #1)

Lucia

The first thing I notice is his pupils. They’re too wide, swallowing the brown until his eyes look almost black. My stomach tightens before I can stop it because I’ve learned, slowly and painfully, what that means. Even though part of me always wants to pretend I don’t.

Cocaine.

The second thing I notice is that he doesn’t look at me when he comes in. That scares me more than if he had, because Marco only ignores me when he’s deciding where to put his anger. Like it’s some physical thing he has to set down somewhere before it burns him alive.

The door slams hard enough to rattle the art on the wall. The painting he bought because the gallery girl laughed a little too hard at his jokes. Rainwater streaks off his coat onto the marble floor in a thin arc that looks almost graceful.

My chest tightens, anyway, like the apartment itself has learned to brace itself.

He tosses his keys onto the counter. They bounce, clatter too loud, skitter across the stone, and one slides close to my foot.

I stare at them and don’t move, because moving draws attention, and attention turns into questions, and questions turn into tension, and tension is the thing I’m always trying to outrun even when I’m standing still.

I remain sitting on the couch with my knees pressed together and my hands folded in my lap, posture neat, contained. Like I’m waiting for someone to tell me what’s expected of me so I can do it right this time.

Like this is a meeting.

Like my heart isn’t already racing while my brain runs through exits the way it always does now, even when I tell myself I’m overreacting, that I’m dramatic, that nothing has happened… yet.

Front door. Hallway. Bedroom. Balcony. No fire escape.

The windows only open a few inches because Marco likes control even when he’s not in the room, likes knowing the limits exist whether he’s enforcing them or not. I learned that the first time I tried to open one all the way.

Marco starts pacing, fast and sharp, one end of the apartment to the other and back again, like his body can’t decide where to put the energy buzzing under his skin.

He drags a hand through his hair and leaves it sticking up in uneven spikes, and I think, absurdly, that he looks like one of those men in expensive magazines who are supposed to look dangerous and desirable.

Except there’s nothing aspirational about this kind of danger when you’re standing too close to it.

“Where were you?” he snaps.

My pulse jumps. I blink slowly, the way I’ve taught myself to, forcing my face into something neutral and uninteresting. Reactions make things worse, and I’ve learned that the hard way.

“Here,” I say.

He stops so abruptly, it feels like a noise even though it isn’t.

His head snaps toward me, and when his eyes finally land on my face, it feels like being caught in a spotlight I didn’t agree to stand under.

His gaze moves fast, over my wrists, my throat, the line of my collarbone.

He’s checking something off a list I’ve never been allowed to see.

“What’s that?” he asks, jerking his chin toward the coffee table.

There’s a mug there, forgotten. Tea gone cold. Ginger and lemon because my stomach always turns after nights like this. After shouting. After slamming doors. My body doesn’t know how to calm down anymore. I tell myself it’s stress. Adrenaline. Nothing more.

“It’s just tea,” I say, too quickly, and then I wish I hadn’t added the just, because minimizing sounds like hiding, and hiding sounds like guilt.

He laughs once, an unpleasant sound that makes my shoulders tense before I can stop them.

“Tea,” he repeats, like the word itself is suspicious.

His eyes drop to my hand. I hadn’t realized it drifted to my stomach until I see it there, resting lightly, unconsciously. My body is trying to steady itself without asking permission.

I move it immediately.

My chest tightens because I already know it’s too late.

Marco’s jaw works as if he’s chewing something invisible, his nostrils flaring. My mind starts racing ahead, trying to predict where this is going, what version of him this is, what he needs from me to make it stop.

“What did you do today?” His question sounds casual, but it isn’t. It never is.

“I worked,” I say evenly. “Emails. Calls. Confirmed vendors for next week.”

He crosses the space between us so fast, I barely register it until he’s there, heat and cologne and the chemical edge of something sharp filling the air.

I’m on my feet before I consciously decide to be.

It’s automatic. Some old, ingrained instinct that says sitting makes me smaller, more cornered, easier to pin.

Standing gives me options. Or at least the illusion of them.

Suddenly, his hand is on my chin, forcing my face up. Not hard. Not yet. Just enough to remind me.

“Don’t,” he says quietly.

Quiet Marco makes my stomach drop. Quiet Marco is thinking Marco, and thinking Marco always hurts more.

“I wasn’t…” I start instinctively, stupidly, because part of me still believes an explanation might save me.

His fingers tighten, pain flaring bright and fast, and my words die in my throat.

“You don’t get to talk right now.”

My body reacts before my mind does, breath catching, shoulders pulling inward, because this is familiar, because I’ve learned the shape of this moment too well.

He shoves me away like he’s bored with the contact. I stumble back but catch myself, refusing to rub my chin, refusing to show him anything he might interpret as weakness.

Marco turns away again and slams both hands onto the kitchen island, hard enough to make the bowl of lemons jump, and the sound makes my heart lurch even though I tell myself it’s just noise, just sound, nothing breaking yet.

“They disrespected me.”

I don’t ask who. I never do. “They” is whoever he needs it to be, and my job is not to make it worse.

“They laughed,” he says, spinning toward me, eyes bright and unfocused. “Like I’m a joke.”

My throat tightens. I keep my voice soft, careful, the way you talk to an animal that might bolt.

“No,” I say. “You’re not.”

He stares at me, and I can feel the moment stretching, my thoughts piling over each other in a rush. Say the right thing, don’t say too much, don’t contradict him, don’t agree too eagerly, either.

My stomach twists again, sharp and anxious… and I swallow hard, forcing it down because now is not the time for my body to do anything noticeable.

Marco’s gaze flicks back to the mug. Then my stomach. Then my purse.

And dread coils tighter in my chest, because he always notices, even when he’s high. Especially when he’s high, because control is the one thing he never loses track of.

“You’ve been sick.” It isn’t a question.

“No,” I say immediately, too fast.

He smiles. That smile… the one that means he’s found something.

“Oh,” he says softly. “Oh, I get it.”

My skin prickles. “Marco,” I say, because saying his name feels like the only tool I have left, even though it has never worked.

He’s on me again, grabbing my wrist, fingers digging into the tender place where the bruise from last time is just starting to fade. Pain flashes hot and sharp, making my vision blur at the edges.

“You think you’re smart?” he hisses. “You think you’re going to trap me?”

I suck in air, shallow and fast. “Let go,” I whisper.

His grip tightens. “You’re pregnant,” he says suddenly, accusingly, like the word itself is proof of something awful. He doesn’t know anything. He just needs something to blame.

The room tilts.

Pregnant.

My heart stutters, then slams hard, and panic surges so fast that it feels like it might choke me. The word hits me like an accusation, not a truth. Like something he needs to believe so he can turn it into a weapon.

“No,” I say, too quickly, and I hate myself for it because it sounds like fear.

He yanks me to my feet, and my shoulder slams into the coffee table, pain blooming bright and vicious. I bite down hard on the sound that wants to escape. Sounds escalate things.

“There she is,” he sneers. “The little victim act.”

I stand there breathing too fast, wrist throbbing, shoulder screaming, my entire body buzzing with the effort of staying upright, of staying calm, of not doing anything that might push him further.

I look at his pupils again. Still blown. Still black. He isn’t coming down. Which means this won’t burn out on its own.

And then the question arrives, settling into my chest like something locking into place. What if this is the night it goes too far? The night it doesn’t stop where it usually does? The night I don’t get to pretend anymore?

“You don’t get to make a fool of me,” Marco says, close enough that I can smell the chemicals on his breath.

I don’t answer right away. My thoughts are a mess. Fear, guilt, reflexive apologies all fighting for space. But underneath it is something else, something quiet and exhausted and done.

I think about the first time he touched me gently.

I think about how long ago that was.

I think about how many times I convinced myself that if I stayed smaller, quieter, better, he’d calm down.

And something inside me goes still.

“I don’t want to make a fool of you.”

The words land wrong.

I hear it the second they leave my mouth, feel the way his attention sharpens instead of softening, like I’ve just handed him something he didn’t know he wanted. Marco’s head tilts slightly. A predator’s curiosity.

“Then what do you want?”

His hand is still locked around my wrist. I can feel my pulse hammering against his fingers, frantic and undeniable. He notices it, too. His thumb presses harder, right into the soft place where nerves flare.

“You’re shaking,” he says, almost pleased. “Why are you shaking if you didn’t do anything?”

“I’m not…” I start, then stop myself. Correction makes it worse. Always does.

My stomach lurches again, sharp enough that I have to grit my teeth. I taste bile. My vision swims, just a little.

He feels it. Marco’s gaze drops to my face, then to my midsection again, like he’s piecing together a puzzle that offends him.