Chapter 16 Wyatt #2
The casual tone instantly dropped from Silas's voice, replaced by the sharp, serious calibration of another Daddy Dom who understood exactly what that meant. "Are you certain?"
"Everything matches," Wyatt said, his voice dropping into a low register.
"The data from her phone records, the areas she's parking in, the fact that she looked like she hadn't had a hot meal in forty-eight hours when she sat in my office.
She's running around Bridgeport in a rusted heap of junk during a freeze.
" He paused, his jaw tightening as he stared out at the gray sky.
"And she hasn't replied to my text from last night. "
"Jesus," Silas murmured, a heavy exhale rattling the speaker. "And she hasn't told you?"
"No. She’s lying straight to my face. Every time I push, she builds the wall higher.
She’s terrified that if I find out how broken her situation is, I’ll pull the job offer.
She thinks she has to be entirely independent to be valuable.
But the lying stops this week. I'm not letting her freeze for another three weeks until her first paycheck clears. I’ve already paid the full year downstairs. It’s handled."
"How are you going to play it?"
"I’m not going to hand her the keys in the office," Wyatt said, his jaw tightening as his internal Daddy Dom took complete control of the strategy. "She’d panic and run. I’m going to bring her down to the apartment under the pretense of evaluating a local corporate housing asset for the firm.
Once we’re inside, behind closed doors, I’m going to lay it all out. The car, the lies."
Silas let out a low whistle. "She’s going to be terrified."
"She needs to know that my boundaries are law," Wyatt said, his voice dark and completely steady. "She’s been running wild, making dangerous decisions with her own safety because she didn't have anyone to answer to. That ends the second she steps into Enigma tomorrow. She’s going to get her first real correction from me, Silas. The moment she pushes another lie across that kitchen counter downstairs, I’m putting her over my knee. "
“Good," Silas said, his voice filled with approval. "She needs the structure, Wyatt. If she’s as fragile as you say, she’s starving for someone to just take the wheel and tell her she’s safe.
Even if she fights it at first." He paused, the sound of a door closing gently on his end signaling he was moving into a more private space.
"I'll have to introduce her to Lennon once she's settled in.
I hope the two of them get along. Having another little around might help take the edge off her anxiety.
Show her that she doesn't have to be a soldier twenty-four hours a day. "
"That's the plan," Wyatt murmured, the tension in his shoulders dropping just a fraction at the thought of Bitsy finally sitting in a warm room, safe and cared for. "Lennon’s a good influence. She might help Bitsy realize that being small isn't a crime."
"Keep me updated, brother," Silas said. "If you need anything—or if she needs to see that she’s part of a bigger circle—you let me know."
"I will. Give Lennon a hug for me."
"Will do. Get some rest, Wyatt. You’ve got a long week ahead of you."
The line went dead, and Wyatt set the phone down.
Just as promised, a small knock on his study door at precisely five o'clock signaled the arrival of the concierge, who handed him a sleek, black key card wallet containing the entry credentials for apartment 1104.
Wyatt slipped the wallet into the breast pocket of his blazer, where it rested right against his chest.
He remained at his desk as the afternoon light fully faded into evening, reviewing server logs out of pure, protective habit.
Suddenly, a sharp, high-pitched chime echoed from his secondary monitor. Wyatt froze, his eyes narrowing instantly.
A small, red alert box was pulsing in the lower right corner of his screen. It was an automated hardware handshake notification from the silver encrypted laptop he had handed Bitsy on Friday afternoon.
Device ID: EN-7749-B. Status: Active. Connection: Public Wi-Fi Gateway.
Wyatt’s chest tightened, a dark, dangerous heat blooming behind his ribs.
He checked the time stamps. She was online.
She had booted up the machine, bypassed the standard local network restrictions using a public truck stop gateway, and the network telemetry indicated she was currently streaming media.
A slow, dark smile touched the corner of his lips, though his eyes remained entirely cold. "Naughty little girl," he murmured into the empty silence of his study.
She was directly disobeying him, pushing against his boundaries to see if they would bend.
He had explicitly told her to keep the machine closed over the weekend, yet here she was, using Enigma's high-grade hardware in the middle of a frozen parking lot just to stream something.
It was an incredibly childish form of defiance—the classic behavior of a little girl testing the perimeter, assuming she wouldn't get caught or that a minor infraction wouldn't trigger an alert on his master grid.
He checked the system logs, verifying if the network layer had delivered his previous text message from the night before.
The system confirmed delivery, but because she was utilizing an older, unpatched cellular device, he couldn't verify if she had actually opened the message thread or if she was simply leaving it unread to preserve her plausible deniability.
He gave her the briefest benefit of the doubt—perhaps she truly hadn't seen the notification while she was driving or sorting through whatever she was doing.
But he wasn't going to leave that loophole open for long.
Wyatt brought up the master profile for her cellular account, navigating deep into the carrier-level configuration strings.
With a few heavy keystrokes, he pushed a silent firmware update to her device, forcing a hard read-receipt tracking callback directly to his private server.
The next time she opened a thread from him, his system would log the exact millisecond her eyes hit the glass.
He shut down the monitoring window and let her finish her streaming in peace, knowing he would address it soon enough.
By eight in the evening, the Bridgeport freeze had set in completely, the wind howling against the thick glass of the penthouse windows. Wyatt ate a quiet dinner of chicken, brown rice, and greens, his eyes tracking the clock.
She still hadn't reported in.
He waited until exactly eight-thirty before he picked up his phone, his face an unreadable mask of authority. He opened the thread, his system instantly verifying that his silent firmware update was active. He typed out a short, commanding message.
You didn’t acknowledge my message last night. Report in. Did you eat?