Page 171 of Merciless Daddy

Her shoulders lowered slightly. Victory, she thought.

I hated that I had let her have it.

At four, the first employee relief payments began to clear.

Yelena watched each confirmation appear. Her mouth did not smile. She only moved to the next one. And the next.

When I returned from speaking with the security team, I found her staring at the screen with both hands around her water glass.

She had not drunk from it.

“Are you overwhelmed?” I asked.

“No.” Her answer came immediately. “I’m fine.”

Her hands were trembling.

Not much. Enough.

I stood beside her chair. She looked up at me, trying to make the expression convincing.

“That was your opportunity to tell me the truth,” I said quietly.

The sharpness left her face.

For one second, I thought she might do it. I thought she might say she was scared, tired, drowning under a bill she believed she owed.

Instead, she rose and kissed the cut on my cheek.

“Daddy,” she murmured. “I promise I’ll stop soon.”

Then she returned to the keyboard.

I touched the back of her neck once.

“Soon is not an answer.”

“I know.”

But she kept working.

Angela left near seven to sleep at Pietro’s insistence. Yelena stayed in the library. I passed the open door twice while she finished the last transfers.

The first time, she caught my wrist as I went by and pressed her mouth to my knuckles.

The second time, she leaned her temple against my hip while I stood beside her chair.

She was not pushing me away. That was what made it more dangerous. She wanted me close while she quietly disappeared inside the work.

Near eight, I saw her open a second document beneath the payment screens.

It had no title. Just a blank white page and a set of numbered clauses.

I could not read it from the doorway.

Her shoulders curved over the keyboard. She typed slowly now. Carefully.

Like each sentence cost her something.