The Storm

Chapter 6

Sierra

I can't believe my mother faked her own death.

I've been looking up to her, felt bad for not doing anything about the man that "killed" her. Well, the same man she's married to now.

How could she have let this happen?

How could she do this to her own children?

It's not like she just ran out on Cody and me for a couple of years. No. She straight up traumatised us with watching her die.

I've been going to her grave for years, crying because I thought this was all my fault. I held myself responsible for her death for over a decade. Who does that?

"Sweetheart?" Atlas's voice comes through to me ever so softly. Maybe that's sorta wrong to say, selfish, perhaps...but I love that he's mine, and mine only. And trust me, he makes that pretty damn clear.

I have to admit, after Allie was born, I figured Atlas might go soft. Not in the sense that he would suddenly stop being a great CEO, but in a way that would have him be...I don't know, more polite?

To his employees.

He's never been anything but nice to me. Not even before I told him I was pregnant. And I mean, let's be honest, I did barge into this office just like that, speaking to him as though I owned the place. Yet even through his threats—very stupid ones, dare I say—he has not once been impolite.

Though, maybe when he made me marry him. But I'm not going to be dishonest here, it was kinda hot as well. Under any other circumstance—that being Atlas not being...well, Atlas—I would have jumped right into the water and drowned myself.

Anyway, what I wanted to say; he hadn't gone soft. He very well knows how to differentiate between his family and work. I'd be worried if he couldn't. He even still differentiates between his daughters and me. That only ever gets truly obvious with his "I love you" though. Apart from...you know, the way he treats them in comparison to me. I'm not some toddler, and he knows that very well.

His employees still only ever see the Atlas Storm. And to my misery, some of my co-workers now hate me. Or distrust me, to be more precise. But that's almost to the same thing. Obviously four years after us getting married and having two kids, they know.

They know about us, not that they haven't already thanks to various press reports back then. It doesn't matter. It pains me that some of my once closest co-workers now think they can no longer trust me, because I might tell their boss all about it.

Which I would never do...Okay, maybe there was this one tiny slip up during sex like two years ago when he asked me if I'd know who keeps talking trash about him. Of course I had known, but I refused to tell him because it was pathetic, truly. The only things Esmir had said was that my husband is totally rude and has money sticking out of every single inch of his body. Which, he was totally right with.

Okay, and maybe Esmir had also called Atlas out for having a bubble-butt. I wasn't going to address this, but it's true. The cutest bubble-but I've ever seen. He hates it, I love it. Especially when I get to pinch those cheeks when he's mad at me or when—

back to the main point...Atlas seduced me and in order to allow me to orgasm, that fucker made me tell him. Can you blame me for caving in? I can't.

Wait, where were we? I swear Atlas was talking before I drifted off to his bubble-butt.

"Sweetheart?" he repeats, this time with a questionably confused understone. "Are you present? Mentally, I mean. I can see and feel your body against mine, but are you...there?"