I winced and my father sighed, but I was not even entertaining the idea of keeping her in the dark. My stepmother was only about five years older than I was, which honestly was fucking weird, but I respected her more than almost anyone in the world, other than Alba. She’d met my dad when I was sixteen and she was twenty-one and now, at thirty-two and thirty-seven she was my best friend. The one who knew all my secrets, including that I had feelings for my assistant. Although at the moment her expression was definitely not motherly; she knew something was up and that she was out of the loop. Cecilia did not tolerate being kept out of her own business.

“Valle Mar heard about Hunter Gardens and they’re worried it will damage their reputation if it gets out,” I explained, looking at my father dead in the eye.

“Everyone got compensated,” my father grumbled. “Am I ever going to get out from under this?” A flash of resentment burned in my chest at his whining. It was true that he’d made sure people were taken care of after the fact, but if he’d done what he was supposed to in the first place it would’ve never happened.

“How do we fix it?” Cecilia asked, taking my father’s hand. I could see how just that gesture bolstered him. That no matter how much he tried to be the big macho real estate mogul, Cecilia’s love, her strength, was indispensable for him. A niggle of yearning flickered in me as I saw the way he looked down at her, like he’d fight his own selfishness every day not to let her down. “We’ll figure it out, baby,” she whispered.

“Can you two please...” I pleaded when she leaned into him and he grabbed her ass. Cecilia laughed. But she got a good look at me and frowned. “What else is wrong with you? Did you talk to—”

I was not getting into the conversation I’d just had with Alba in front of my father, so I just shook my head and glared at my dad. “We need to do damage control. Figure out a way to get some good PR lined up for when we announce, something splashy enough to calm the Valle Mar people.”

The intercom to my office blared as my father leveled me with one of his “don’t you dare talk to me that way” stares. Typically that went a long way to mollify me, but today I resented not being able to prioritize my personal crisis because Ganas Corp always came first.

“Mr. Ganas, it’s Sarah Billings from Streamflix.”

“Not again,” I said with annoyance. “When are they going to give up on this? They just called like a week ago,” I growled over the speaker to Mike.