Breach of Protocol

DOMINIC

༺ ༻

The scotch burned a harsh path down my throat. I stared down at the wet plastic ID card sitting on my kitchen island. I did not drink scotch anymore. Not more than a single glass. Control was the only currency that mattered in my world. Anything that compromised my iron grip was a liability I could not afford. Alcohol. Sentiment. Distractions. All massive liabilities.

Yet last night, I poured ten fingers of Macallan down my throat like tap water.

Because of her.

I paced the length of my empty penthouse. My bare feet slapped against the cold marble floor. I turned the damning facts over and over in my head, analyzing the situation like a hostile corporate takeover.

Data point one. A girl broke into my heavily guarded penthouse.

Data point two. She attended my daughter's college.

Data point three. I was the one funding her academic scholarship.

Data point four. I fucked her raw against the edge of my pool. I slammed my hips into her until she screamed, taking her virginity without a single ounce of hesitation.

Data point five. I came deep inside her tight pussy without a goddamn condom. I filled her with my seed like a feral beast, ignoring every rule I ever lived by.

That last point was a blaring siren in my mind. I never failed to use protection. I never skipped protocol. Not once in my forty years of life. I kept elite legal teams on retainer for the sole purpose of handling indiscretions. NDAs. Quiet settlements. Intimidation tactics. Whatever ruthlessness was required to eliminate a problem before it turned into a messy media circus. I had fixers who could make a scandal vanish from the public eye in twenty-four hours.

But I was not thinking about my lawyers right now.

I was thinking about her mismatched eyes. One calm blue, the other stormy green. I thought about the way she looked at me in the water. She did not see a title. She did not see a billionaire. She did not see a threat.

She just saw a man.

Maybe that was the trap all along.

The Senate election was twelve weeks away. Twelve weeks until I either secured the primary seat or watched my entire legacy get shredded by rivals like Arthur Sterling. Sterling was a snake in a tailored suit. He did not need the truth to destroy me. A well-timed scandal worked just as well, and the press ate that garbage up for breakfast.

A billionaire candidate. A college girl. A private pool. Raw, unprotected sex.

It was the perfect political ammunition for a smear campaign.

Except she did not act like a corporate spy or a gold digger. She took no photos. She made zero demands. She did not play the game at all. She just gave me her virginity and surrendered.

I could still feel the suffocating tightness of her grip around my cock. I could still hear that high-pitched, desperate cry tearing from her throat when I pushed past her barrier and buried deep inside her. I remembered the way she gasped my name into the night air. The smear of virgin blood left on my fingers afterward. It was undeniable proof that whatever game she might be playing, that part was real.

And I took it like the ruthless bastard I was.

Then she vanished into the night.

That was the worst part. I could not categorize her. I could not control the situation.

I adjusted the cuff of my fresh dress shirt. Irritation clawed at my chest. My thoughts kept circling back to her naked body shivering in the water. Sex was never supposed to linger in my head. It was a transaction. Temporary and contained.

This was intrusive. Persistent. Demanding.

Where the hell did she go?

I had been asking myself that question since four in the morning. I finally gave up on getting any sleep. She could not just vanish into thin air. She could not swim back to the mainland. Not after I fucked her so hard she could barely stand up.

The heavy oak door to the penthouse clicked open. Knox walked into the room. My right-hand man was the only person with the clearance to approach me without knocking. His grim silence told me I was not going to like his report.

"Did you find her? Mismatched eyes. Small frame." I fired the demand before he even settled into the room.

"No, sir. Not yet." Knox stood with his hands clasped behind his back.

"Explain." I gritted my teeth.

"She didn't come through the front gate. We reviewed all the security footage. She is not on any of the cameras."

"Then how the fuck did she get in?"

"It appears the security system underwent a software upgrade last night. The system was briefly down for forty-seven minutes. It left the back terrace doors unlocked and unmonitored." Knox kept his voice level, masking his own frustration.

I turned to face him. "Forty-seven minutes."

"Yes, sir."

Just long enough for a clever little girl to breach my defenses.

"So someone walked into my private residence, and walked out again, without a single guard seeing her." I kept my voice deadly quiet.

"Yes, sir."

It was a staggering failure. Unacceptable on every level.

"That won't happen again." Knox nodded sharply. "I will make sure we source a new head of security by the end of the day. Mr. Tariq is writing his formal resignation as we speak."

I did not tolerate failure. One strike and you were out. That was the unbreakable rule of my empire. Especially for the men responsible for keeping me breathing in a political landscape where rivals would gladly arrange a fatal accident if they thought they could get away with it.

But I felt a strange shift in my chest. For reasons I refused to examine, I was not angry that my security team let this dark-haired girl slip into my pool.

"Tell him to hold off on that resignation." I poured myself another half-inch of scotch.

Knox blinked. The shock on his stoic face was comical. "Sir?"

"I will let this slide. This one time. Keep Tariq on the payroll."

We both knew my ruthless reputation. The Butcher of Wall Street did not offer second chances.

"Understood, sir." Knox recovered his composure, though confusion still lingered in his dark eyes. He cleared his throat. "May I ask what transpired between you and the young woman, sir? We need the details for damage-control purposes."

My jaw locked hard. "No, you may not, Knox."

A heavy silence hung between us in the massive room.

"Not now. Not later. Not ever." I stared him down, daring him to push the issue.

Knox inclined his head. "Understood, sir."

"I want her found. Immediately." I buttoned the top of my shirt. "I want to know where she disappeared to. Initiate a full tactical security sweep of the island."

"Of course, sir. There is something else, sir."

I raised a single eyebrow.

"Your daughter is here. In the main villa. She appears to be throwing a large party." Knox delivered the news with a flat tone.

"What?" I slammed my glass down on the marble counter.

"Miss Camilla. She has been on the island since late last night."

My jaw clenched again. "She is supposed to be at school. I spoke with her yesterday on the phone. She swore she was studying hard for her midterms."

"She lied to you, sir."

Of course she lied.

Camilla. My twenty-one-year-old daughter. The living, breathing reminder that even a powerful man like me could be brought to his knees by a toxic woman and a broken condom.

I tried everything in the goddamn book. I hired the most expensive nannies. I enrolled her in the finest boarding schools in Europe, flying her across the globe in private jets. I handed her every single advantage a billion dollars could buy. In return, she gave me nothing but defiance, entitlement, and a spectacular talent for public humiliation.

Last month it was a DUI in a wrecked Porsche. The month before that, photos surfaced on social media showing her snorting cocaine off some trust-fund kid's chest. My crisis PR team burned through a quarter of a million dollars in forty-eight hours to scrub the internet clean and bribe the right reporters.

And now she was here. On my private island. Throwing a wild party when she was supposed to be three hundred miles away in a library.

Discipline.

That was what the girl needed. What she always needed. But every single time I tried to enforce harsh consequences, her mother intervened. The woman was a parasite. My campaign managers reminded me that any public family warfare this close to the Senate primaries would be political suicide.

So Camilla did whatever the fuck she wanted, and I wrote massive checks to bury her messes.

I turned away from the counter and strode toward the heavy double doors.

"Where to, sir?" Knox followed a step behind me.

"I need to go discipline my insolent child."

"The campaign meeting, sir. It is time."

I checked the heavy Rolex on my wrist. Eight o'clock. The war room meeting had been scheduled for seven thirty. Damn it.

"Reschedule the agenda." I grabbed my suit jacket from the chair.

"Sir, the key stakeholders and top donors have already arrived in the boardroom." Knox hesitated.

I shrugged into my jacket and headed out the door.

"My daughter is my priority at this exact moment. The meeting begins when I walk into that room. Not a single second sooner. Let them wait."

I left the penthouse and stalked down the manicured stone path toward the main estate. The cool morning air hit my face, but it did nothing to cool the fire burning in my veins.

I was not thinking about Camilla.

I was thinking about her. The mystery virgin from my pool. Maddie Brooks.

Find her. That was the direct order I gave Knox. But what I really meant was much darker. Much more primal.

Find her so I can fuck her again.

I knew the risks. I knew the political danger. I should not go anywhere near her.

But I wanted to. The urge was a physical ache in my groin, heavy and persistent. A dark, obsessive hunger that I could not logic my way out of.

I wanted to pin her down, spread her thighs, and bury my cock so deep inside her wet pussy that she forgot every word in the English language except my name. I wanted to hear her beg and sob for more while I dominated her body. I wanted to feel her sharp nails digging into my bare back, drawing blood. I wanted her teeth grazing my throat. I craved that impossible, gripping tightness wrapping around my thick cock, milking me until I was blind with pleasure.

Once was not enough. Once was just a taste.

That raw, demanding lust was more dangerous to my empire than any political rival.

The heavy bass of electronic music thumped against the massive stone walls of the main villa as I approached. Empty red solo cups littered my pristine lawn. The sheer disrespect made my blood boil.

I reached the heavy mahogany doors and shoved them open without knocking.

I stepped right into the center of the chaos. Sweaty college kids. Blaring speakers. The sharp stench of cheap alcohol and weed smoke.

My eyes scanned the massive living room, ready to single out my daughter and drag her out by her ear.

Instead, my gaze locked onto a figure standing right in the middle of the room.

Her.

The girl I fucked last night in my pool.