A little girl in a billionaire’s office innocently asks him to be her dad—unaware her words are about to uncover a truth that changes everything

reasonably certain Janet had stopped breathing entirely — he crouched down. Not in the awkward, I-don’t-really-do-this way that some adults crouch near children. He went down to her level deliberately, rested his forearms on his knees, and looked at her directly.

“And why,” he said, in a voice that was quieter than I’d ever heard him use, “did you decide continue reading …