One Night Stand, Eight Surprises: Pampered by My CEO Husband --- - Chapter 21: Chapter 21

Damien Kingston had closed billion-dollar deals without breaking a sweat.
He’d testified before Parliament. Been on the cover of Forbes seven times.
But he had never, in all his life, faced a challenge like potty training.
“Hazel,” he said calmly, kneeling next to the tiny, pastel-pink toilet. “We’ve gone over this. When you feel it, you tell someone. We race here. We win.”
Hazel crossed her arms. “Winning is gross.”
Damien blinked. “This is about hygiene, not combat.”
“I like diapers. They're squishy.”
He sighed.
Arielle peeked into the bathroom, stifling a laugh.
“Good luck,” she whispered, and disappeared.
Later that evening, Damien sat in the nursery surrounded by books.
Not legal briefs.
Not quarterly reports.
Bedtime stories.
“Pick one,” he told Eli, who narrowed his eyes.
“I want the one with dragons and death.”
Damien blinked. “We have The Giving Tree.”
“I want The Flaming Sword of Bloodfire.”
Damien exhaled. “We’ll compromise. Tree now. Sword tomorrow.”
Eli rolled his eyes but climbed into bed.
By the second page, he was asleep.
The twins, Noah and Leo, staged a coup at bath time.
Bubbles flooded the hall.
Damien stepped in to find two naked warriors covered in shampoo foam and wielding loofahs like swords.
“I said rinse,” the nanny wailed.
“I said ATTACK!” Noah screamed.
Leo dumped a bucket of water over Damien’s head.
They froze.
Damien wiped his face slowly.
Then grabbed a sponge.
And declared war.
Parenting wasn’t clean.
It wasn’t orderly.
It didn’t fit into a spreadsheet.
There were tantrums and tears and lost shoes and broken crayons and silence so deep it made his heart twist.
Like the day Lily wouldn’t speak.
No reason. No trigger. Just curled in a chair with her thumb in her mouth.
Damien didn’t call a doctor.
He sat on the floor beside her.
For hours.
Finally, she whispered, “I miss home.”
Damien swallowed. “I do too.”
And she crawled into his lap.
One night, Arielle found him asleep in the hallway.
Four kids on top of him. A book open on his chest.
The former king of steel and suits, snoring quietly with stickers on his cheeks.
She watched for a long time.
Then lay beside him.
And whispered, “You’re doing better than you think.”
In the following weeks, the house changed.
Walls that once echoed began to hum.
The help began to smile.
One even slipped a note into the kitchen fruit bowl:
"We never thought we’d hear laughter in these halls again. Thank you."
Damien stared at the note for a long time.
Then folded it, tucked it in his wallet.
His business calls were now punctuated with cries in the background.
His boardroom briefings interrupted by texts: Hazel drew on the cat again.
He didn’t mind.
He thrived.
Because the power he’d spent years building meant nothing if he couldn’t wield it for something real.
For eight lives with chocolate-stained mouths and wild dreams.
For the woman who’d done it alone until now.
For the family that called him “Dad” with more authority than any chairman ever had.