Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 11

Chapter 11

OCEANS.

This was the first in six years.

The first time I ever got such positive news from Reeves.

I couldn’t sit. I’d tried. My body had rejected the idea entirely and sent me back to my feet before I’d fully lowered myself into the chair. So, I paced back and forth the length of my office and checked my phone every thirty seconds.

I had sent everyone home an hour ago, including Kiss. I didn’t need witnesses for whatever state I was about to be in when Reeves walked through that door.

I loosened my watch. Buckled it back. Loosened it again.

72

How long does it take to drive down here? It was just a ten–minute drive from his house. Why the fuck was he taking all night?

Fuck. I was losing my grip.

I loosened my wrist watch and buckled it back up before picking up my phone again. But just before I hit the dial button, my office door pushed open after one knock.

“Took you long enough,” I said, clearly displeased. “Speak.”

He crossed to my desk, set his tablet down, and pulled up a footage without preamble.

“City infrastructure recovery. They were upgrading the entire grid in that district – pulling old hardware, transferring archived data. Our contact flagged it the moment the files from that block came through.” He tapped the screen. “This is from six years ago. The night of the shooting.”

The footage was grainy. Six–year–old street camera footage recovered from a city infrastructure archive wasn’t going to be perfect. But it was usable.

At the edge of the frame, I saw a figure moving against the flow of the crowd. Everyone else was running away from the commotion, but this man was walking toward it.

I watched him reach the spot, crouch down, and wrap his arms around her.

He seemed to have spent some seconds there, as if he was being told something by the girl, because he nodded before scooping her up.

My chest did something I wasn’t prepared for. Something that felt like six years of held breath releasing all at once, except it wasn’t relief because I still couldn’t see her face.

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45 Souchers

She was down when he reached her, facing away from the lens, and when he lifted her, he turned his back to the camera to get his footing, and she stayed hidden in his arms.

I felt the relief curdle into frustration.

“Why can’t I fucking see her face?” I asked, losing my grip on my emotions for a second.

“She was down when he reached her…” He tried to explain, but I cut him off.

“I’m not blind, damn it!” I bit out and stared at the screen again.

Eleven seconds of footage. It’s the closest I had come in six years, and her face was still hidden from me. Like the universe had a specific interest in making sure I never got what I needed.

“The man,” I said. “You have him?”

“Facial recognition confirmed. His name is Gerald Watts. Fifty–eight years old now. Retired. Lives six blocks from the scene. Has lived there for thirty years.” Reeves pulled up a photograph a still from the footage, the man’s face clear as he approached. “We reached out through a back channel yesterday. He agreed to a meeting this morning.”

–

I turned away from the desk and looked through the window without saying anything for a moment because what was sitting in my chest right now needed a second to be managed before I let it anywhere near my mouth.

“The camera on the opposite side of the street,” I said. “What did it pick up?”

Reeves was quiet for exactly one second too long.

I turned around to face him.

“Wiped.,” he said. “Completely. Someone went into that system deliberately and removed everything from that night.”

The room went very still.

Someone had wiped that footage six years ago. Which meant someone had known about that camera. Which meant someone with resources and access and a specific reason to make sure nothing from that night survived had gotten there before me.

I loosened my watch.

“How long after the shooting?” I said.

“Based on the system logs – within forty–eight minutes.”

I had

gone

back to that street two days later with half my security team. Whoever wiped that

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Chapter

footage had moved faster than I had.

I was still processing that when my phone vibrated on the desk.

I picked it up.

72

35–vauchery

It was a text, but not the usual standard text. It came through a channel I didn’t recognize an encrypted routing address that my system flagged immediately as unregistered.

I quickly swiped it open, and the text read:

‘Six years and you never found her. I found her in four months. She’s lovely, by the way. Such a shame she doesn’t know that the night she decided to play hero was the night she signed her own death warrant. But she’s about to learn. Are you fast enough, Mr. Stark?‘

I read it twice before I set the phone down on the desk, very carefully, with the specific intentionality of a man who is doing everything in his power not to put his fist through the nearest wall.

Reeves was watching me.

“Get out,” I said quietly.

“Sir-”

“Get out.” I picked the phone back up and looked at the message again. Those words. She’s lovely, by the way. Whoever sent this had seen her. Had been close enough to form an opinion. “Meet Gerald Watts tomorrow. I don’t care how you do it or what it costs.” I picked the phone back up and looked at the message again. “Get him to tell you everything he knows. Someone else is already looking for her.”

I hadn’t heard from or about the shooter from that night. I never got to know who had attempted to take my life.

My people had investigated, pushed every contact we had, followed every thread until the threads ran out. Whoever ordered that shooting had covered themselves so completely that eventually the trail didn’t just go cold – it vanished as if it had never existed.

I had enemies. I knew that. You didn’t build what I built without collecting people who wanted to watch it burn. But none of them fit the shape of what happened that night.

But tonight, whoever it was, decided to resurface. And they brought war with them, wanting me to know exactly two things – that they had found her, and that I was already behind.

I had failed her once. I had let security drag me away from a girl bleeding on a pavement because there was a shooter in the crowd, and my own life was apparently worth more than staying.

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Chapter II

I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice.

72. 72.

To Youchers

I picked up my phone and called the one person whose tech capabilities I trusted above everyone else I employed.

“I need a message traced,” I said when he answered. “I know it can’t be done. Do it anyway.”

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