Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 124

Chapter 124

MOONIE.

Just for the record, I’m not crazy. I want that on record before anyone tries to make me feel crazy.

I am not crazy.

There was something uniquely humiliating about being beautiful and still unwanted.

Being overlooked or ignored by ordinary men with ordinary taste would have been easier to dismiss.

Men wanted me. Men always wanted me. Men looked twice, stumbled over words, and even pretended not to stare at my perfectly toned legs when I crossed them.

But Oceans Stark?

My fiancé?

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He looked at me like I was a debt he had agreed to pay

in installments.

And Kisarel, with her sad little eyes and stupid quiet suffering? All she has to do is walk into a room, and suddenly, my fiancé forgets how to breathe.

I hit the gear some more.

The city lights blurred past my windshield, but all I could see was his face at dinner when Jace knelt in front of her. That crack of glass. His blood. His eyes on her like the rest of us had stopped existing.

Kisarel had somehow become a problem to me again.

It wasn’t enough that she walked around with that pathetic wounded look that made people want to protect her. It wasn’t enough that Jace still hovered around her like a dog begging for forgiveness. No. She had to get Oceans, too.

My Oceans.

A man I had spent a better part of my young adult life desiring, until Dad had to find a way to bind him to me.

The other night when I pretended to be asleep, I saw him pick up his phone. He was lying with his back turned to me. He swiped it open and scrolled through his gallery, then opened a photo from a private folder.

At first, I thought it was work, a document, or some cursed thing he valued more than me.

Then he angled the screen, and I saw her.

Kisarel.

It was a grainy, old photo of her in one of her disgusting little cardigans, looking like a substitute teacher who cries in the bathroom, and he stared at it like it was the Virgin Mary.

Do you know what that does to a person?

I have done everything. I ran the bath. I did the robe thing. I put on the set that cost more than that girl’s entire wardrobe. and I stood there, just for him to look at me like I’d handed him a tax form.

For like ten minutes. I counted. I lay there with my eyes basically closed, counting while my fiance had a moment with a JPEG of my cousin.

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I have never in my hard to fight for a mons. They always make forks of the parked the charity orphan we let sleep in our house out of the gootsew of our

I drove home like I wanted to total the car. Parked like garbage across the gravel hady enough that see

edge of the wone path. I didn’t care. I slammed the front door so hard something rated.

Mum and Dad were in the living room being boring, Wine, phones, TV. the wall

“Moon?” Mum sat up. “What on earth-

He’s observed with Kharel

Dad didn’t even look up from his phone, which, honestly, fits the whole theme of my night.

“Sit down,” he said. “Stop slamming doors like a teenager

“Did you hear me?” I threw my bag on the floor. “Ocean. He’s into Kitarel Our Kisarel The cardigan He: ben- I don’t know what they’ve been doing, but he can’t keep his eyes off her, and he can’t stand to touch me, and that’s all you have say?

Dad took a sip of his wine. “Lower your voice?

“No, Dad, I am not lowering anything tonight” I pointed toward the door as if Oceans house was somewhere beyond it. 1 moved into his house. I cooked. I planned that engagement party. I smiled for photographers until my cheeks hurt, and the whole time he was looking at her like she was the one standing in my place.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Moon” Mum picked her wine back up like I’d told her it might rain.

“I’m not BEING dramatic, oh my God, why does everyone always-” I went to the bar and poured something, anything my hands shaking. “I live there. I’m in the house. I have watched him pull away every single time I get near him for weeks, and you know what? No. He keeps a picture of her on his phone. He looks at if every night. He thinks I don’t see. My voice did a horrible thing and cracked, and I hated it.

I hated that under all of it, I was actually hurt and not just angry. “He wants her. He doesn’t want me. Say something

Dad finally put the phone down.

That’s how I knew he’d heard the only part that mattered to him, which was never going to be my feelings.

“How sure are you?” he asked.

“How sure? Dad, I’m telling you what I saw.”

He just looked at me for a second, then got up and walked to the window.

“You’re upset about the wrong thing,” he said,

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20:21 Mon, Jun 1 MO.

Chapter 124

“He doesn’t want me, how is that the wrong-

“Men not wanting things is recoverable” He sounded bored, like he was talking about the weather and I was the rain. MA wanting the wrong thing is the problem. Do you understand what’s halfway onto that man’s desk right now?” He garned.

RiverTalley. All the properties. Two years I’ve spent walking all of it into Stark’s hands nice and quiet, where nobody asks who it used to belong to

I didn’t get it. I don’t do property. But Mum did. Mum’s whole face changed.

“If he loves her. Mum said quietly, “he starts caring what happens to her, with her, and around her.”

“He’s already starting to pull some threads,” Dad said. “And there are threads on that girl I’ve kept buried along time. A bored Ocean I can work with. An Ocean in love with a girl who doesn’t even know what she’s sitting on-” He shook his head. “No She comes off his eyeline. She stays right next to Jace where I put her, on the date I picked.”

“So get rid of her.” I said. “I mean it. She cannot continue staying in his office.”

Dad walked back to the armchair but didn’t sit. “Oceans is stubborn. If you demand it directly, he’ll resist you with every breath in him.”

“I can make him. He now listens to me.” I said.

“Sometimes.” Dad corrected. “Not when she is involved.”

That hurt because it was true.

“Your father is right. You don’t ask Oceans to remove her because you are jealous. You make it look necessary.” Mum added.

“How?” I asked, suddenly interested.

“Oceans will be given the kind of choice powerful men hate. His legacy and deal on one side, Kisarel Harry on the other.” Dad said.

“How sure are we that he’ll choose the deal?”

Dad looked at me like I was still too emotional to understand.

“Oceans will never let go of the only thing that keeps his father’s memory alive… His company.”

Realization slowly dawned on me. “And, how do you plan on achieving this?”

Dad smiled.

“By making the Board of Directors care.”

Author’s note:

Fred says he’ll make the board force Ocean’s hand. How do you think he’s going to do it? And will Ocean actually choose the company over Kiss?

Drop your thoughts below. I’m reading every single one.

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C

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