Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 125

Chapter 125 –

Chapter 125

OCEANS.

They stared at my knuckles like I was cursed. I didn’t stop them. They had their eyes, and they were responsible for whatever the fuck kept them entertained.

The cuts were no longer fresh, but blood sat in thin, dark lines across the healing skin, ugly against the polished table where these men had not summoned me like I worked for the.

Meanwhile, I equally had my rights, and I sure as hell know exactly how to use them.

“You need to think this through, Frank said after a prolonged silence which I had actually enjoyed.

“I have,” I replied, tapping two fingers against the desk to keep from throwing the entire folder in his face and telling him to go fuck himself.

I had barely responded to Kisarel’s morning greeting before Harold stepped into my office and told me the board had convened.

About me.

They had fucking summoned me… In my own building, to a table I built, over a chair I bought.

Since when did this room convene over anything I hadn’t sanctioned?

Xerjof cleared his throat, suddenly interested in the edge of his cuff. “You can take a day or two. This is a very delicate-”

“If you’re asking me to fire a woman who has done her job properly because a man who enjoys playing God with other people’s lives has a personal problem with her, then this meeting is already wasting my time.”

“No one is asking you to act out of personal selfishness,” Mrs/Langston, always the quiet one, finally said.

“Good. Then we agree this meeting is pointless.”

“We are asking you to consider risk,” she pushed.

I leaned back. “Say what you mean.”

She looked at Frank.

Cowards.

Silence moved over the table for a moment before Caldwell picked it up.

that he isn’t at liberty to “Fred Harry isn’t asking us to fire anyone out of malice,” he said. “He’s raised a concern. A serious one. He says there are

family matters, something with a criminal dimension to it matters connected to that girl detail And until it’s resolved, he isn’t comfortable moving his portfolio into a firm where she sits inside the executive office. Beside you. With access”

I leaned back in my chair. “Fred Harry does not run my office

“No” Frank said, choosing his next words with irritating care “But Harry Property Group is preparing to hang sier LTSCHLA assets into the alliance with Stark Sovereign Capital. His concerns affect the deal”

“Then he can keep his portfolio!

Chapter 123

watched

my words move through them, chair by chair, and I enjoyed the effect it had on them.

“You don’t mean that. Frank said.

“I rarely say things I don’t mean. It’s exhausting.” I leaned back. “What exactly is this criminal matter? Did he give you a name for it? A charge? A document

Caldwell’s jaw shifted. “He said it was sensitive.

“Convenient is the word you’re looking for.” I let my hand go still on the desk. “A man wants something gone, so he wraps it in the one word none of you will ask questions about. Criminal. And not one of you thought to wonder why a man would know intimate criminal details about his own niece and refuse to say a single one of them out loud.”

“Oceans. Xerjof again. “No one doubts your judgment. But you’ve tied a great deal to Fred Harry. The merger. The engagement to his daughter. His confidence stabilizes the board, it reassures the institutional partners, it keeps the people who’d love to see this company stumble from circling. If he walks because of one assistant-

“Then the company survives losing him, the same way it survived everything before him.”

“Does it?” Caldwell asked calmly. “You’re carrying a public engagement, a pending merger, and a balance sheet that looks stronger on the assumption Fred’s assets are coming in. You pull that assumption out now, and the wrong people start asking what else is unstable here.” He paused. “You built something your father would have been proud of. Don’t gamble the whole of it on the placement of one desk.”

My father…

That was a fucking pressure point, and Caldwell wanted me to feel him pressing.

I kept my face exactly where it was because the one rule I have never broken is to let people see which words hit.

Harold sat two seats away, quiet, with his jaw tight. He had warned me before we walked in that this was bad. I had ignored him because ignoring warnings was apparently becoming a hobby.

“That girl…” Caldwell made to continue, but I interrupted him.

“Say her name,” I said through clenched jaws. I was currently running on rage and impatience.

Caldwell frowned. “Pardon?”

“You keep saying ‘one assistant.’ ‘One desk. “That girl.” I looked around the table, one face at a time. “Her name is Kisarel Harry. She has worked in this building for years. She has done nothing wrong that any of you can name because there is

to make her unhireable, because we all know that’s what it nothing to name. And you sit here, asking me to end her career

on the unsupported word of a man who profits from her absence?” means when I let someone go

I let them digest those words before I continued.

“I’m already marrying his daughter to close his deal. That is the limit of what I’ll trade for Fred Harry. I’ll gamble my own life. I paused, “But I won’t gamble hers.

The temperature in the room changed.

Frank exchanged a look with the man beside him. Caldwell sat back slowly, and when he spoke again, the patience had gone out of his voice, and something more decisive had taken its place.

Mrs. Langston sighed. “You seem a bit too emotionally close to this issue. Mr. Stark

My eyes moved to her “Careful,” I said.

2/4

Chapter 123-*

Cranks Tace frombed “But she is right. You are making this unnecessarily personal.”

“It is personal” I placed my bleeding hand flat on the table. “She is my Personal Assistant” I emphasized on ‘personal’ so no

one would miss it

Xerjof muttered, “This is absurd

I turned to him. “You might want to speak a bit ouder.”

There was a brief pause.

“You understand the position you’re putting us in,” Caldwell finally broke the silence. “A board exists for moments precisely like this one. When a chief executive lets a personal attachment override the company’s financial interests, the board has not only the right but also the obligation to act. With or without his cooperation.”

There it was.

There it fucking was.

“Say what you mean, Caldwell.”

“I mean

that a man can build a company and still be removed from it.” He held my gaze without blinking. “It has happened to better men than you, Ocean. Founders. Visionaries. Men who were certain the thing they made could never turn its hand against them.” A thin pause. “Don’t make us demonstrate it.”

The threat sank its ugly claws into me.

And the worst part

the part I’d carry out of this room and chew on for the rest of the day

was that it wasn’t an empty

one.

The numbers were exactly where Caldwell said they were. The merger, the engagement, my father’s name stitched into the foundation of all of it.

They could move against me. It wasn’t going to be clean and easy, but they could try. And a single try would cause damage I couldn’t fully control.

I felt that cold, narrow worry I almost never let myself feel move through me.

But I shut it down and maintained my principle… ‘Never let them see the words that hit.

I smiled, but no one at the table looked comforted by it.

T

“Then demonstrate it,” I said, and stood. “Vote me out if you have the stomach for it. Until the day you actually ma ge this is still my company, that is still my office, and she keeps her job.” I buttoned my jacket. “We’re done here.”

At the door, I paused.

“One more thing.”

They looked at me.

“If any of you go near Miss Harry with this before I say so, I will treat it as a personal decision, not a board decision. Frank’s tace tightened. “Is that a threat?”

I said. “It’s me being very polite before lunch.

9:50 am

Chapter 123

Lakin

I walked oys-leaving the door open behind me because slamming it would have suggested they had gotten under me

They actually had.

And that was the problem.

Because I just realized with a flat, unpleasant clarity that I had just told a room full of frightened, powerful men that I would burn my entire legacy before I’d let them touch the only woman I truly cared about in this world.

And I meant it.

I just didn’t yet know what it would cost me to have said it out loud.

曲

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