Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 157

Chapter 157

Keeves put a single slim bile on my desk and stood while I opened it. The expression on his face made me know that

satever he had just found out now was worse than the last one

You wanted something on Fred that would end him. He kept his voice even. I found the thing Fred’s spent his whole life making sure no one would find.”

The first page was a name I didn’t know. A photograph of a gaunt man, sun-darkened, older than his years. taken through a long lens somewhere with red dust and corrugated roofing behind him.

“The man in that photograph. Desmond Kroll. Twenty years ago he was contract muscle the kind you fire when you need something to look like an accident. He’s spent the last two decades hiding in places without extradition treaties, because the man who hired him has been killing everyone else who touched the job.”

“What job?” I asked.

“Thirteen years ago, a car went off a road. Husband and wife. It was ruled an accident – brake failure, wet road, the usual verdict for the kind of accident that isn’t one.” He paused. “The wife’s name was Marielle. Her husband was Thomas Harry

Everything in me went still.

“Kisarel’s parents.

“Kisarel’s parents.” He repeated and let it sit. “They didn’t die because the road was wet. They died because someone was paid to make certain the brakes failed on a particular stretch of it. And the man who paid was his own brother.” His jaw tightened. “Frederick Harry.

I sat back slowly. “He killed his own brother.”

“For all of it. Thomas Harry was a wealthy man properties, holdings, business interests, more than his daughter has ever been told. Everything he had would pass to her, held in trust until she came of age, with a trustee to manage it in between.” Reeves explained. “Fred was already in financial trouble. Kiss’s father had started reviewing family accounts and intended to remove him from two management positions. There was also a trust amendment being prepared. If it had been signed, Fred would never have become sole trustee after their deaths.”

He paused.

“But that amendment never saw the light of day.” He added. “Fred is Thomas’s brother. When Thomas and Marielle were gone before the amendment, he was the blood standing closest to all of it. He made himself a trustee, and he’s spent thirteen years squandering an inheritance that was never his to touch.”

Reeves tapped the photograph. “This man was one of the crew he hired for the road. The only one still breathing. Fred cleaned up everyone else who touched the job – the others died over the following years, spread out, unremarkable, the way careful men erase a paper trail made of people. This one ran. He’s spent two decades in places without extradition. certain that the day Fred found him was the day he stopped existing.” He met my eyes. “I found him first. He’ll talk. He wants to talk. He’s been waiting twenty years for someone to make it safe to stop running.”

Kisarel had grown up an orphan, grateful to the uncle who’d generously taken an interest in her, who’d do whatever that uncle’s world wants her to do because she’d never once suspected that the hand feeding her was the hand that had made her hungry in the first place.

Fred hadn’t just tried to steal her inheritance.

1/4

12:16 pm Ppp.

Chapter 15-

cd built her whole life as a slow harvest Orphaned her, groomed her gratitude, and aimed her at an altar where the s it would transfer clean

Fuck.

I stood up. “Get this man on the next secure flight back here immediately” I nodded ar Dominic.

“No more waiting for the right time.” I buttoned my jacket and looked at Reeves. “It’s time to go public”

‘My engagement to Moonie Harry is over, effective immediately. Any announceraent stating otherwise is false

I put that line on replay and enjoyed every bit of reaction the news was getting from the public wherr Harold came through my door without knocking.

He had his own phone in his hand, the screen still lit, and his face was the color of someone who’d just watched something he couldn’t undo.

“Tell me I’m misunderstanding.” He didn’t lower his voice. “Tell me you did not just go on a live broadcast and end your engagement to Moonie Harry. In front of the entire city. Without one word to legal, me, the board, or to anyone with a functioning survival instinct.”

I set the phone down. “You’re not misunderstanding. It was my engagement.”

“It was attached to business whether liked it or not.”

you

I was quiet.

“Have you lost your mind?” He crossed to my desk. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? The merger, the board, Fred- you’ve just detonated every arrangement holding this company together, on camera, for the pleasure of it.” He planted both hands on the edge of my desk.

“You are dismantling your life one impulsive decision at a time.”

I leaned back.

“Fred murdered Kisarel’s parents.”

The words stopped him.

His hands slowly left the desk.

“What?”

“Reeves found out. Fred ordered the crash.”

Harold’s face changed, but not enough to erase what he had come in carrying.

“That explains Fred,” he said after a moment. “It does not explain why you went on live television and detonated the engagement before arrests were made.”

“I was done wearing his daughter around my neck.” I kept my voice level, which cost me. “Because the arrangement was a leash, Harold, and I’m done being walked.”

“You’re done?” He laughed, and there was no humor anywhere in it, only fear. “That’s what you told yourself last time, too.

12:16 pm PPP

Chapic: 157

fult you were done daring careful. That the rules didn’t apply to what you felt. And I watched what it cost. I watched everything

“Say what you actually came here to say.”

“I came here to stop you making the same mistake twice” He leaned in and planted his palms on my desk agam

“A woman. It’s always a woman/with you. Your judgment goes, your sense goes, the company goes, and you call it love arid leave the rest of us to bury what’s left. I have spent years cleaning up after your heart. I am tired, Ocean. I don’t have another cleanup in me.”

“Then don’t clean it up.” I held his eyes. “Quit”

Something in him snapped at that the last professional thread, the thing that had kept him managing me for three decades even when he despised the direction.

“Maybe I will.” His voice dropped, and it shook. “Maybe I’m finished. Because cannot watch you do this again-” He reached into his jacket, and I didn’t understand what he was doing until he pulled it out and threw it down on the desk between us. “You want to burn your life down for a woman? Fine. But at least remember how it ends. You’ve done it before”

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