Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 158

:

87

Chapter 158

Chapter 158

OCEANS.

55 vouchers

Harold looked from Elgin to me, and whatever he read in the room told him the argument we’d been having had just been demoted to the second-worst thing happening in this office.

He straightened his jacket, and for once in thirty years he chose retreat.

“We’re not finished,” he said to me before walking out.

“We are,” I said before he shut the door.

Elgin came further in, and I got a proper look at him. I’d only ever seen the young man polished – silk scarves, theatre in every gesture, the friend from Kisarel’s other life who’d looked at me across his own threshold and decided, with some reluctance, that I was human. That man was gone. This one hadn’t slept.

His coat was buttoned the wrong way. Grief had scraped all the performance off him, and what was left underneath was leaner and harder to predict.

“Your grandfather,” I said carefully.

“Gerald Watts.” He said the name like he was setting it down on the desk between us. “You were in his house, Monsieur Stark. You and your man Reeves. The night before he died.”

Everything in me stopped.

Gerald Watts.

The old man Reeves had traced through six years of dead ends and one grainy piece of footage. The lead I’d waited six years for, that ended up dead before I ever got my answer.

“Gerald was your-” I heard how stupid I sounded and couldn’t stop it. “He was your grandfather?”

“You didn’t know.” Elgin watched my face with an attention that missed nothing. “Interesting. You knew enough to find his house, but not enough to know whose family you were walking into.” His voice thinned. “So you admit it. You were there.”

“I was there.”

This was awkward.

How did Reeves ever miss that Gerald had a grandson who was Elgin? How the fuck did he miss that?

“He was healthy.” His words started coming faster, the accent thickening with them. “Eighty-one years old and he took the stairs two at a time, and one visit from the great Oceans Stark and by morning he is dead in his chair, and the doctors shrug at me natural causes, they say, the heart, monsieur, it happens – and I am supposed to accept this? I am supposed to bury the only family I have and accept this?” His hand had found the back of my visitor’s chair and gripped it. “So you will tell me what you were doing in his house, and you will tell me now, or I swear before God I will spend every cent I have and every friend I own putting your name next to his in the papers.”

1/4

11:55 Fri, Jul 10

Chapter 158

“Elgin-”

87

55 vouchers.

“Did you kill my grandfather, Oceans Stark?!” He yelled, and the fury in his eyes told me this would go nowhere until this man heard what he wanted to hear from me, because a man that far past fear cannot be managed, only answered.

Fuck.

What’s there to hide?

So, I told him.

I fucking did. Because he was owed it.

“Six years ago, someone saved my life.” I stood up and came around the desk, slowly, my hands where he could see them. “There was a shooting—an attempted assassination against me. A woman stepped in front of a bullet that was meant for me, and went down in front of me. She was on the ground, Elgin. Bleeding out on the pavement – and my security had me off that street before I could even get to her. Protocol. Protect the principal. They dragged me into a car while she lay there in her own blood, and by the time I fought my way back, she was gone.” My jaw tightened around the oldest wound I owned. “No ambulance ever picked her up. No hospital ever admitted her. I had spent every year since trying to find her – because whatever my life is worth, I owe it to a stranger I left bleeding in the street.”

I paused because I felt the fury and guilt from that night almost take over me again, but I intentionally shut it

out.

“I had spent every year since trying to find her.” I watched his knuckles stay white on the chair. “Reeves ran that search. Six years of nothing – until he pulled the street footage apart one more time and found a man at the edge of it. An old man, four blocks from the scene, who took a wounded young woman. We identified him this spring.” I held his eyes. “Gerald Watts. That’s why I was in his house, Elgin. I went to ask him about the woman he sheltered. And he died before he could tell me her name.”

Elgin had gone very still while I spoke, giving me the kind of attention I appreciated but didn’t actually need. His grip on the chair had loosened, but nothing about him had softened – he was listening like this was a testimony, and he was weighing every word for the lie in it.

“And this woman,” he said slowly. “The one who took your bullet and bled on your street.” His eyes narrowed. “You never found her, I suppose?”

“I did. I found her.” The words scraped out of me as the old bitterness moved through me again. “Moonie. My ex-fiancée, as of this morning’s broadcast. She came forward afterward with the watch that was in the jacket I left with her on that pavement that night.” My jaw set. “I only found out a few weeks ago; otherwise, I wouldn’t have gone to Gerald Watts for any of this. Back then, he was the one living soul who saw my savior’s face. I desperately needed him to tell me who she was. I’m really sorry, Elgin. But I never killed your grandfather.”

Elgin was staring at me like I’d started speaking a language he almost recognized and couldn’t bear to translate.

“Moonie,” he repeated softly. And I must say, I was surprised that was the first thing he’d picked an interest in, and not the fact that I didn’t kill his grandfather. Unpredictable as usual.

“The watch was-” I was saying, but he interrupted me.

2/4

11:55 Fri, Jul 10

Chapter 158

87

55 vouchers

“The watch.” And then the word ‘watch’ also seemed to rip him apart because he turned away, one hand pressed flat over his mouth, and when he turned back his eyes were wet and blazing, and every ounce of theatre was gone.

“Six years. Six years of search, and a spoiled brat comes waving a watch at you, and you hand her your life and gratitude? Mon Dieu-” He caught himself, tried to breathe but failed. “Monsieur Stark. Listen to me very carefully, because I am only going to survive saying this once. My grandfather did not carry Moonie Harry into his house that night. Moonie Harry has never bled for another living soul in her life.”

The cold started at the base of my skull.

His words rang like bells in my ears, and for a full second, I could only fucking stare.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify