Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 27

I stirred in my sleep, feeling so exhausted, like my body had been wrung out and put back wrong.

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I peeled my eyes open and winced. The sharp light coming through the curtains hit me. I lay there for a second just blinking against it, waiting for my brain to catch up with the rest of

1. me.

It caught up and did its thing…

“Our flight is for 4AM…”

“Be home at ten…”

Mr. Stark’s words came replaying in my head all at once, and I jerked upright so fast the headache cracked across the side of my skull like something splitting open. I ignored it completely and grabbed for my phone on the bedside table.

It wasn’t there.

Oh, God.

The light reaching me through the curtains told me all I needed to know.

It was morning.

“No. No. No. No.”

“Looking for this?”

Jace’s voice came from across the room. I turned, and he was leaning against the vanity with his legs crossed and my phone held loosely in one hand, and he was smiling, obviously finding the situation considerably more amusing than I was.

“Jace.” I was off the bed and crossing the room before I’d finished saying his name. He lifted the phone out of my reach the moment my hand went for it, still smiling, like this was a game we were playing that I hadn’t been told the rules of.

Wait. He thought it was a good time to play?

“Give it back!” I yelled. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

I was frustrated.

“Because you needed the sleep, babe. You should have seen yourself…”

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Chapter 27

“You think this is funny?” The words came out hot and shaking as I cut him off angrily, “I told you I had a 4 AM flight! And, how did I… How did I fall asleep? You promised to take me home!” I turned around immediately, fisting a handful of my hair as I reached for my handbag, which was sitting neatly on the bedside stand.

“Relax, babe, I was just being reasonable, that’s all.”

“Don’t tell me to relax!” I spun back to face him. “Give me my phone. Right now.”

Something in my face must have finally communicated that this was not the moment, because the smile faded and he held the phone out without another word.

I snatched it from his hand.

“I am sorry. I didn’t let anyone’s calls disrupt your sleep. You seemed extremely exhausted that you fell asleep on the couch.” He pointed at the couch close to the window.

I didn’t even know how or when I fell asleep. All I remembered was sitting on the couch, and that was it.

How could I have been so careless?

I ignored all he was spewing and swiped my phone open.

The first thing my eyes caught on my phone was the time. 8:25 AM.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

There were multiple missed calls from Elgin.

And then there were three missed calls from Oceans, and one received call. All at midnight.

I looked up slowly.

Jace was watching me with an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral and wasn’t quite getting there.

My heart was already thudding so hard I feared it would rip out of my chest.

“Did you answer my boss’s call?” I asked him the obvious, and he shrugged.

“His calls were persistent. Seemed easier to just-”

“Jesus, Jace.” My voice cracked somewhere in the middle of his name. I shoved his chest with both hands, hard enough that he actually moved. “How could you do that?”

“What?” He genuinely looked confused, which was almost worse. “You were exhausted. I was looking out for you. What exactly did I do wrong?” He sounded like I was making a fuss out

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of nothing.

The tear that fell from my eye was not one I had given permission to fall. I wiped it off fast, grabbed my bag from the bedside table, and shoved past him.

I walked out of his room and pulled the door shut behind me.

Tisha was in the hallway.

She was carrying a folded towel and moving toward the linen closet, and she slowed when she saw me – took in my face, my bag, the way I was holding myself – and something moved across her expression that she didn’t bother hiding.

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She’d been giving me that look since I forgave Jace and came back to him after catching him in bed with my cousin.

I didn’t have the capacity for it this morning.

I walked past her without a word, down the stairs, through the living room, and out the front door, and I didn’t stop moving until the morning air hit my face and the door was closed behind me.

I stood on the front step and dialed Oceans.

It didn’t connect.

I tried again. Same thing. It wasn’t even ringing – just the flat silence of a line that wasn’t receiving calls.

After the fourth call, I knew for a fact that he had left without me.

I flagged down the first taxi that came up the street and gave the driver Oceans‘ address, and for the entire ride, I kept my phone in my lap and my eyes on the window and told myself that maybe he hadn’t left yet. That maybe the flight had been delayed or pushed, or that he was still there and furious and I could explain, and it would be – not fine, nothing about this was fine but at least not this.

–

Oceans‘ gate was closed when the taxi pulled up.

A man in a dark jacket stepped out of the security booth before I had even opened my door.

“Miss Harry,” he said.

The way he said my name – not particularly unkindly, but with the rehearsed neutrality of someone who was about to deliver an unpleasant message they had been given word for word told me everything before he said anything else.

“Mr. Stark has already departed.” He paused. “He asked that your belongings be returned to

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Chapter 27

you.”

I looked past him at the gate and back to him.

“He-” My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. “He left my things at the gate.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Two of his colleagues appeared from somewhere behind him, carrying bag after bag of everything Noella had spent $68,000 of my future salary choosing.

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I stood on the pavement outside his gate and watched them load my bags into the taxi, and I didn’t say a single word because there was nothing to say and nowhere to put what I was feeling that would have made any sense out loud.

The security man gave me a small, professional nod when they were done.

I returned it with a smile I had absolutely no business producing at that moment, held it together just long enough to get back into the taxi and pull the door shut behind me.

I pressed my fingers to my mouth and breathed through my nose until the threat behind my eyes receded enough to be manageable.

Couldn’t cry in front of strangers.

“Where to, ma’am?” The driver asked.

I took in several deep, calming breaths. “Home, please.” I gave him the address and leaned back against the seat and let the city start moving past the window.

I scrolled lazily through my phone and dialed Oceans‘ contact again, and was still met with the same response.

I lowered the phone.

That was when Elgin’s missed calls registered properly. I had seen them earlier in the chaos of Jace’s bedroom and filed them away for later without looking closely.

I hoped he was fine. Elgin had never called me thirteen times in a row. Not once in six years. Not even the time he got lost in Lyon at two in the morning with a dead phone battery and one bar of signal.

I dialed his number, and he answered on the fourth ring.

“Arel.” His voice came through the line, and I knew immediately before the next word arrived, from the single ruined syllable of my own name, that had been crying.

“Elgin…”

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“Grand–père is gone.” He sniffed, and the sound of it cracked something open in my chest that everything else this morning had only managed to bruise.

“He’s gone, chérie.”

B