Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 32

Chapter 32

OCEANS.

The second I landed in Sydney, I dialed Reeves.

“What have you found?” I asked, taking long strides toward the cars waiting on the tarmac.

“Nothing yet, sir.” He sounded the exact way he always did when the news was bad, and h was managing to VA CEAS “Mr. Gerald had no CCTV in his house. The property a few yards away recorded nothing useful other”

Fuck.

I loosened my tie like it was suffocating me. The Sydney air was warm and open, and it will felt live the walls were

Whoever this was, they were thorough. Disturbingly thorough. The kind of thoroughness that didn’t happen by wonder ser improvisation it was practiced. The work of someone who had been doing this long enough to kom rarily when remove and what to leave behind. And they were taking it to a whole new level.

“No trace of violence on the body,” Reeves continued. “No foreign substance found. The doctors are leaning towere-

“Fuck what the doctors are leaning toward.” I cut him off, keeping my voice low and controlled, even though control was becoming increasingly difficult. “We both know what this is.”

I paused, letting that sit.

“Gerald texted you just before he died, Reeves.” I sucked in air through my teeth, “It’s all connected to the fucker wh hadn’t decided if he wants me dead or not.”

“Yes, sir.”

I had wronged people on my way up. That was not something I was going to pretend otherwise about. You didn’t build what I built without making enemies, without leaving people behind who had reasons to resent the leaving. But whoever the back this was had chosen to go after an old man who had nothing to do with any of it rather than facing me with their grievances.

“We’re still looking, sir,” Reeves said. “Whoever this person is, they certainly know what they are doing. And they mean to pass a message to you. A very specific one.”

Speaking of messages.

Just as we were stepping off the jet, my phone had pinged. I hadn’t checked it left it sitting while I dealt with Reeves.

assumed it was something work–related and

I pulled the phone from my ear and swiped to open the text when I stopped walking just two feet away from the car

The text was short, and it took me less than eleven seconds to read. I read it three times.

without you even knowing she is the one.” “I hope my message was clearly passed? Now you believe me when I say I know who your mystery woman is. I’ll make sure I snuff the life out of her while you watch

The city noise around me

the cars, the voices, the wind coming off the tarmac

all of it went very far away.

I put the phone back to my ear. “I just received a text.”

“What does it say?”

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Chapter 32

“I’m forwarding it now.” I dropped the call, forwarded the message to Reeves.

I read the text again, and my head spun.

I hate this.

I hate every fucking bit of it.

Most of all, I hate it when I have no control. When someone else is holding the cards and making sure I know it. When the only move available to me is to react, and reacting means they’ve already won the exchange.

“Fuck!” My fist connected with the roof of the car before I had decided to move.

The sound of it cracked across the tarmac, and the entire team froze where they stood.

“What the fuck, man?” Logan crossed to me in three strides.

The other team members stopped walking immediately they saw my outburst. They stood frozen, watching me like they were trying to calculate how much danger they were currently in.

I turned to face them, “What?” I bit out through clenched teeth, and they all filed into the cars immediately.

“Oceans.” Logan’s voice dropped.

“They sent a text.” I cut him off, holding the phone out so he could read it himself.

He took it and read it. His jaw tightened as he went quiet for a while.

He handed it back without a word.

“Get in the car,” he said finally. “Let’s talk about this.”

***

KISAREL.

Being in the office without my boss was a different kind of torture. Not that I missed him or felt anything of that sort toward him.

No.

It just reminded me that I was sitting on the edge of something, with no idea what I was going to land on when he returned

It’s been four days now, and I still haven’t heard from him yet. My calls were still not going through, and I had sent him tons of emails; he still wasn’t replying. It felt like I was trying to get through a wall.

His silence was somehow worse than if he had just called and fired me outright.

It bothered the shit out of me.

I was still furious at Jace.

If he had just woken me up. If he had just handed me my phone when Mr. Stark called instead of answering it himself and telling my boss I was exhausted from a hectic night, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now in this particular shade of dread. waiting for a man who had the power to end my career to come back from Sydney and do exactly that.

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Chapter 32

I had turned down Jace’s offer to stay at his place after everything with Freda. I was crashing with Elgin for now. Besides, he needed someone by his side now more than ever. He was still shaken from Gerald’s sudden death.

Gerald’s death still didn’t sit right with me. The hospital had ruled it a natural cause, and I was trying to accept that I was. But I had sat in that man’s living room just hours before he died. I had watched him smooth his collar and tell me he was expecting an old friend, and he had looked so entirely like someone with more living left to do that natural causes felt like a verdict the facts hadn’t quite earned.

But who would want Gerald dead? He was the kindest man I had known. No enemies, no complications, nothing that pointed anywhere except toward a sad and ordinary end.

I was trying very hard to believe that.

I pulled the next file toward me and had barely opened it when my office door pushed open.

Carol. Mr. Stark’s EA. She walked in with that particular energy she always carried – brisk, slightly impatient, already halfway through whatever came next on her list.

“Kisarel. Mr. Stark says you should go through the Avillion proposal and send your feedback to me?

I looked up. “To you?”

“That’s his orders.”

“Shouldn’t I be sending it directly to-

“You’re to report to him through me.” She cut me off. “Those are his instructions.”

She wasn’t rude. But, somehow, it felt so wrong.

Why would Mr. Stark take the time to specifically reroute my reporting line through his EA rather than deal with me directly? That wasn’t administrative efficiency. That was a man putting a wall between himself and someone he had decided he was done with.

Shit

“Okay. I’ll do that.” I gave a small smile and nodded, but she was already at the door.

It clicked shut behind her, and I leaned back in my seat and stared at the ceiling for a moment.

I turned back to my desk, but the Avillion file blurred in front of me before had read a single line. My mind was already somewhere else. The same somewhere else it had been drifting to for the past four days without my permission.

That night at Jace’s.