Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

KISAREL.

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It was looking like a fine Monday morning until I decided to make a detour to the fifth floor to drop off Kloe’s novel. I had borrowed it over three weeks ago and hadn’t opened a single page of it – the storms in my life had made sure of that and I figured returning it was the least I could do before she started thinking I’d kept it on purpose.

I stepped out of the elevator and was heading toward Kloe’s desk when Carol’s voice echoed across the floor, dishing out instructions that sounded like pre–formatted commands.

“We have a meeting with the boss at ten. Go over your

without breaking stride. “Unless you want to lose your thly report,” she was telling Janice

My heart skipped a beat.

My feet slowed without my permission.

The boss.

Mr. Stark was back?

Didn’t he say the trip was for a week?

I stood there for a second with Kloe’s novel pressed against my chest and felt my mouth go completely dry.

“Carol?” I called when she was about to walk toward Mr. Jack’s office.

She stopped and turned to look at me like her internal clock was running and did not appreciate the interruption. “Yes, Kisarel.”

like a PA

“Is Mr. Stark back from his trip?” I asked, and heard immediately how it sounded who didn’t know her own boss’s schedule, which was exactly what it was and exactly how it

looked.

Carol gave me the look that confirmed she

agreed with that assessment. “Yes. He is.” She was already turning away when something seemed to occur to her. “Oh. That reminds me.”

She pulled up her phone and began scrolling rapidly. She tapped and clicked a few times and the phone chimed.

“Mr. Stark wants you to prepare a few things before the meeting commences. I just sent you

the list.”

“Oh,” I said when my phone beeped, and I pulled it out of my bag immediately to check.

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Chapter 37

While I scrolled to open my email, she kept speaking.

I pulled it out immediately, already scrolling to my email while Carol kept talking.

“He said to make sure nothing on that list is undone by the time he arrives.

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I was already composing my response in my head – a calm, professional “consider it done” that would tell Carol and anyone listening that Kisarel Harry had this completely handled because a list meant he still needed me here. Which meant that whatever was coming when he walked through those doors today, a teon letter wasn’t the first item on his agenda.

That thought alone was enough to make me want to cry with relief until I opened the email and read “the list,”

The words forming in my throat dissolved completely.

A quick sweat broke out at my temple.

“What?”

I stared at the screen.

The first item alone made my stomach turn. The second made it worse. By the third, I had stopped breathing properly, and by the time I reached the ones at the bottom of the list, my brain had stopped processing words entirely and had moved straight into a quiet, cold panic that I was doing everything in my power to keep off my face.

The memo to be prepared and distributed to every board member before the meeting. His schedule for the next two weeks to be updated, printed, and on his desk before he arrives. The specific phone calls to be made. His personal setup in the meeting room.

All of it. Before ten.

I looked up slowly.

Carol was watching me, but not with the impatience she’d had two minutes ago. No. It was with something more careful than that.

It was the look of a woman who had worked in this building long enough to recognise what she was seeing.

“Carol.” I kept my voice as even as I could. “Thi

is impossible for ten o’clock.”

“I know.”

“Then why wasn’t I notified earlier? Even yesterday – if I had known yesterday, I could have come in at six, seven, anything but two hours for all of this-”

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“He sent it to me five minutes before you walked in,” she said simply.

The floor felt slightly less stable than it had a moment ago.

Carol’s eyes moved over my face, and whatever she saw there made her exhale slowly. She took a step toward me and placed her hand on my shoulder, which was so unlike Carol that it frightened me more than anything else so far.

“Kisarel.” Her voice had dropped to something I had never heard from Carol before. “What did you do?”

I blinked. “Sorry?”

“To Mr. Stark.” She glanced briefly across the floor, then back at me. “I have worked in this building for eight years. I know what a standard

struction from him looks like. This-” she glanced at the phone once more before lowering it, “-is not that. This is personal. So I’m asking you again – what happened?”

I didn’t know how to categorize this. Carol and I were not friends. We were just colleagues who worked with those boundaries in mind. So, hearing this part of her threw me off balance.

I licked my lips, “I uh… I was supposed to go on the trip with him,” I said quietly and looked down at my phone before looking back up. “I missed the trip.”

Carol stared at me and said nothing for a moment, just looking at me with an expression that made me want to take a step backward.

“You missed it,” she repeated the words back to me in a tone that contained some kind of

horror.

“Yes.”

“His first official trip with his new PA.” She took her hand off my shoulder and pressed it to her own chest instead, like she needed a moment.

“Lord.” She said under her breath. Then she looked at me with the expression of a doctor delivering a diagnosis they wished they didn’t have to give. “Do you understand who this man is?”

“Carol-”

“No. Listen to me.” She lowered her voice, her eyes cutting briefly across the floor before coming back to me. “Do you understand who this man is?” She paused. “Not as your boss. As a person. Do you actually understand what Ocean Stark is capable of when someone gets on the wrong side of him?”

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1 shook my head slowly.

“I have watched him sit in a board meeting,” she continued before I could speak, “smile at a man across the table, shake his hand at the end of it, and have that same man’s entire career dismantled before the week was out.” She paused. “Is that the same man whose official trip you missed?”

I swallowed.

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“I watched a senior director in this building make one mistake with Mr. Stark four years ago,” she continued quietly. “One. He thought he could manage it. Perhaps he thought he had enough goodwill built up to ride it out.” She paused. “He hasn’t worked a single day in this industry since then. Not even anywhere else. Not because Mr. Stark made calls or sent letters or did anything you could point to specifically. He simply withdrew his regard. And in this industry, that is enough. He was here seven years before that mistake.” She looked at me. “You have been his PA for how long exactly?”

I couldn’t bring myself to speak.

went on after a

“I’m going to say this to you once, and I need you to hear it properly.” She pause, “If this man decides to fire you, understand that it will not end at the door of this building. His name and his word carry weight in every room that matters in this industry, and no one who wants to remain relevant in those rooms will touch someone he has decided to be done with. That is not speculation. That is simply how it works.” She let that sit for exactly as long as it needed to. “And if he decides to keep you – at that list,

which, looking appears to be his current intention – a man like Ocean

then God help you. Because with Stark? Whatever is coming for you is not mercy. It is something you will have to endure one

day at a time until he decides you have paid whatever he feels you owe him.” She straightened slightly. “Neither option is comfortable. But only one of them leaves you with a career at the end of it.”

The floor of the fifth floor had never felt so small.

I stood there and absorbed every word of it as I felt the full reality of where I was standing

settle over me.

“Make a start on that list,” she said, her voice returning to its usual brisk, professional register. “Do not leave a single item undone. You have already given him enough to work with. Don’t hand him more.”

TH

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