Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 46

Chapter 46

OCEANS.

“Any luck?” I asked Reeves, pressing the phone to my ear with more force than necessary.

“No, sir. She’s not there,” He reported.

“How sure are you?” I hissed.

“Very sure, sir. I even had one of my men pose as a delivery driver with a parcel addressed to her, just to find out. But he was told at the gate that she wasn’t there.” Reeves reported.

I exhaled slowly through my nose and kept my eyes on the street outside the window, like some part of me genuinely believed I was going to look up at the right moment and find her standing on a pavement somewhere in eight million people, waiting to be located.

She wasn’t at Jace’s.

I turned that over for a moment, trying to decide what to do with it.

I didn’t know if it was a good more concerned about.

n I should be happy about, or a bad sign I should be even

But underneath the ambiguity, if I was being honest about what I actually felt when Reeves said those words… ‘She isn’t there.

It was relief. Clean and immediate and completely disproportionate to the situation of a man who was desperately trying to find his PA, who had just resigned.

But for whatever reason I feed my ego to agree with me that this was right, it meant I could stop spending mental energy on painting images of what he might be doing to her every passing second and redirect it toward something that actually served a purpose.

After a few nods and a promise to take Moonie on a ‘romantic‘ outing so the public could start putting faces to the engagement, I left Fred’s house the way you leave a room with a gas leak – calmly, without running, but with the full and urgent awareness that staying a second longer than necessary was going to cost you something.

And the first thing I did before stepping into my car was call Reeves.

“Keep looking,” I said. “I want answers before morning.”

“Sir-”

“Check the fucking street cameras.” I leaned forward in the back seat, “Pull every single one from the surrounding blocks of the office. She walked out of my office on Monday at

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approximately two forty–five PM. I want to know exactly which direction she went, which street she turned onto, and whether she hailed a cab or called one.”

“Understood, but-

W

“The cab, Reeves.” I cut him off because I wasn’t done, and I didn’t have the patience right now for anything that wasn’t the next instruction. “When you find the cab – and you will find it, because there are cameras on every fucking corner of this city and one of them caught her getting into a vehicle – I want the driver’s details. Plate number, company, name, everything. And then I want someone sitting across from that driver tonight, asking him exactly where he dropped her and what she said during the ride, if she said anything at all.”

“That’s going to take some-”

“I didn’t ask you how long it was going to take.” My voice dropped so low it was barely above a murmur, which was the register it reached when I had run completely out of patience and was operating on something considerably less forgiving. “I asked you to have answers on my phone before I wake up tomorrow. Those are two different conversations, and I’m only interested in having one of them right now.”

He paused.

“Yes, sir.”

I ended the call and sat back, breathing through that grinding tension that had been living in

chest since Monday afternoon and had been getting progressively less manageable with each passing day.

my

This was not obsession.

I needed to be clear about that with myself because clarity was the only thing that separated a man operating with purpose from a man operating from something considerably less rational.

I was not a man who lost himself over a woman. At least, not anymore.

I had been that man once, yes, but I had no intention of becoming him again.

What I was, was a man whose PA had walked out of his office in possession of confidential knowledge about his company’s operations, his schedule, his clients, his correspondence all the things a PA accumulated over weeks of proximity to the CEO’s desk – and who had done so without completing a formal exit process and without signing the relevant confidentiality documentation that should have been handled on her first day and apparently hadn’t been, which was its own administrative failure he was going to address separately.

That was the issue.

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*

That was the entirety of the issue.

A man in such an important position, running a company a recently resigned employee to disappear into the city

This size, could not simply allow

whether the information she carried was going to remahout knowing where she was and

It was due diligence.

where it belonged.

It was entirely, completely, one hundred fucking percent due diligence.

***

KISAREL

We both sat on the couch facing opposite

Neither of us had woken up with any

completely lost in our own thoughts.

week. Elgin had retreated into hims ace of the usual energy we’d been waking up with all

even before we got out of bed, and I understood it e completely. He was still mourning Gerald, and Marcus still hadn’t found anything useful for

us yet.

So I had all the quietness and all the

time in the world to sit with my own thoughts, which

had been an absolute disaster of a companion since I woke up.

I kept thinking about all my life’s choices that had brought me to this moment of sitting idle in the morning with no job and no idea what to do next.

And for every time I turned that reality over in my head, I hated Jace a little more.

It was his fault. All of it.

If he had kept his dick in his pants and his hands off Moonie, then I wouldn’t have been in this situation right now. I wouldn’t have been stupid enough to have crossed Mr. Stark’s line of sight. I would have remained exactly what I was for three years the quiet, nerdy girl that nobody looked at twice – and my life, however small it was, would still have been mine,

“Do you

–

think you should go and beg him?” Elgin finally spoke, breaking my thoughts.

I turned my head slowly in his direction. He was still leaning back against the couch, with his head tilted toward the ceiling.

“What?”

“Your boss, Arel.” He didn’t move. “Go and beg him.”

I scoffed, “No. I won’t. He won’t even listen to me,” I said, Carol’s words still sitting pretty in front of my memory. “You don’t know what he’s like.”

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“You never can tell until you try.” He shifted slightly, turning his head toward me with a tired expression. “It’s ten in the morning, Arel. You’re sitting here looking so bored and miserable, like the world has already ended when it hasn’t even started yet. You’ll see more of such mornings for quite a while, because getting a job isn’t as easy atever your ego is painting for you right now.” A small, exhausted scoff. “Trust me on that one.”

“I’d rather not risk the humiliation,” I said, pulling my arms around myself and turning away. “I’ll pass.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then, “You know what I still think?”

“Elgin-”

“That you could take Fred and Freda to court

t and win. Cleanly. Without breaking a sweat.” He sat up slightly, and even through the grief and th exhaustion, there was something in his voice that sharpened whenever this particular topic surfaced. “You are the Harry heiress, Arel. You shouldn’t be sitting in my apartment at ten in the morning with no job, wondering what comes next. You should be running your father’s empire, not begging to eat from people’s tables.”

“You can’t fight a man like Fred easily,” I said. “I’ve tried twice and gotten nowhere. And besides ” I exhaled, “-I’ve waited fourteen years. Four more months won’t kill me.”

–

–

“Four more months.” He sat up fully now, turning to face me, genuinely unsettled. “And what exactly do you think is going

to be left for you in four months, Arel? They have taken everything the company, the estates, the properties, every single thing your father built and they did it while you were still a child and couldn’t stop them. They pushed you out of

subject got its your own house last week!” His voice was rising as it always did when this hands on him. “And you’re sitting here talking about four more months. You think Fred is just standing in for you and keeping your inheritance warm while we wait for you to turn twenty–five?”

I smiled, “Don’t worry. I’m sure there’s a reason my father wanted me to turn twenty–five before I get access to his will and all of that.” I shrugged, sounding as stupid as I should. “Maybe, just like you said, Fred is keeping things warm for me.”

“Christ, Arel-”

He was winding up for the full philosophical treatment – I could see it assembling behind.

the professor references already forming — when the knock came.

his

eyes,

We both went completely still and looked at each other.

“Expecting someone?” I asked.

“I’ve never given anyone my new address,” He replied, and the slight panic on his face matched exactly what I was feeling in my chest. He stood up slowly. “Don’t worry. I’ll check.”

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“Be careful,” I whispered loudly, leaning forward from the couch to see past him as he

crossed to the door.

Elgin pulled the door open, and I watched him tilt his head upward to look at whoever was standing on the other side, which told me everything I needed to know about the size of the person before a single word was spoken.

The silence that followed was a bit intense, and I wondered why no one was saying anything until the person finally spoke.

“Where is Kisarel?”

My heart screeched to a stop.

AD