Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 53

52

7:18 AM

I arrived at the office earlier than I normally would. I had some important contracts to review before the end of the day.

Fred and I had finally begun some legal processes now that I was set to “publicly engage” their daughter.

Fifty–one properties across the country. Luxury residential developments in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. Commercial office complexes. Retail centers. Undeveloped land parcels sitting on projections that looked better on paper than they actually were. Four hotels that were bleeding money in ways Fred had apparently never found inconvenient enough to address. Industrial warehousing. Historic buildings in Chicago that generated steady income and absolutely no excitement.

All handed into the care of SSC to manage, because he desperately wanted a seat on my board.

The greedy bastard would give up anything just to get my name attached to his portfolio, and he didn’t care what it’d cost him to get it.

I opened the first contract, read the terms, and read them again.

What I was looking at was… careless. Bloated projections, inflated valuations, and gaps that had been carefully inserted to pass as strategy if you weren’t paying attention.

But I was paying attention.

The figures sitting in the management fee structure were the kind of aggressive that told me Fred had instructed his legal team to push as far as they could and then push further, which meant that either he thought I wouldn’t notice or he thought I would notice and not push back because of what he was holding over me.

Both possibilities made the muscle in my jaw do something I couldn’t stop.

My jaw tightened as I flipped another page, scanning through columns that contradicted each other in ways that felt almost insulting.

Three of the hotel properties had been valued at figures that bore a relationship to their actual market worth that I could only describe as aspirational. The undeveloped land parcels in Arizona were listed at projections that assumed a rate of regional growth that had not materialized and showed no signs of materializing. And the retail centers – four of the six retail centers had occupancy rates buried in a footnote on page thirty–seven that directly contradicted the headline figures on page four.

“Fucking bastard.” I hissed under my breath as I put the files back down on the desk with a force that sent the rest of the stack sliding and scattered three pages across the floor, which did nothing to calm the burning quality of the rage moving through my chest.

I stood up abruptly, the chair scraping behind me, and crossed the office in a straight line toward the window as I pulled out my phone and dialed my attorney, my eyes taking in the busy street below – the taxis, the cars pulling in and out, the steady stream of people moving toward the building’s entrance as the morning shift arrived.

There was a blue taxi parked at the curb directly below. It had been sitting there longer than the others. Slightly tinted glass The engine was still running, which meant whoever was in it hadn’t finished their business yet.

My attorney picked up. “Mr. Stark-”

“Tell me you went through the valuation appendix on the Fred Harry contracts,” I said. “Page thirty–seven specifically.”

22

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16:31 Fri, May 22

Chapter 53

M

My eyes slid to the blue taxi again, and it still hadn’t moved.

My eyes narrowed slightly as I kept it in my line of sight, my attention splitting between the call and the unnecessary delay happening right outside my building. And, for no particular reason, it grated on my nerves.

…Mr. Stark?” my lawyer continued, unaware that my focus had shifted.

“Yes,” I replied absently, my gaze still on the vehicle. “Go on.”

But I wasn’t listening anymore.

The car had been there too long.

“I did review the full documentation, yes-”

“Then tell me how three hotel properties with documented occupancy rates below forty percent ended up valued at sixty- nine percent?”

Whatever staff member was sitting in that vehicle needed to make a decision about whether they were coming to work or not, because lingering in a taxi outside the building at five past eight in the morning was not a behavior I intended to

tolerate.

Nobody on my payroll should have the luxury of wasting time like that.

Fuck.

“Mr. Stark, regarding the appendix-” my attorney was saying, but I had stopped listening because the door was finally opening. Good.

I was already forming the mental note

whoever this was, whatever their name, they were getting a conversation about professional punctuality that they would not forget quickly – when the person stepped out, and every thought in my head stopped simultaneously.

What the fuck?

Kisarel?

She was wearing one of the dresses from yesterday – the red one. A little above her knees, framing her curves in a way that made me want to tell her never to wear it in public ever again.

She was fucking laughing… A real, full, unselfconscious laugh- her head tipping back slightly with it, one hand coming up to her mouth aimed at whatever the cab driver had just said to her through the open window.

Something moved violently through my chest.

“Mr. Stark?” My attorney’s voice came through the phone. “You were saying

the hotel valuations-”

She didn’t walk away from the cab,

She leaned down toward the front passenger window instead, one hand braced on the roof of the taxi, her face angled toward the driver, and said something else. And then she laughed again.

Jesus… What’s that pain in my chest?

Fuck.

My hund ughtened on the phone..

Hello Mr. Stark, are you-

22

O

16:31 Fri, May 22 M

Chapter 53

She was pulling her phone out now.

I watched her unlock the screen, lean further toward the window, and extend her arm into the vehicle. The specific. crystalline clarity of what I was watching her do arrived in my brain approximately one second before the rage did.

She was giving him her number.

A cab driver.

“Don’t do that, Kiss…” I said quietly as I watched her with that pain in my chest.

“Hello? Hello, Mr. Stark-”

The driver said something through the window. She laughed again for a third time… A third real laugh, and every single one of them was sitting in my chest like a lit match looking for something to catch.

And then, she straightened up, pulled her phone back, and gave him a bright and easy wave as she turned and walked toward the building entrance, happily.

“Hello? Mr. Stark, I’m losing you-”

I ended the call.

Because I just realized with a sickening urgency that I had to call Mr. Bernard for the second time in less than twelve hours.

୦

B

AD