Semua Bab The Secret Billionaire in Aisle 9 : Bab 51 - Bab 60

It was now or never.That thought had been echoing inside Eli’s head all morning as he paced near the stockroom door, wiping invisible lint from his shirt and pretending to check inventory reports he wasn’t reading.Callie was on the floor, walking through the weekly planogram adjustments with Brenda and Marcus. She was in full supervisor mode—efficient, sharp-eyed, focused—but every now and then, she glanced in his direction.He didn’t know if she was looking for him.Or at him.But either way, it gave him courage.Today was the day.He couldn’t wait any longer.He’d been playing this role too long—letting her grow closer to a version of him that wasn’t the full truth. And maybe she’d be angry, maybe she’d shut him out, maybe everything they’d built would shatter the moment he spoke.But he owed her honesty.Even if it meant losing her.He waited until after the team check-in, once th

The storm didn’t come in with thunder.It crept in quietly—beneath flickering fluorescent lights, between customer service calls and mispriced displays—taking the shape of quiet questions Callie could no longer ignore.Something about Eli didn’t line up.Not anymore.Not after all the missing inventory records, the phantom logins, the brief moments when he knew too much about operations, and—most damning of all—the way he kept almost telling her something before pulling back.She wanted to believe it was nothing. That she was overthinking. That her instincts were fogged by whatever this thing was between them—this flirtation, this connection, this unspoken current that had slowly drawn her in.But she knew better.The closer she got to Eli, the more her gut whispered, Something’s off.And today, she was done ignoring that voice.---It started with an excuse.“I’ll stay late tonig

The problem with suspicion was that it never let you rest.Even when you tried to move on, it whispered in the back of your mind, tapping at your conscience like a leak in the ceiling—slow, persistent, impossible to ignore.Callie had been trying for days to shut that voice down. She told herself to focus on inventory reports, team scheduling, and the logistics of the upcoming promotional event Corporate had dumped in their laps.But even as she counted floor decals and coached Naomi through display assembly, her mind circled back to Eli.More specifically, what he wasn’t saying.It had been four days since she cornered him in the office. Four days since he stood there, silent, when she’d laid everything bare.And still, he hadn’t told her anything.But he didn’t deny it either.That was the part that stuck with her.No lies. No excuses. Just quiet guilt that looked a lot like confirmation.Cal

Eli Whitaker had faced board meetings in London, regulatory panels in Geneva, and once, a hostile investor who tried to sabotage the European acquisition deal with a single doctored spreadsheet.But nothing—absolutely nothing—rattled him quite like the quiet precision in Callie King’s voice when she said, “Let’s talk about your goals.”He should have seen it coming.The entire setup had been too clean. The clipboard. The official review template. The presence of not just one, but two supervisors. And Callie’s posture—straight-backed, perfectly neutral, as if she weren’t secretly dissecting every answer he gave under a microscope.Eli knew the trap when he saw it.The difference was—he walked into it anyway.The moment he stepped out of that office, Eli kept his face neutral as he returned to the floor.He passed Naomi in aisle five, who looked up from a half-stocked toy display and grinned. “Survive your review?”

Callie didn’t usually linger after a shift.She was a woman of routines—close the registers, check final reports, lock the stockroom, secure the back office. Out by 9:15. Maybe 9:30 if Eli had done something inexplicably chaotic with the barcode system again.But that night, she sat in the breakroom long after the last staff member had clocked out, her cup of vending machine hot chocolate cooling slowly in her hands.The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The clock on the wall ticked, relentless and even.Still, she sat.Because something had shifted.And she didn’t know what to do with it.The inventory check had gone off without a hitch—numbers aligned, seasonal displays prepped, and not one misplaced console unit. Eli had worked silently, efficiently. No jokes. No smirks.Just… presence.He had stood beside her like the Eli she used to know—the one who gave her sarcastic nicknames and grinned like a