All Chapters of Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss: Chapter 21 - Chapter 29

OCEANS."What the fuck is going on, Oceans?" Logan asked the moment my door clicked shut behind us."What do you mean?" I rounded the table to my seat, undoing my suit jacket."The girl. Why were you standing so close?" He gestured outside at Kisarel's office, which was demarcated by a glass wall and a door.She was just outside my office - in our office - her desk sat directly in my line of sight through the glass, which I had arranged deliberately when she was transferred to my office and had told myself at the time was purely practical. I could see her clearly from where I sat. She had her head down now, her hair falling forward over the files she was organizing, completely unaware she was being discussed."She's my personal assistant, Logan," I said, pulling the first file toward me. "We work in close proximity. That's the nature of the role.""I asked you in DC if you slept with her. You practically avoided that question." He stepped closer, planting both palms flat on my desk an

OCEANS.We waited for the door to be answered. It took a while, almost like Mr. Gerald was taking his time to decide whether to answer the door or not.The door pulled open a second before I lost my patience, and the man I'd see in the footage showed up looking a bit older. But he was dressed smartly. Just like in the footage. Button-down shirt. Pressed trousers. Good shoes. He was a man who had a knack for looking good when he was younger, I could tell.I had taken Reeves' advice about the clothes. No suit. Dark fitted trousers, a simple black shirt, nothing that announced anything or gave up my real identity. Not because I was ashamed of who I was looking for or why, but because the fewer people who could connect Ocean Stark to a six-year-old shooting investigation, the cleaner everything stayed. My name attached to this search tended to produce more noise than information, and noise was the last thing I needed right now.Plus, Oceans Stark, CEO of Stark Soverign Capital, couldn't b

KISAREL."I can do this. I can beat the time."I was still chanting it under my breath when I slammed the taxi door and hurried toward Jace's entrance, which was optimistic considering it was already 9:38 and optimism was about all I had left at this point.I had made peace with missing the ten o'clock mark somewhere between the jazz bar and the cab ride over. Eleven was still a reasonable hour. Besides, that was the original time I had asked for, which he vehemently refused to grant me.Besides, the most important thing was to be at his place for the 4am trip. It shouldn't matter when I got there."This is no longer funny, babe," Jace murmured, moving toward the small bar in the corner of the sitting room. He spoke quietly, without heat. "I didn't see any of this coming when you got this promotion.""I'm sorry, Jace. But these things happen." I settled onto the barstool and watched him pour. "You have a PA yourself. You can relate.""I don't overwork her like this." He slid the glass

KISAREL.I stirred in my sleep, feeling so exhausted, like my body had been wrung out and put back wrong.I peeled my eyes open and winced. The sharp light coming through the curtains hit me. I lay there for a second just blinking against it, waiting for my brain to catch up with the rest of me.It caught up and did its thing..."Our flight is for 4AM...""Be home at ten..."Mr. Stark's words came replaying in my head all at once, and I jerked upright so fast the headache cracked across the side of my skull like something splitting open. I ignored it completely and grabbed for my phone on the bedside table.It wasn't there.Oh, God.The light reaching me through the curtains told me all I needed to know.It was morning."No. No. No. No.""Looking for this?"Jace's voice came from across the room. I turned, and he was leaning against the vanity with his legs crossed and my phone held loosely in one hand, and he was smiling, obviously finding the situation considerably more amusing than

KISAREL."Well, well, well..." She stepped in slowly and easily, her eyes pinned to the box on the floor. "What do we have here?"I clutched the photograph tighter, knowing that one wrong move and everything I'd been protecting for years would be gone in a few seconds.Her interest seemed pinned to the contents of the box without her even looking my way.She crouched in front of me, and the first thing she picked up was the knitted socks.She held them up, turning them over in her fingers with the expression of someone handling something they found vaguely offensive. "What on earth—" She laughed. "Your parents died, and this is all you get from them. A pair of cheap, misshapen socks? That’s almost impressive."She dangled them from two fingers like they were something she'd found on the street. "No wonder you turned out like this. They didn’t even think you were worth leaving something real behind."She flung them sideways."Stop it!" I scrambled after them, snatching them off the flo