All Chapters of Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss: Chapter 41 - Chapter 48

48 Chapters

Chapter 41

KISAREL."Kisarel Harry. It's been a long time coming..."The strange words from that strange voice replayed in my head, doing all it could to compete with all the emotions I was drowning in.When I answered the strange call in the hallway while holding my breath in order not to cry into the phone, those were the only words that filtered into my ears before the call ended.I tried calling back countless times, but to no avail. And no matter how hard I tried to brush it off so I could focus on the tears that wouldn't stop pouring from my eyes, it still always managed to make its way to the front of my mind.My eyes were so sore from squeezing them too hard for the past two hours that I had no more tears to spare.Slowly, my embarrassment turned into pure, untamed anger.Who the hell did he think he was?Why the hell did he think he could treat people the way he liked and get away with it just like that, because he was the Almighty Oceans Stark?No. He wasn't getting away with this one.

Chapter 42

OCEANS."I quit..."I had been hearing those two words on repeat for the past three hours, and they showed absolutely no signs of stopping.She had a gift for this. A specific, infuriating gift for walking out of a room and leaving more of herself behind in it. She always left something that was sure to stay and linger and torment my every thought.She fucking left the job. So, tell me why her words still remained in my fucking office?"Fuck." I cursed.Nonsense. Again.I crumpled the paper on my table, threw it, and watched it join the thirty-five others scattered across the office floor.Despite my efforts, it was no different. Still the same meaningless scrawl I had been producing for the past three hours every time I tried to work through the Venzela analysis.It felt like I was in a loop, and I was consistently doing the same thing over and over again since she walked out that door.Fine. She fucking quit. That's her loss. Not mine. But why the fuck was I this affected about it?

Chapter 43

OCEANS.Harold was treading a dangerous path, and he fucking knew it."I'm asking because I genuinely want to understand." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked at me with a careful, unafraid attention. "You buried her. You buried her that very night — the same night it happened — and you have never once spoken her name since, never grieved her properly, never spoke about what happened, never allowed anyone around you to acknowledge that she existed, and you built everything that came after on top of that. This office. This version of yourself. All of it." He paused. "And we both know that. We have always both known that.""Stop talking." The words came out absolutely quietly.He didn't stop."And now you are sitting here, unable to do anything productive, and a PA's name still live in the staff directory because you cannot bring yourself to close that file. And you want to look me in the eye and tell me this is all normal and professional?" He shook his head slowly. "Oce

Chapter 44

KISAREL."Can you stop already?" I pressed my palm against my forehead as I reached for the coffee pot."Non." Elgin followed me into the kitchen without missing a beat, barefoot, still in his oversized sleep shirt. He had obviously woken up this morning and decided that today was the day he was going to finish the conversation, regardless of whether I wanted to have it. "Not until you actually listen to me. And I mean listen, Arel. Not just hear and dismiss.""I am listening," I said, pouring my coffee without looking at him. "I have been listening since last night. I have listened so thoroughly that I could recite everything you've said back to you in chronological order.""Then why aren't you seeing it?""Because it doesn't make sense, Elgin." I turned to face him, mug in both hands. "You're talking about Ocean Stark. Cold, ruthless, unfeeling, heartless, gets-out-of-bed-in-the-morning-and-chooses-violence Ocean Stark. The man who took me apart in front of people. The man who calle

Chapter 45

OCEANS.I kept my eyes on my phone.Three sixteen PM.For the better part of the one hour I sat in that conference room, I had developed a routine so consistent it had practically become scheduled.Pick up the phone. Look at the screen like it were a fucking ticking bomb. Register the absence of what I was yearning for. Place the phone face down on the table. And pick it up again.Rinse and repeat.For one hour.She still hadn't replied.Fuck.I picked up my pen and looked at Hargrove, the client across the table. He was a careful man in his sixties who managed a private equity portfolio that Stark Sovereign Capital had been courting for the better part of three months.I gave him the version of my attention that I had available right now, which was not the version he deserved and not the version I was known for delivering in settings like this one.She hadn't reported to work, either... I returned to my thoughts, keeping half my attention in the room.I tapped my pen against the edge

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 sign I should be happy about, or a bad sign I should be even more concerned about.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 complete

Chapter 47

OCEANS.I barely caught any sleep. I have never had a night as long as this one in my entire life.I was at war all through the night with different versions of myself, and none of them were winning cleanly.The version that kept pushing me to call Reeves at three in the morning just to know what progress he had made.The version that had me three taps away from dialing the police and reporting a missing person before I caught myself and put the phone face down on the nightstand, while staring at the ceiling and asking myself some very serious questions about what exactly I thought I was doing.The one that made me search her up on all the social media platforms to see the kind of friends she keeps and if she had made any posts that could disclose her whereabouts...And there. That's the version of myself I allowed to take the lead.I spent almost an hour scrolling through every social media platform I knew of. It wasn't difficult to find her profile each time. Not many ladies bear ra

Chapter 48

OCEANS.We sat in an uncomfortable silence since the moment her 'male' friend excused us and went upstairs.And every single word I had rehearsed on the drive over vanished the moment we were left alone with room to actually use them.Fuck.I'd never been this speechless around anyone before. I had always had the right words for every situation. Always known exactly which ones to reach for and exactly how to deliver them for maximum effect.Using the right words to describe the exact way I felt now would be an embarrassment to me.I could never use the word 'nervous' to describe how I fucking felt sitting on the edge of a couch in a stranger's apartment with both elbows on my knees and my fingers laced together, staring at a patch of floor that had done nothing to deserve this level of attention, completely and humiliatingly blank.I couldn't even bring myself to look at her.Looking at her right now felt like the kind of thing that would undo whatever thin thread of composure I was s

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