All Chapters of Thrown Out, Claimed By The CEO.: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

7 45 AM Floor 50Elma’s desk had a new nameplate. Lead Vendor Compliance. No temp. No assistant. Just her name. The folder on her desk was thicker than before. Ten departments. Forty two vendors. Three months of data to review. Spreadsheets, contracts, email chains, delivery logs. It smelled like paper and printer ink.Nathan walked in with two coffees. Black. No sugar. He remembered. You look like you’re planning to move in, he said.I might, Elma said, taking the coffee. Someone has to make sure this never happens again. Nathan sat on the edge of her desk. He didn’t sit often. When he did, it meant he wasn’t in a hurry.You know they’re watching you right, he said.Let them, Elma said. If I’m doing it right, they won’t find anything. Nathan nodded. Good. Because they will look. People don’t like being told their process is broken. Especially when they were the ones who built it.Elma opened the first folder. Finance. The tabs were color-coded. She’d done that herself at 9 P

The courtroom was cold. Not from the AC, but from the kind of silence that settles right before a verdict drops.Elma sat in the back row, hands clenched tight in her lap. Nathan was beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. A steady, quiet weight that kept her grounded. She didn’t have to be here. The subpoena had been withdrawn weeks ago. But she chose to be. Because if Catherine was going to face this, Elma was going to watch. Not for revenge. For closure.The doors at the back opened with a soft groan. Catherine walked in.No designer heels. No PR team. Just a plain navy suit that hung loose on her frame like she’d lost weight in the last month. No makeup. Hair pulled back tight. No lawyers walking ahead of her this time. She looked smaller than Elma remembered. Older. Catherine’s eyes swept the room. They didn’t stop on Elma. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she wouldn’t.“All rise,” the clerk said. The judge entered, robe settling around him like a verdict already written.T

9:10 AM | Floor 50Monday came quiet. No emergencies flashing red on the compliance dashboard. No flagged audits in her inbox. No urgent calls from Floor 12 about a missing contract. No 6 AM message from Richard with “We have a problem.” Elma set her bag down and let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. For the first time in months, Monday didn’t feel like a fight waiting to start. It felt like a normal day. The kind of day she used to have before Floor 12 and vendor fraud and 2 AM spreadsheets became her life. She opened her laptop, fingers moving out of habit more than urgency. Email. Calendar. Vendor tracker. All green. All boring. All correct. Then she saw it. A calendar invite. *Subject:* Strategic Expansion Meeting *Time:* 2:00 PM *Location:* Boardroom *Organizer:* Richard Hayes Elma frowned. That wasn’t a routine audit meeting. Strategic Expansion didn’t show up unless something big was happening. The last time she’d seen that title, i

8:45 AM – Conference Room CThe room was full of managers from every department in the building. Forty-two chairs, every one of them filled. The air smelled faintly of burnt coffee and printer toner, the kind of smell that clung to corporate spaces at the start of a long day. The AC hummed too loud, fighting against the body heat of a room packed with skeptical people who had better things to do.Some sat with crossed arms, posture closed, eyes skeptical. Legal had three people in the front row, all of them with notebooks open to blank pages like they were preparing to document a mistake. Finance sat two rows back, heads bent over laptops, occasionally glancing up as if checking if the presentation was worth pausing their spreadsheets for. Procurement was quiet, but their expressions said they’d heard promises like this before. Operations had Director Patel in the center seat, arms resting on the table, watching everything.A few looked at Elma like they were waiting for her to slip u

8:15 AM – Lagos Regional OfficeElma arrived a day early to oversee the Lagos rollout. She hadn’t slept well on the flight down—too much adrenaline, too many contingencies running through her head. Lagos had always felt faster than headquarters, louder, less patient with excuses. If the system broke here, it would break everywhere.The regional office was smaller than headquarters. Two floors instead of sixty, one elevator that always smelled faintly of fried plantain from the canteen on floor one. But the energy was the same mix of curiosity and doubt. People lingered in the hallway when they saw her, trying to figure out if she was here to help or to police them.Linda was already there setting up the training room on floor two. She’d arrived at 6 AM to test the projector and arrange the chairs in a U-shape instead of rows. She said it made people less defensive. She was probably right.James had the compliance portal tested and ready on three laptops. He’d stayed up until midnight