All Chapters of Hooked On My Boss: Chapter 31 - Chapter 37

VALENTINA The silence in the room felt like a physical weight crushing my lungs.My grandfather’s empire. My legacy. My name.All of it flashed before my eyes, tethered to the cold, sterile tiles at the foot of Charles Thorne’s bed.Kneel before me and beg, Valentina.The words echoed relentlessly in my head.Just do it.A desperate voice whispered from somewhere in the back of my mind.Kneel. Secure the votes. Save the company. Ruin him later.Against every instinct screaming at me to preserve what little dignity I had left, I slowly unclasped my white-knuckled fists.My heart pounded violently as I pushed myself out of the velvet armchair.Charles and his parents watched me in silence.My legs felt almost numb as I took a single step toward the bed, my eyes fixed on the floor as I prepared to lower my knees onto the cold tile.Charles's smirk widened into a triumphant sneer.Before my knees could bend, the doors swung open.My head whipped toward the entrance.Roman stepped into th

VALENTINAI kept asking myself the same question over and over until it stopped sounding like a question and started sounding like an accusation.Why Roman?Why did one man take up so much space in my chest?Why did I think about him so often that it had stopped feeling like longing and started feeling like an irritation I couldn't scratch away from beneath my skin?Why were my fingers hovering over his name in my contacts right now, at eight o'clock at night, for no reason I could justify to myself?Why did I want so badly to call him?I flipped my phone face down against the sheets and exhaled sharply, as if that alone could force the feeling back down where it belonged.I lay back and stared at the ceiling.By tomorrow, I would be legally married to Charles.My uncles would have nothing left to threaten me with. Everything I'd spent the last week fighting for would finally, finally be secure.I should have felt calm.Instead, something restless and wrong seemed to crawl beneath my

VALENTINAStay.One word shouldn't have had the power to undo me the way it did.Yet standing there in Roman Calloway's living room, with tears still drying in salty trails down my cheeks, I felt something inside my chest loosen.It was like a knot I hadn't even realized I'd been carrying until that moment, finally beginning to unravel.He wanted me to stay.I nodded, unable to stop the small smile that threatened to spread across my face despite everything.Roman exhaled, a breath that sounded almost like relief. The tension in his features softened, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.For a moment, neither of us moved.We simply stood there, looking at each other in the quiet of his living room.Then Roman finally broke the silence."Let's sit." He gestured toward the couch."What did you want to tell me?" I asked as I followed him."Something you should know about me."He lowered himself onto the couch, and I sat beside him, close enough to feel the warmth still rad