All Chapters of CEO, Take Your Filthy Money and Get Out: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Ten minutes earlier.Inside the VIP room, eight-year-old Emma lay quietly on the bed with a thick white bandage wound around her forehead, her face drained of color from the blood loss. The heart monitor beeped its flat, steady note.Regina stood at the bedside, looking at her daughter on the bed with raw concern. "Why did you speak up for that woman today? Look at how much blood Emma lost. You should never have let her leave. She belongs at the police station!"Asher frowned. "Calm down, Regina. Eleanor has taken care of Emma for eight years. I don't think she would have done it deliberately.""Deliberately?" Regina looked at him, then at Emma on the bed. "Your daughter is lying here unconscious and you are still making excuses for the person who put her there? Asher, do you have any conscience as a father at all? That woman has you so wrapped around her finger that you don't care whether your own daughter lives or dies."Asher looked at Emma, small and weak on the bed, and his chest

By the time Eleanor reached the Grayson estate, the rough asphalt had torn through her thin slippers. Blisters on both feet had burst and bled, but the sharper pain sat behind her ribs. Each step home had stripped away another excuse she had made for Asher, until even her hope felt rubbed raw.Eleanor did not turn on the hall lights. She went straight up to the second floor and into the master bathroom. She sat down on the bathroom chair, turned on the shower, and let the warm water run over the dirt and the cuts on her feet. The water hit the broken blisters and the pain spiked, but nothing showed on her face.She lifted her head, and her eyes settled on the huge wedding photograph on the wall.They had gone back and taken that picture on their first anniversary. Eleanor looked at herself in the white dress, so happy, so certain that she had the best husband in the world.She remembered that day clearly. The photographer's requests were endless, but Asher never showed a flicker of imp

The next morning Asher bent over the bed and gave Eleanor his usual good-morning kiss. She kept her eyes closed and pretended to be asleep until his footsteps faded beyond the door.Not long after he left, the tutoring agency called. A family in a secluded part of the city's wealthiest district needed a piano teacher that afternoon and was offering an unusually high rate.Eleanor thought of the checks lying on the nightstand and accepted at once. In eight years she had never touched a dollar of that money except what went to Daisy's treatment, which she could never have covered alone. Everything else she lived on she had earned with her own two hands, and she intended to keep it that way.The address led to a gated estate far grander than she had expected. Before she could check it twice, the door opened from the inside."Ms. Eleanor! You came!" Little Leo stood in the doorway with his whole face lit up."Leo?" Eleanor stared at him in surprise. "What are you doing here?""This is my g

At the Grayson estate, Regina stood in the living room with a fistful of cancellation notices, she slammed the papers onto the coffee table. "Damien Montgomery ordered every sponsor out and threatened every gallery in the city. He has no reason on earth to come after me. It has to be Eleanor."She did not raise her voice, but the anger was there. "I don't know what she offered him, but she told him to destroy me. For all you know, she has been sleeping with him."Asher stood across from her, his brows locked together. "Regina. That's enough. Don't say things like that."Regina looked at him for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was low."Now you're defending her? Asher, have you forgotten the three hardest years of building that company? We were in that garage in Palo Alto with no heat and I ate expired canned food beside you. I didn't buy myself one new piece of clothing for two whole years so you could buy servers. I lay in a run-down public hospital in labor for twelve

Eleanor rushed out of the Grayson estate and took a cab straight to San Francisco Central Hospital.The VIP cardiopulmonary intensive care wing on the top floor of that hospital was where her sister Daisy had been living. Eleanor had barely reached the nurses' station when the head nurse came out to meet her, beaming."Mrs. Grayson, you're here!" The head nurse took her hand warmly, full of admiration. "Our whole department owes Mr. Grayson our thanks. He had his assistant donate ten million dollars to the hospital account just this morning, earmarked for upgrading the equipment in intensive care, and every one of us had our bonus doubled. Your husband is a rare kind of philanthropist, and the most perfect husband there is. He truly loves you. He has never once counted the cost of getting Daisy the best treatment available."Eleanor listened to all this praise and pulled her mouth into a very bitter smile. "There's no need to thank us. It's what he should be doing."Every word of prais