Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 145

Chapter 145

ANS

rest of her words didn’t mach me quick enough. Slowly they gradually began to seep into my head

My new PA

My new fucking PA.

The words went in, arranged themselves, and still wouldn’t make sense.

The air around me thinned until every breath had to fight its way into my lungs. My hand closed at my side, so slow thật felt each finger lock in its place. If I moved recklessly fast, something was going to break, and it was not going to be a pos Nadine took half a step back.

Good girl. She knew how to read the room when danger was standing in front of her.

Who signed the transfer?” I asked, barely holding my leash.

..I’m sorry, sit, but…”

Wrong.” I cut her off, stepping so close to her that we were just inches apart. “Who the fuck handed you your employment Better?”

Mr. Harold.”

My ears rang at the mention of his name, and for a second I couldn’t hear anything past the sound my own blood was making.

closed my eyes and took in long, calming breaths because I wasn’t familiar with what my chest was doing. I couldn’t fucking breathe.

had to put a hand in my pocket to stop it from shaking, and even then I felt the tremor run up my arm.

I opened my eyes and turned my gaze back to Nadine.

She looked like she wished the floor would open.

“Do not touch anything else on that desk,” I instructed.

“Yes, sir.”

“It isn’t yours,” I added. “It can never be yours.”

“Yes, sir.” She whispered.

“Be gone before I’m back.”

She nodded so fast it hurt to watch.

I turned and walked out of the office before I’d do something the young lady would regret.

49-44

I didn’t knock on Harold’s door. I put my hand flat against it and shoved it open hard enough that it hit the wall.

He was at his desk.

201

He looked up, and the one thing that told me everything was that he didn’t look surprised. He didn’t even ask what was wrong. He set his pen down slowly, like he’d been expecting this exact storm to walk through his door and had braced himself to stand in it.

“Oceans.”

Tell me I’m wrong.” I shut the door behind me because the next phase of this conversation didn’t need an audience. “Tell me there’s a woman sitting at Kisarel’s desk because of some clerical mistake, Harold. Tell me, and I’ll go fix it, and we’ll forget this.”

Sit down.” He gestured at the seat across from him.

I will not fucking sit down.” I crossed to his desk. “Where is she? What did you do?”

I let her go,” he said. “Friday’s situation made it untenable. The board, Fred’s ultimatum, the optics that were already spreading through this building – it had become a liability we couldn’t carry. You were unreachable. A decision had to be made. So I made it.”

The room tilted.

“I was in Detroit keeping my cousin alive

know

“Then you know I wasn’t dead”

“No,” he said carefully. “But you were absent during a crisis here

I took one more step forward, but he sat still without even flinching.

Brave but stupid

“You left your engagement party for another man’s wife to be, Oceans. What did you think would happen Fred gre pat on the back while the board claps for you?”

I ignored him, jumping to the very question that determined who lived and who didn’t at this moment

“By whose authority was she removed?”

There was silence.

And there it was… The one second of silence that told me exactly how ugly this was.

“By whose authority, Harold?”

His eyes held mine. “Mine.”

Something in the room changed so drastically it was almost physical.

For a moment, Harold looked at me like he was measuring the distance from my hand to his throat.

Smart man.

“I did what had to be done while you were unavailable.”

I planted both hands on his desk and leaned over it until we were just a breath apart.

“You signed papers removing the woman I told every single one of you not to touch.”

His voice dropped. “I protected the company. “And the board was not going to wait for you to reappear while Fred Harry threatened a governance complaint, workplace misconduct review, and a public relations disaster after you disappeared from your own engagement.”

I smiled, and Harold’s eyes narrowed because he knew me well enough to know that expression was worse than anger.

“So Fred barked, and you rolled over.”

“I made a containment decision.”

“You had no fucking right,” I whispered with my eyes closed.

“I had every right, and you know I did.” He stood up, and his voice finally rose. “That’s the part that’s eating you up. Not that I overstepped – that I did the exact thing the old you would have done. The Oceans Stark who built this place would have fired her himself before lunch and never lost a wink. I just did it for you, because you’ve lost your mind over a woman, and one of us still has to think with something other than-”

Before he could finish his words or brace himself, I struck a blow directly to the side of his throat.

Harold went down hard against the edge of his desk with one hand flying to his throat as he let out a strangled cough.

His chair rolled back and hit the cabinet behind him.

I stood over him with my fist still clenched and my own breath coming out of my lungs in slow, ugly pulls. The part of me that should have regretted it was nowhere in the room.

Harold’s eyes watered as he forced air through his throat. He looked up at me, and the look in his eyes was more disappointment than shock.

“You’re proving my point,” he rasped.

I smiled. He should not have said that.

I reached down, caught the front of his shirt, and dragged him upright until his back hit the cabinet. A framed award dropped from the shelf beside him and shattered on the floor. Harold’s jaw tightened, but he did not try to pull away.

Good.

He knew better than to turn this into a fight.

This was nowhere near a fight.

This was a fucking correction.

Chapter 375

“Pray your action doesn’t ruin anything, Harold. Otherwise, you’d be shocked what little our years of friendship could

to me.

I let go of him so hard he stumbled into the wall

stopped walking at the door with my hand on the knob

Every part of me that was still functioning told me to keep walking. But there was one thing I needed from him before 1 lore this city apart looking for her.

‘Was she dismissed in person?” I asked from over my shoulder.

Harold was quiet long enough to make me look back at him.

“She was escorted out this morning.” His voice was scraped raw

I nodded slowly and turned away.

“And, just so you know,” His words stopped me.

“What?” I turned my gaze to him again.

“The firing.” He swallowed, and it visibly cost his bruised throat to do it. “From where she’s standing, there’s only one man who could have done this to her – and it isn’t me. It isn’t Fred, either, nor is it the board.” He held my eyes. “It’s you.

The moment he said those words, the rage I felt went out of me all at once. I felt it drain, and what it left behind was way worse – it was a flat, cold hollow with nothing in it to hold onto except fear.

I had lost her…

I knew it deep down…

She’d spent all her life thinking she was disposable, and now, she got even more proof from the same man who had promised never to dispose of her. Me.

She didn’t know about the war I’d been fighting for her.

And now, the only visible handwriting on the wall here was fucking mine. And she might never let me erase or correct it.

Fuck.

“So you might want to save yourself the headache of going after her now.” He added.

I was already numb.

I tried to feel something… Anything at all, but I had exhausted my emotions.

So, I just nodded and opened the door, ignoring Harold’s last words to me:

“Whatever you’re about to do think. For once in your life, think before you ruin yourself again.”

But his words didn’t register.

I was already far gone.

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