Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 164

15:00 Fri, Aug 7

Trapped By My Ruthless Boss

Chapter 164

KISAREL

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My blood ran cold, and my heart was slamming in a way I knew, even through the terror, could not be good for the baby.

I tried to swallow through the shock. I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe.

Oceans?

How?

–

The events of that night came tearing back the darkness, the shouting, the gunshot, and the broad back of a man who never once turned around.

I had only ever seen him from behind. I pushed him the moment I saw a gun aimed at him, and then wet heat spread through my dress – and I never saw his face.

But… How… Did he even know this? Did he know I was the one who saved him?

“No.” I shook my head, and kept shaking it, as if the motion could throw the truth off me. “No. That’s not true. It’s not-”

And then it all began to arrive all at once, piece after piece.

The watch. The initials. O.S.

Oceans Stark.

It had never once crossed my mind. Why would it?

I’d spent years by his side, and never for once did it ever occur to me that he might be the man.

A sob escaped me, and Vanessa laughed.

It was the first true laugh I had heard from her all day, and it was terrible, because it was full of real delight.

Her years of patience were finally paying out, and she leaned back in her chair and drank the look on my face like it was the finest thing she’d ever been served.

She was so enjoying this.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, I have imagined this moment for so long, and trust me when I say it is way better than I did. Look at you. Look at your face.” She pressed a hand to her chest, actually breathless with it. “Do you understand it now? You saved his life, and your reward was serving as his PA and watching him get married to someone else. How ironic.”

She laughed again. “And the watch, Kisarel. My God, the watch. How dumb can you be? You carried the one thing that could have led you to the truth, and you let that spoiled cousin of yours bully it out of your hands.

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Trapped By My Ruthless Boss

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You just let it go. Like you let everything else go” She wiped her eye, still smiling. “And she marched it straight to him, told your story, and got a ring for it. Such a pathetic fool”

Each sentence went in and found something to break.

Moon…

The watch. The engagement.

‘I owe her my life…

I replayed how many times I had heard him say those words when it should have been mine, all of it. Instead, every second of his gratitude was spent on the wrong woman.

“And him.” Vanessa’s smile turned brighter. “He had the scar under his nostrils, yet he never wondered. Never thought twice about it. He never even looked at the scar on his quiet little assistant and did the simplest arithmetic on earth.” She tilted her head. “Do you know why? Because men like Oceans Stark don’t care about women like you. You were just for pleasure. You were a warm, convenient body when the nights got long. His whore, Kiss – let’s use the true word, since we’re telling the truth today – his whore with his own miracle carved into her shoulder, and he never. Once. Saw you.”

“Stop.” My voice came out in pieces. “Please-”

“Why? It’s the truth. You’ve been starving for the truth your whole life, and I’m the only one who ever brought you any.” She stood, unhurried, and smoothed her coat, and when she looked down at me, all the laughter drained away and left an ugly scowl. “You’re going to die today, Kiss.”

The whole room tilted sideways.

My heart resumed its marathon. Panic threatened to eat me whole.

“That’s the last of it. The end of the story. I’m sorry it’s you I have been sorry since the day I met you; you have no idea how inconvenient it’s been, liking you – but the account has to balance. He took my whole world with one certain, arrogant choice. So he loses his whole world the same way. You. The child. Everything he loves, in one night, because of what he did.” She said it without remorse. “Payment. For his sins – and for yours.”

“Mine?” The terror was everywhere now, in my hands, my chest, my stomach, and under it, from somewhere I didn’t know I still owned, anger was clawing upward. “What sins? What did I ever do to you? I stepped in front of a gun for a stranger. That’s my crime. That’s the whole of it—”

“Yes.” She crouched in front of me, level with my eyes, gentle as a nurse. “That’s exactly it. That’s the sin. Ten seconds, and eleven years of my work gone, and five more years to rebuild it – I spent five years watching him grow richer and colder and more untouchable, all on the life you bought him. You signed for it, Kiss. You underwrote the monster.” She reached out and tucked my hair behind my ear, and I flinched. She didn’t seem to notice or mind. “So tell me, since you’re sorry. What exactly are you sorry for – saving his life? Or finding out what it was you saved?”

I was quiet, staring at her in disbelief.

She turned away from me, picked up her phone from the crate by the door, and her thumb moved across the

screen.

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Trapped By My Ruthless Boss

D:

Given how calmly she did it, one would think she was just confirming a dinner reservation.

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“Now,” she said, and her voice came back to its old warmth. “Enough about the past. I think it’s time we brought our beloved man into the conversation. Don’t you? He should hear how the story ends. He’s earned

it.”

Then she dialed his line.

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