Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 165

Chapter 165

OCEANS

The restaurant was the fourth dead end in five hours.

ミ

The manager stood in his doorway in his cot, keys in hand, ready to go home to whatever google were waiting for him, and told us for the third time that yes, he remembered the blonde lady, thed bems as a few times, always paid cash, no she didn’t have a reservation history, no he didn’t know a some, was there a problem?

I got back in the car before I did something to a man whone only crime was a bad memory.

Elgin dropped into the passenger seat pulled the door hout, and didn’t say anything for a long momen. The dashboard clock said 11:52. Kisarel had been gone for nine hours.

“Reeves,” I pulled out into the road. “Tell me something

His voice came through the speakers, but it sounded flat. I didn’t need anyone to tell me he’s got nothing “Plates from the hotel camera come back to a rental under a name with no history beyond a license issued four years ago. The address is a mail drop in Queens, closed unce March We’re pulling traffic cameras on three arteries out of the district, but she moved in the seven-o’clock window, and half those cameras were looking at morning rush.

My heart was drumming fast.

“So nothing?” I asked, even though I knew the answer to that.

“So not yet.” He replied.

I took a corner hard enough to put Elgin’s hand against the door.

“Where else?” I couldn’t stop driving.

Stopping meant sitting still while a clock ran somewhere I couldn’t see. “Elgin. Where else? Think. Every time you saw her – did she ever pick the place? Did she ever mention anywhere outside the city, anywhere she’d been, anywhere she was from-

“I have given you everywhere.” His voice cracked, and I could feel the raw panic in it. “Two cafés. That restaurant. The nail place on Ninth. Every one of them somewhere she came to meet Kiss.” He turned in his seat, and in the flat afternoon light through the windscreen I could see his face was wet.

“I have known that woman for barely a month. I cannot tell you one thing about where she lives. Not a street. Not a neighborhood. Not whether she has a lease or a cat or a mother.” He pressed the heel of his hand into his eye. “Everything I know about her is a thing she said. There is nothing behind it. She is a stage set. And I dined with her and thought, ah well, she’s a bit much, but Kiss is happy-”

“Stop,” I said calmly. His words were breaking me apart.

“No! I won’t!” He turned to face me. “I should have gone with my instinct, instead of pushing Arel away. It’s all my fault.” His voice broke further. “That woman played us all. She never told us anything about herself. That

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Trapped By My Ruthless Boss

should have been the red flag. But I was too blind to see it.”

My hand tightened on the steering wheel. “Shit.”

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I had also told Kiss twice that I’d like to see this new friend of hers. But guess what? I was too fucking occupied with my own problems that it stopped crossing my mind.

I felt like an idiot. And if anything ever happens to Kiss or my baby, I’ll never be able to forgive myself.

“I told Kisarel not to trust her, and then I sulked like a child for over a week instead of doing something-”

“Elgin. Stop.” My hands were locked on the wheel, and my jaw was clenched tight. “You want to sit in that seat and hold the blame? Get in line. I have three years of standing ten feet from her without ever seeing her. You have barely a month of not liking a woman she chose over you. You can hate yourself later. So can I.” I changed lanes without looking properly, and someone honked behind us. “Right now the only thing either of us is good for is remembering something useful. So try to remember.”

It’s been eight hours. I had aircraft, a security division, more money than several small countries and a private intelligence apparatus I had built specifically so that nothing in my life would ever again be outside my reach – and I was driving in circles in broad daylight like a man who’d lost a dog.

My phone rang again, and I picked up.

“Sir,” Reeves said. “One more thing on the license-”

The console lit up.

Unknown number.

Everything in the car stopped, including the world around me. Elgin went rigid beside me.

“Reeves, stay on. Trace it.” I said to Reeves.

I answered the call and hit speaker. “This is Stark.”

Nobody replied.

The line was open, and whoever was on the other end of it said nothing at all, long enough that Elgin looked

at me.

Then, softly, I heard a voice.

“Still same old Oceans Stark. Nothing’s changed.”

I put the car into the kerb. All I remembered was the tire hitting concrete with the engine still running and my hands going numb on the wheel, because that voice had come out and reached something I had buried so deep I’d stopped believing it was still down there.

“This is not possible.” My own voice reached me from a long way off. “You’re dead.”

“Am I?” She sounded almost fond. “That’s a terrible way to greet the first woman you ever loved.”

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Trapped By My Ruthless Boss

My hand went numb around the steering wheel.

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For one sick second, I was twenty-four again, standing in a burning house with smoke inside my lungs and Vanessa screaming somewhere behind me.

Along with it came all the beautiful memories we had made together. As well as the ugly ones.

I remembered how she begged me not to make the deal that eventually destroyed all of us.

Elgin turned toward me, and his face had already gone pale.

I lifted one finger, warning him not to speak.

“Vanessa,” I whispered.

“There he is,” she said softly. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten me. I almost forgot what my name sounded like in your mouth. Feels good to hear it again.”

My stomach twisted so hard it hurt to breathe. All I could do at this point was to pray to God that Reeves was already trying to track this call.

I forced my voice to stay level.

“Put Kisarel on the phone.”

A pause followed before Vanessa sighed. “You always were impatient.”

“Put her on. Now.”

“So demanding.” Her voice remained warm. The same soft, fucking comforting voice that had deceived my Kiss. “Not even a ‘how have you been, Vanessa?’ Eleven years is a long time. Aren’t you curious?”

“I don’t give a fuck how you’ve been.” I bit out. “Put my girl on the phone. Now.”

She went quiet.

I took a deep breath to calm myself down. “Please. Just let me hear her voice. One word. I just need to know she’s-”

“She’s alive. She’s warm, she’s fed, she’s sitting in a chair five feet from me.” A pause. “She’s wearing your jacket. Did you know she kept it? All these years. Neither of you knew anything, the two of you. It would break your heart, if you had one.”

For a second I couldn’t make the words mean anything, and then they meant everything all at once.

My jacket – the one I’d put over her on that cursed night.

She’d kept it for all these years, even though the ungrateful bastard was never able to find her.

Fuck.

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Trapped By My Ruthless Boss

That stranger had been worth something to her. I had. And yet, I never said ‘thank you’ to her.

The guilt threatened to tear me apart. It was killing me inside.

I had to gather my thoughts if I ever wanted to see her again and make things right.

“What do you want?”

I heard her chuckle in the background.

“Her life for my family’s.”

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15:01 Fri, Aug 7

Trapped By My Ruthless Boss