“Cut the crap! I don’t know what games you’re playing, but I can assure you that it’s not going to end in your favor, so you better get your head straight! You better don’t bother Celsie anymore with your incessant calls and shameless lies,” Benne warned, and then he hung up before she could respond.
Once he hung up the call, he dialed another number and it connected almost immediately, “I want you to keep an eye on Anita Miller. I want to know everything she is up to. By everything, I mean every single detail. I want to know who she meets and talks with. I want to even know what she is thinking about, I don’t care how you do it, but get on it immediately,” Benne ordered and hung up once he was done giving the instruction.
Having dealt with that he got out of the car and dipped his phone into the pocket of his trousers as he headed for his private elevator. As he walked his thoughts drifted to the strangers he had run into in his home.
He was going to give Harry a call once he was settled in his office, and scold him for not convincing Jade to inform him first before bringing strangers into his home. On the other hand, he knew that he couldn’t really blame Harry though. Knowing Harry, he was sure that he must have instructed Jade to give him a call, but Jade being her stubborn self must have ignored Harry’s advice.
His thoughts were broken into when his phone started vibrating in his pocket, and his steps momentarily as he reached into his pocket to take out the phone before he continued walking.
Speak about the devil, he thought when he saw that it was a call from Harry, and he received the call immediately, “I was just going to call you. Why didn’t you inform me that Jade….”
“Benne…” Harry cut in with a grave voice, shutting him up, and causing the hair on Benne’s neck to prickle with unease.
“What is wrong?” Benne asked, stopping in his tracks.. Knowing Harry, he could tell that something was very wrong, and whatever Harry was going to say wasn’t something he would like.
As Celsie headed for the elevator, she noticed the way everyone she passed by was staring at her and murmuring under their breaths. It made her feel quite uncomfortable so she tried not to meet anyone’s gaze as she kept walking.
Why were they staring at her that way? Was it because she was dating her driver, or was there something else she didn’t know about? Although she knew that dating her supposed driver was going to stir some gossip in the office, she wasn’t sure that it was bad enough to make them murmur about her in this manner, especially considering the fact that most of the ladies had shown interest in Benne at one point or the other.
Celsie stopped by the elevator and opened it. Just as she stepped into it, she noticed that the two ladies who were walking behind her and were about to take the elevator with her, quickly moved away so that she would ride the elevator alone.
“Good morning,” Celsie managed with a polite smile, but neither of them responded to her greeting as they hurried away while murmuring something under their breath.
Their action only seemed to intensify Celsie’s suspicions that something was wrong. It couldn’t just be about her relationship with Benne. What was it? She wondered as she rode the elevator up to the third floor which housed the fashion unit, instead of the seventh floor where the CEO’s office was.
She knew that whatever it was, she could find out from Amy, since Amy was not only her secretary, but was also the person she most interacted with in the company apart from Benne.
By the time the elevator door opened on the third floor to let her out, she had worked herself into a nervous mess. Her stomach was already in knots, her palms were sweaty, and she was having palpitations.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had this feeling, but it was one she had hoped to never feel again. She grimaced against the slight headache she was already beginning to feel, “Calm down, Celsie. It could be nothing serious,” she assured herself under her breath as she approached her office.
Once she stopped by the door, she reached for the doorknob but paused when she suddenly heard her name being mentioned.
“I don’t think Miss Miller is capable of something like that.” It was Amy’s voice.
“Well, you can’t always judge a book by its cover. Who knows? Maybe that’s why she is such a workaholic! She’s using it to hide her psychopathic tendencies,” Another feminine voice said.
“Thinking about it alone sends chills down my spine. I hope it isn’t true. I don’t think I will ever look at her the same way if it is true,” one of the guys in the office said.
Psychopathic tendencies? Celsie’s brows pulled together in a concerned frown as she tried to figure out what they were talking about. Just as she turned the doorknob she heard it.
“It’s not just about looking at her. I don’t want to work in the same office as a murderer!” The other female voice said, making Celsie stiffen.
Her heart skipped a beat when she heard that, and her stomach churned as she tried to process what she had just heard. Murderer? She asked herself as her vision blurred. Was this about Jamie’s death? How did they know of it? The only person she had spoken about it to recently was Benne. Benne wouldn’t do something like this to her by exposing such a painful secret, so who else could have done it? Perhaps someone from the neighborhood where she grew up knows someone working here and told the person about her past?
Was it all happening again? Would she have to deal with this one more time? Even though the court had pronounced her not guilty eight years ago, people had kept staring at her like a murderer so much so that her parents had to move them from the former neighborhood even though they had claimed it was because they didn’t want the house to keep reminding her of the night of her abduction since she seemed to jump every time she heard the sound of the doorbell.
She dropped her hand from the doorknob and reached for the wall instead to steady herself when she started feeling lightheaded.
As she tried to steady her breath she didn’t know when the tears started dropping from her eyes. One after the other the tears fell until her entire body started shaking from the force of her sob. When she heard footsteps coming from the opposite direction, she raised her hands to her mouth to muffle her sobs as she quickly dashed for the ladies’ room on that floor, since she didn’t want anyone to see her that way.
She knew that she shouldn’t be hiding. If anyone was supposed to be ashamed, it should be the lot of them for judging her when they didn’t even know the true details of what had happened eight years ago, but she knew that humans hardly cared for the truth. They only cared about the first part of the story they hear. Any other version of the story would be seen as a lame attempt by her to cover up the truth.
Once she got to the ladies’ room, she heard voices coming from inside, and it sounded like they were also talking about her, so she took a detour. The only place she could be in right now without running into anyone was the storage room on that floor, so she quickly ran into it and shut the door before giving in to the tears.
Meanwhile, Benne’s heart was pounding really fast in his ears as he took the private elevator to his office.
He needed to get Celsie out of the company before she finds out what was happening. After seeing how merely telling the story had made her go into shock, he wasn’t sure she would be able to stand it if she found out that the news was all over the net.
Immediately the elevator door opened and he stepped into his office, he didn’t bother with wearing his disguise costumes, he just walked straight to her office, and his heart sank when he realized that she wasn’t in her seat, and it seemed like she had not gotten to the office yet.
Judging by the time she left him at the parking lot and all the calls he had made in between, she should have been settled in her seat by now. So where was she? Had she probably heard of it already? But from who? He wondered and dismissed the thought since he knew that no one would be bold enough to confront her about such a thing. He was going to worry about who had started such a hateful rumor only after making such that Celsie was okay.
Once he opened the door and stepped out of the office, he looked down the hallway to see if she was still on her way and maybe had only just stopped to exchange pleasantries with someone, but the hallway was empty.
Perhaps she had decided to stop by her other office to pick up some documents? Without thinking twice about it he headed for the elevator and rode to the third floor. If he didn’t see her there, he was just going to ask the head of the security unit to check the security cameras until he found her.
Once he stepped out of the elevator, he walked in quick strides to her office, but before he could open the door he heard them speaking.
“If I was the CEO I would fire her immediately. How can such a person be the CEO’s personal assistant?” a female voice was saying.
“To think that he had stayed this whole time without a personal assistant, and of all people, the assistant he chose turns out to be a murderer! It seems the CEO has a poor taste in people.”
“Andrew! You shouldn’t say something like that about the CEO!” Amy snapped at him.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.