Chapter 4
521 Words
"Fine, I will leave now."
I turned and walked back to the front desk. Victoria followed right behind me like she was guarding a prisoner. "Hurry up. Don't try to stall. Everything on your desk is company property. You're not taking a single thing with you."
I sat down slowly and pulled my personal storage box from under the desk. I never kept much there. A few spare jackets, some handwritten notebooks. And the last thing my father had left me.
Victoria pinched her nose in disgust. "These old notebooks are growing mildly. Throw them out. Who knows what bacteria are on them."
She kicked my storage box over.
An old watch rolled out. Victoria's eyes lit up. She bent down and snatched it up. "Nice watch. Pretty good quality for a fake. Where would a secretary get something like this? Taking bribes now, are we?"
My voice had gone ice-cold. "Put it down, Ms. Hale. That is not something you get to touch."
Victoria scoffed. "A corrupt ex-employee thinks she can yell at me?"
She opened her fingers. The watch slipped from her palm and hit the marble floor.
A sharp c***k. I stared at the shattered glass on the floor, a high-pitched ringing in my ears.
It was the watch my father had handed me himself, right before he died. The last piece of him I had left in this world.
For ten years—through all the all-nighters, all the client dinners where I'd had to drink on Julian's behalf—I'd protected that watch. Never a single scratch.
"Oops. Not my fault, though. You should've kept it put away. It's just a fake. Who cares if it breaks?" Victoria showed zero remorse and rolled her eyes.
Julian frowned at the broken watch on the floor. "Vicky didn't mean to. Calm down."
Victoria clung to Julian's arm, looking wounded. "Julian, the way she looked at me just now… it was scary."
As my expression grew colder and colder, Julian's face darkened. "Evelyn, it's just a watch. It's not worth much. I'll pay you back. Now apologize to Vicky. You're scaring her."
I knelt down and tucked the broken watch into my pocket. "She broke my thing. And you want me to apologize to her?"
I looked up. My gaze was absolutely frigid.
"What else? You're fired. What do you think you're going to do?" Julian said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I stood up slowly. "Don't bother paying for it. Because you can't."
My voice was quiet, but Julian took an involuntary step backward.
I picked up my storage box and walked out of the office I'd worked in for ten years—without looking back.
The debt I owed Robert for saving my father's life… we're even now.
I stepped through the front doors of Grant Tower. Then I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in ten years.
It rang once. Then Sean Sterling picked up.
"Mr. Sterling," I said.
An aged man's voice came through the line, trembling with emotion. "Ms. Carter? You finally called!"
- Writer
