Chapter 50
Chapter Fifty
I considered calling in sick on Monday, but I knew Neil would see straight through me. Besides, I couldn’t avoid him forever. Better to get it over with.
My heart thumped as I entered my office. The room was quiet. Neil’s door was ajar, but I didn’t dare peek inside. I tiptoed to my desk, hoping to delay the inevitable confrontation a little longer.
Just when I had convinced myself Neil hadn’t heard me enter, he emerged. He was dressed and groomed to perfection as usual, yet something about his demeanour seemed frayed. He looked at me with hard eyes, his mouth set in a stern line. “Good morning, Amelia. Can we speak in my office?”
So, we’re back to Amelia again.
I tried to stall. “We’re meeting with finance in fifteen minutes?—”
“This won’t take long.”
His stony expression said he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He made a head-jerking action that told me to come with him. Now .
I suppressed a shudder as I followed him into his office. He closed the door with a deliberate click. “Take a seat.”
I obeyed, perching on the edge of the couch. Neil continued to stand. I opened my mouth to explain my side of the story before he had a chance to reprimand me, but my tongue felt thick and clumsy, making me stumble over my words. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened. I just felt close to you… I don’t know what came over me.”
Neil remained shuttered. “I crossed a line. I invited you into my home—more than once. I invited you for dinner. That was negligent and an abuse of my position as your employer. If you want to report this to HR, please do so. I will accept any punishment that’s handed to me.”
I gaped. “What? No, that’s absurd! You did nothing wrong.”
Neil frowned, his forehead creasing. “Don’t make excuses for me. I manipulated you.”
“No, you didn’t. Why are you acting like I had no agency in this?”
“Amelia, please?—”
“I wanted to kiss you!” I blurted. It came out louder and more forceful than I had intended, and I slapped my hand over my mouth in shock.
Neil appeared to consider my outburst for a second before dismissing it with a shake of his head. “Regardless, whatever this is, it has to stop now. It just can’t happen. Even if I wasn’t your boss, it can’t happen.”
His rejection stung, but I pressed my case. “Why not? What would be stopping us? Hypothetically speaking.”
Neil sighed, touching his forehead as if warding off an oncoming headache. “I’m not a good man, Amelia.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Oh, please. Don’t be so na?ve. I’ve done things. Terrible things. You don’t get to be as rich as I am while being a good person.” His voice was bitter, laced with self-loathing.
“But you are good! What does money have to do with anything?”
“Everything. Money, power, and control. I should never have allowed you to get so close to me. I’ve already endangered you enough as it is.”
I strained to understand where this was coming from. “Are you talking about what happened in Singapore? Is that what you mean? Because Daniel hasn’t contacted me or done anything since then. I think he’s given up on me.”
Neil said nothing, but every bone and muscle in his body seemed to strain.
I wished I could see into his mind, know what he was thinking and feeling. I rose and moved closer. “Look, I know you’re not perfect. None of us are. But I also know you have a good heart. I’ve seen it.”
“You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“Maybe not, but I’d like to get the chance to know you better. As a friend, at least. Can’t we move on from this and go back to how things were before?”
“We can’t be friends.” Neil drew his brows together, eyes full of regret. “I thought we could be, but I was mistaken.”
“Neil…” I reached out to touch his arm, but he flinched and turned his back on me.
“I need to get to the meeting.”
“What about me?”
“I don’t need you. Spend some time thinking about whether you’d like to resign or change roles within the company. I think it would be for the best if we didn’t work together anymore.”
Neil’s words replayed in an endless loop inside my head, tormenting me.
“I’m not a good man, Amelia. I’ve done things. Terrible things.”
What did he mean by that? What sort of “terrible things” could he have possibly done? I tossed and turned beneath the twisted sheets, analysing every detail of our exchange. Why did he blame himself for the kiss when I was the one who initiated it? He said he had manipulated me, but I didn’t feel that way at all. I wanted to kiss him. It was my choice as a grown woman who knew my own mind.
“It just can’t happen. Even if I wasn’t your boss, it can’t happen.”
If it wasn’t about the ethics of our working relationship, then why did he insist we couldn’t be together? Was it about me going away? Or did he just not like me?
My thoughts circled back to Singapore. The way he tensed up when I asked if his rejection had to do with what happened there. Was I getting close to something he didn’t want me to know?
I groaned, burying my face in the pillow. This endless guessing game was getting me nowhere. I tried to go to sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I was back in Neil’s office, in the midst of our confrontation.
The first rays of light peeked through the curtains by the time exhaustion claimed me. I had barely slipped under when I jolted awake to the screeching alarm. My head throbbed as though someone was drilling a hole into it. My joints ached, my nose was congested, and my throat felt raw. I couldn’t tell if it was the start of a cold or if stress had done me in. Either way, I knew I was in no state to go to work.
I called James, since I didn’t have the nerve to speak to Neil directly. “Hi James, it’s Milly. I don’t think I can make it into work today. I’m sick. Could you let Neil know?”
“Sure, no problem. Rest up.”
I thanked him and hung up, then swallowed a couple of painkillers before crawling back under the covers. Neil would probably think I was faking illness to avoid him, but so be it.
One day off stretched into two, then three, as I battled with sinus congestion, aches, chills, and fatigue. My doctor confirmed it was a virus, likely brought on by stress.
On the fourth day, I called the office again. My voice came out strained and hoarse. “Hey, James, it’s Milly again. Still not feeling well.”
“Yikes, you sound terrible!”
I let out a pathetic half-laugh, half-cough. “I guess this bug is really doing a number on me.”
“Don’t worry about it, just focus on getting better. I’ll pass it along.”
I shuffled to the kitchen and prepared a coffee, hoping the caffeine might help clear my brain fog. Since falling ill, I hadn’t had the mental clarity to think about Neil’s rejection and what to do about his order to resign or change positions. Cradling the warm mug, I curled up on the couch and tried to think things through again. Did Neil seriously want to get rid of me, or did he say that in the heat of the moment? If I made it clear that I wanted to keep working with him, would he let me, or would he fire me? A job loss now meant I’d have to take up cleaning again to fill in the gap before going overseas.
I lay down, feeling another headache coming on. The leather cushions squeaked beneath me as I shifted, trying to get comfortable. At some point, I must have drifted asleep, because I stirred sometime later to the shrill tone of my phone ringing. I fumbled to grab it off the coffee table, but missed the last ring. My heart constricted at the sight of Neil’s name on the missed-call message. I wondered what he wanted to say to me, but I didn’t have the courage to call him back, so I just left it. This wasn’t the first time I had ignored a call from him either.
In the afternoon, I found the energy to clean the house, put on a load of laundry, and restock the barren pantry from a grocery delivery. Bit by bit, I started to feel like myself again.
I was in the middle of preparing an afternoon snack of crackers and cheese when my phone rang. I tensed, expecting it to be Neil again, but saw an unexpected name instead: Christine Liu.
That’s weird. Why would she call me?
I picked up. “Hello?”
“Hi, Milly. It’s Christine. How are you? Neil said you’ve been unwell.”
Hearing her voice lifted my spirits. “Oh, hi, Christine. I had a bad sinus thing going on, but I’m feeling a bit better now. I think I’ll be able to go back to work on Monday.”
“Neil will be relieved. He sounded so worried about you on the phone. He asked me to check in and see how you’re doing.”
I blinked, unable to fathom Neil fretting over my absence when he had been so cold the last time we spoke. “Did he?”
“He sounded quite distraught, actually.” A teasing lilt crept into her tone. “Did something happen between you two? He seemed to have the impression you’d be more likely to answer a call from me than from him.”
I hesitated, weighing how much to confide in her.
“You can vent to me,” Christine said. “I won’t tell on you.”
I supposed if anyone could help me decode Neil’s behaviour, it would be Christine. “Well, actually… Yes. Something did happen. I… made a mistake, and now Neil is upset and wants me to leave my job.”
“What?” She sounded genuinely shocked. “But I thought you two were getting along really well.”
“We were.”
“What happened?”
I shuffled my feet. “I don’t want to say. It’s kinda embarrassing.”
“Oh really? Well, I’m sure Neil has his reasons. He can be stubborn at the best of times. What did he say exactly?”
“He told me he’s not a good man, he’s done terrible things, we can’t be friends…”
Christine let out a soft sigh, as if Neil’s reasoning didn’t surprise her at all.
“Do you know what he meant by that?” I asked.
“I think he has a guilty conscience. Zelthia’s not exactly known for good working conditions across their companies. Not to mention all the blackmail and bribery and corruption. He’s tried to keep his hands clean throughout the years, but that hasn’t always been possible.”
I reeled, struggling to reconcile this darker version of Neil with the man I knew. Of course, I was aware he couldn’t have achieved his success through wholly ethical means. Cutthroat tactics were par for the course in the corporate world, especially at his level, but hearing the stark reality laid bare still came as a shock. “So when he said those awful things about himself, that’s what he meant?”
“Most likely.”
“That’s quite a lot to take in.”
“You deserve to know who you’re dealing with.”
“But he doesn’t seem to be a bad person. Not anymore, right?”
“I don’t know how much he’s told you, but he’s doing the best he can behind the scenes to reform the business.”
“I have some idea. I just wish he’d let me support him instead of pushing me away.”
“Milly, you know what I think?” Christine’s voice took on a conspiratorial hush. “I’ve heard the way Neil talks about you, seen the way he looks at you… I think he cares an awful lot about you—even more than he lets on. If he’s pushing you away, it’s because he’s trying to do what he thinks is best for you.”
I frowned. “Why would pushing me away be what’s best for me?”
“Because he’s trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
Christine paused, then her tone turned serious. “Neil is involved in something very dangerous right now. If the wrong people were to find out about his plans… Well, look what happened to Alex Patterson.”
I shuddered. “So you also think his death was orchestrated?”
“I don’t know. But I do know Neil is worried.”
“That he could meet the same fate as Alex?”
“No. He accepted that possibility a long time ago.”
“Then what?”
“I think he’s afraid of what could happen to you , Milly. He’s afraid you could become a target.”