Chapter 4 #2
I’m by her side in a heartbeat, grabbing the man’s wrist and forcing him to release Natalie’s hand, furious. Shoving the terrified woman behind me, I grab Robert by his shirt and slam him face down into my desk. His cry of pain doesn’t register on me as I lift my fist.
“No!”
Natalie grabs my arm, her voice shaking. “Stop it!”
I turn to look at her, my blood pounding in my ears. I can’t shake off the image of the raw fear in those blue eyes. Even now, she looks terrified.
Is it of me? Is she scared of me?
“He put his hands on you,” I snarl.
“I-I’m fine.” Her voice trembles. “You can’t hurt him. You can’t!”
She’s not let go of me yet, and slowly, I take a step back, releasing the fool.
“Go get Clarice,” I order her, reining my emotions in. As she walks away, I wait for the door to close before grabbing Robert by the back of his shirt and throwing him to the ground, my voice low and threatening. “You’re lucky she stopped me in time. But I’m not done with you yet.”
As he gets to his feet, eyeing me cautiously, I say coolly, “You will never find another job in this industry again. I’ll make sure of it.
You should’ve walked out of this office when I gave you the chance.
But you chose to put your hands on Natalie of all people. That’s going to cost you everything.”
“That’s a threat! You’re threatening me!” Robert splutters, waving his finger at me.
The door to my office is thrown open, and Clarice marches in. Her sharp eyes assess the situation within seconds before she says calmly, “Security is on their way. Do I need to call the police, Mr. Wilder?”
“No need. Have security escort this man to his office and watch him remove all his personal items. I want you to check everything he takes with him. He is not allowed to enter this building again. As of now, Mr. Dean’s contract with this firm is terminated.”
“I’ll sue you, you bastard!” Robert wipes the blood from the cut on his forehead. “I’m going to sue you and that bitch!”
“I’m sure you’ll try.”
Robert’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head, and he grabs something from my desk, rushing towards Natalie who is standing beside Clarice. “You did this. Braxton warned me about you!”
He has a letter opener in his hand, and he plunges it towards Natalie.
Clarice cries out in alarm. “Miss Thorne!”
I move faster than I ever have before, throwing myself in front of the red-haired woman.
My right hand is outstretched, and I feel a hard, digging pain in the center of it.
The sounds of footsteps in the hallway outside barely register on me as I use my left fist to punch Robert in the face.
He staggers back, dropping the bloodied letter opener on the ground.
“Ethan!” In the distance I hear my brother’s alarmed voice but all I can focus on is the woman standing behind me.
When I look up, Jake bursts through the door. He leaps on Robert, restraining him, as two security guards enter moments later.
“Are you alright?” I demand, turning to face Natalie, my eyes running over her, heart pounding. But when she looks at me there is stark concern, mixed with thick fear, in those pretty blue eyes.
“Me? Your hand, Ethan!” Natalie reaches out to grab my wrist, turning my palm over. I stare at the dark red seeping from the center of the puncture wound. So that’s what that burning sensation was.
“We need to take you to a hospital!” The panic in her voice grounds me. Her hand is wrapped around my wrist in a death grip .
“It’s just a flesh wound,” I try to reassure her. “Clarice, call the police.”
My assistant nods curtly, before focusing her attention on the guards. “Take him downstairs.”
My brother leaps to my side as she hurries after the guards. “Hospital, Ethan. This isn’t superficial.”
“It’s fine.” I grimace at him, ignoring the stinging pain. “There’s a first aid kit in the cupboard over there. Go fetch it.”
“I’d rather fetch Dr. Hans.” Jake mutters. “You’re bleeding all over the floor.”
He’s exaggerating. My palm is bleeding, but it’s nothing that requires a hospital visit. He only nicked my top layers of skin.
Natalie isn’t wasting any time arguing with me. She rushes over to the cupboard in the corner of the room and retrieves the first aid kit. “I agree. We should take you to a doctor. But we should probably disinfect this first. Sit down.”
Her voice is commanding, and she practically drags me over and shoves me into my office chair before crouching beside me. My brother is on the phone with our family doctor while Natalie applies disinfectant on the wound.
“What were you thinking, getting in the way of that? You’re lucky that thing got your hand. What if he stabbed you in your neck or your heart? Do you always act before you think?”
She’s scolding me, but her voice is shaking. I note her wrap the gauze carefully around my hand. She doesn’t seem to have realized that the lack of excessive bleeding means it’s not that grievous of an injury.
“I didn’t mean to worry you.” I’m more intrigued that she is worried.
“Worry me?” she explodes, glaring at me. “Do I look worried to you?!”
I wonder if this is one of those situations when I’m supposed to lie and say no.
“Dr. Hans is on his way.” Jake approaches me. “You’re lucky he was in the neighborhood. How did you get stabbed on your first day here?”
“Second day,” I correct him. “And I didn’t know he was violent. He went after Natalie.”
“Natalie?” Jake turns his head to look at the red-haired woman beside me. “You’re Natalie Thorne?”
“You know me?” Natalie asks cautiously.
“You look nothing like your brother.”
Natalie stiffens. “You know Lucas.”
“Barely.”
“This is Jake, my brother,” I introduce. “He’s the firm’s corporate lawyer.”
Natalie looks between the two of us, and Jake puts his hand on my shoulder. “You can’t tell it, but we’re twins.”
“Really?” Natalie says, cautiously. “Fraternal, I assume.”
“I’m the charming one.” Jake takes her hand without prompting and kisses the back of it. “Charming enough that I don’t get stabbed by my employees.”
“Is there a reason you’re still here?” I give him an irritated look.
“I’m not leaving your side. If Mom finds out that I left you to bleed to death on your office floor, she won’t invite me to Thanksgiving this year.”
“Jake.”
My menacing tone has him sighing. “Fine. I’ll go wait for Dr. Hans outside. In the meantime, try not to get stabbed again.”
As he walks away, Natalie looks uncertain. “Maybe we should just go to an emergency room to get this wound looked at.”
“I’m fine,” I assure her. “It’s not that deep of a cut.”
It’s true. The letter opener didn’t hit any muscle. It’s just surface-level.
“Why are you so stubborn? A quick trip to the ER, and we’ll all be happier for it. ”
I observe her fuss over the wound, and I feel amused. My wound does hurt, but it’s nothing I can’t manage. Growing up with four brothers, I’ve had worse injuries.
“I’m really alright, Natalie.”
“What were you thinking, jumping in front of him?” she repeats, wringing her hands now. All her veneer of calm and composedness has been stripped away. She looks scared and anxious. Because of me.
I like it.
She can claim to despise me all she wants but here she is worked up over an insignificant injury. But her question gets my attention.
“You expected me to watch him stab you?” I retort, displeased. “I know you say you don’t like me, but there’s a limit to how awful of a person you think I am. I wasn’t going to let him hurt you.”
She looks flustered and tries to hide it by turning around. “What’s going to happen now?”
“Plenty but you don’t have to worry about it. I’ll make sure you’re not involved.” I examine my hand. “You did a good job patching this up.”
Natalie picks up the fallen papers from the ground, as if needing something to do, and sets them back on the desk. “Did you suspect that Robert would become violent?”
I raise a brow. “Would I have had you in the room if I had known? He was let go from his father’s firm because he didn’t enjoy working.
He was siphoning funds from there. He knew that if he lost his job, he wouldn’t get any references.
But I did not expect him to resort to violence.
What I don’t understand is why he blamed you. ”
Natalie grimaces. “A lot of the people that Braxton hired, and ones you might potentially fire, will blame me. He was the CEO, but he often hired friends and people he knew without consulting HR. I always maintained files about their quarterly reviews. I did it for all the employees, but their files were marked. They were well aware of this. Robert must’ve thought that I gave you his file. ”
“Did you?”
She looks uneasy. “I didn’t have a detailed file on Robert since he was already here before I arrived, and Braxton covered for him, citing meetings and whatnot for all his late arrivals. I didn’t know he had been hired by Braxton personally.”
“And Braxton had no issue with it?”
She takes her time in replying. “When I work at a company, my full interest is not in making the CEO happy but making sure that the company runs like a well-oiled machine. He was aware of what I was doing, and it’s not like he didn’t try to make things hard for me.”
It’s obvious that she’s hiding something.
“So why did he never fire you? From everything I know about Braxton, he wasn’t the kind of man to keep on an employee if he didn’t like them.
Because of you, the policies have changed multiple times, policies that benefit the female staff.
Why was he so willing to go along with it? ”
“Because he didn’t have a choice,” she admits.
“I wasn’t hired by Braxton Thompson. It was the board of directors who wanted me here.
Braxton didn’t get a say. Employee morale was down.
The company was having trouble holding onto employees.
Profits were falling as a result. They had two options.
A crisis CEO or a new HR head. I was the cheaper option. ”
My eyebrows knit together. This is something I wasn’t informed about.
Now it makes sense why Braxton was so openly hostile towards Natalie and why she had such sway over the decisions regarding employees within the firm.
The HR Department bows down before the CEO of a company, but Natalie did no such thing because she was not bound to the CEO.
She was answerable to the board of directors.
“While I’m restructuring this company,” I tell her, “those files that you have will come in handy. In fact, I would prefer that you assist me in this capacity. If we work together, we can make this as painless as possible.”
I can see the reluctance in her eyes. “I can just send you the additional files.”
“You can. But I’m sure that you know a lot more than what is written down on those files. It’s up to you, Natalie. Either I drag this out at my own pace and fire individuals whom I consider incompetent, or you work with me and we can keep those whom you think can be redeemed.”
Her body is stiff as she looks at me. “Why does this feel like blackmail?”
I give her a half-smile, showing her my injured hand. “Do I look like I’m in a position to blackmail you?”
“Your hand is injured, Ethan, not your brain,” she retorts, but I don’t miss the flash of guilt in her eyes.
“So that’s a no then?” I deliberately move my hand, furrowing my brow as I do.
The guilt in her eyes seems to grow, and finally she lets out a defeated sound. “Fine. Fine, I’ll do it.”
“Good.” I lower my hand into my lap. “And judging from the voices outside, I think that’s Dr. Hans. Why don’t you go and create a job description for the recently vacated position? I’ll get my hand looked at.”
She nods, jerkily.
Jake is already opening the door for the doctor to enter, and he smiles at Natalie as she passes him by. “Leaving so soon?”
Natalie gives him a brief uninterested look before walking past him.
I see my brother’s ego crash and burn, and I grin to myself. As he approaches me, followed closely by an older man in a white coat, I nod in greeting. “Dr. Hans.”
The man sets down his case, peering at me from over his glasses. “You don’t look like you’re dying. ”
Jake laughs sheepishly. “I may have exaggerated a little bit on the phone.”
The doctor pulls over a chair. “It’ll be reflected in my bill. Now what happened?”
“It’s just a small cut.” I hold out my hand. “I’m sorry for having you called in like this, Dr. Hans. It wasn’t my idea.”
He studies the bandaging. “You did this yourself?”
“Had a little help.”
Opening his case, he takes out a pair of scissors. “Well, send the person who did this my way. I’m always in need of nurses at my clinic.”
It takes him a couple of minutes to remove the dressing, inspect the wound, clean it, and bandage it, afterward prescribing a round of oral antibiotics. “Just so that you don’t keel over and die.”
“Thanks for this.” I give him a brief smile.
“Just don’t overdo it. It’ll heal in a couple of days. You can use it, but no strength training or whatever it is you boys do for fun these days.”
Jake rolls his eyes at me, and Dr. Hans snaps his medical bag closed. “I saw that, Jake. That disrespect will also be reflected in my bill. Tell your father I said hello, Ethan. Walk me down, Jake.”
Jake trails after him, leaving me alone to stew in my thoughts.
My palm hurts, but it’s nothing unbearable.
I keep replaying the scene in my head. If I hadn’t gotten in the way, Robert would have landed a fatal blow. Anger burns my insides, and when I hear a knock on the door, I snap, “Who is it?”
Clarice enters. “The police have taken Robert into custody. They want you to come down to the station to make a formal statement.”
I glare at my assistant, the image of Natalie’s frightened face swimming behind my eyes. “I want you to dig into every part of Robert Dean’s life, Clarice. Dig out every skeleton in his closet. You have a week. I want his life turned inside out.”
Clarice looks at me with uncertainty. “Sir?”
I meet her gaze, my voice steady. “Do I need to repeat myself?”
She shakes her head and hurries back to her desk.
Robert Dean went after Natalie.
It’s a decision that’s going to cost him everything.
Nobody touches what’s mine.