Vengeful Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

to face him, I offer a forced smile. “I like that dress on you.”
    Vomit rises to my throat. Another outfit Jack has successfully banished to the back of my closet.
    Back at my desk, I open Outlook and calculate the days I think I’ll have to wait for my next promotion, the promotion which will hopefully see me escape Jack’s close scrutiny. If I do a good job, I could make legal director in two years. Now there’s an incentive. Three hundred and sixty-five days, less twenty-eight days’ annual leave, multiplied by two. Six hundred and seventy-four days, my calculator tells me.
    My momentary contentedness disappears when it occurs to me that in less, much less, than six hundred and seventy-four days, I’m likely to be without my father. That’s where playing around and not doing your work will get you! My subconscious chastises me in a ner-ner-na-ner-neeeer fashion.
    Shaking the thoughts away, I get started on my tasks for today and the rest of the week. Given the tight timings, I’ll be working almost exclusively on the Eclectic Technologies deal.
    “Margaret,” I call from my office to the secretaries’ station.
    “Yes, Scarlett?”
    “Hey, you said Scarlett first time!” I say when she appears at my door, her voluminous grey-blond hair glued into place just above her shoulders by a bottle of hairspray.
    “I’m getting there,” she says, her freshly-coated pink lips turned up. Margaret is the kind of well-turned-out lady who’d never be seen in public without her lipstick. “What can I get for you?”
    “Have my reports come through from Companies House for the Eclectic deal?”
    Companies House is the official registrar for companies incorporated in England and Wales. Reports from the registrar contain all sorts of key information about a company—its shareholders, directors, incorporation date...things like that.
    “Just,” she says with an innocently smug smile, handing me the reports, already printed and ring-bound.
    “What would I do without you?”
    “Anything else?” she asks.
    “Actually, you wouldn’t mind getting me another latte would you? With an extra shot?”
    “Of course.” She rotates on her small kitten heel, the ends of her floral dress swaying beneath her peach tweed jacket, Anais-Anais filling the air as she moves.
    * * *
    The rich, indulgent scent of my extra-strength coffee fills the room and makes my mind fresher, sharper whilst sifting through the Companies House reports. When I reach the details of Eclectic Technologies’ directors, I slip off my shoes and roughly pin my hair into a crocodile clip then pull my legs up to cross them on my chair, settling in for the read.
    First Director: Gregory James Ryans
    Date of Birth: 09.10.1985
    Date of Appointment: 01.07.2010
    Associated Directorships: GJR Enterprises, Inc., GJR Europe Limited, Bio-energy Holdings Limited, Sound Telecommunications GmbH, Constant Sources Limited...
    The list is endless.
    I do the math and work out that Gregory is thirty in less than a week. Only thirty! Not even two years older than me! Surveying the shareholder details of the GJR companies, I confirm that he does, in fact, own those too. GJR Enterprises Inc. and GJR Europe Limited are owned exclusively by Gregory but he’s the majority shareholder in most of the others. Casting my mind to the plaque in the entrance of GJR Tower, it’s obvious now that the entire high-rise belongs to him. Outrageously handsome and accomplished. What does a sexy bazillionaire CEO do to celebrate his thirtieth birthday? Shaking my head back to reality, my eyes move to the next section of the document—Mr. Williams and Mr. Lawrence.
    Williams is older than Gregory, thirty-two, and seems to sit on the boards of almost all the same companies as Gregory. In fact, he isn’t a director of any company that isn’t at least partly owned by Gregory. He has shares in many of those companies too.
    Lawrence is older, fifty-seven, which I’d estimated from his