Page 544 of Savage Bosses

Obey Me

SAVAGE BOSSES

Reana Malori

Chapter One

Nyla

M

y hand itched to slap the smug look off his face. It took all I had to stay calm and not flip him the finger. Every day was the same thing with him, and I was done dealing with his bad attitude. Even if there were moments when he showed his human side, it wasn’t enough for me to keep this up for much longer. Increased demands were placed on my shoulders without considering how much I already had to do.

King Solomon was a dictator. The man never gave me a break. Then again, no one got a break from him. He pushed his employees to be their absolute best—almost to their breaking point. But he also seemed to forget that his employees were human beings with lives outside of his company. He had very specific expectations, and any deviation was met with dissatisfaction.

King Technologies, the company he created, was one of the most successful tech start-ups in the last twenty years. In just over ten years, they built King Tech from the ground up. It went from King and his brother Jagger struggling to get their first large client to having over a thousand employees. With all they’d accomplished, it was something to be proud of. But this company was King’s baby, not mine.

Yet, for the fifth time in two weeks, he assumed my life revolved around him and King Technologies. Maybe he had a valid reason to think so. Dedicated and loyal were my middle names. Not really, but you get the idea. Every night at home, I answered emails, completed presentations, and scheduled meetings. On Saturday mornings, I spent hours catching up on projects and keeping his professional life straight. Of course, he would think my commitment to the company rivaled his.

He was wrong.

My commitment wasn’t to the company. It was to him. But he was too stupid to see it.

“Nyla. Are you daydreaming again?” he snapped at me.

Briefly closing my eyes, I took a deep breath before trying to answer him. Because, if he wanted the truth, yes, I was daydreaming about how I could get away with murder. Over the years, I’d watched enough murder-death-kill shows to know how to dispose of a body without leaving a trace. King Solomon, my boss, the bane of my existence, and the man I wanted to climb like a tree so that I could sit on his face… was on my fucking list.

I turned my gaze to him as I tried to put a smile on my face. “Of course not. I was thinking about how I can get all that done for you in the next forty-eight hours. I already have the executive meeting tomorrow afternoon. And you have clients coming in every other hour for the next two weeks. With all that, I don’t have time to daydream. So, if you want to add more… stuff to my plate, who am I to argue?”

“Nyla,” he called out as I walked toward his office door.

Pausing, I turned to look at him. “Yes, King?” He hated it when I said his name that way. It was only when he was behaving like a fucking dictator that I said it this way. With a healthy dose of sarcasm and derision in my tone.

He glared at me with those ocean blue eyes, warning me. We both knew if he wanted to see who would blink first, it would always be me. I tried my best to give as good as I got when we had our disagreements. Yet the intensity of his gaze when he looked at me always did something to my insides. No matter what I did to try and get over these pesky, stupid feelings for him, nothing changed.

He must have seen something in my eyes that calmed him down. King crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat. “We have the Overwatch Security charity event in two weeks. Make sure it’s on your calendar. Cade and his wife, Norah, will be there, so I want to ensure we’re there to support them. Buy yourself a new dress and send the company the expense. There are some important people we need to connect with while we’re there, so I’ll need you to learn everything you can about the owners of Overwatch and their VIP guests. That room will have so many power players looking for a good time. This could be what we need to get to the next level.”

See? The man never stops. “Aren’t we already at the next level? How much more do you need?” I asked. “We have so many clients, we turn people away. At least, that’s what Jagger said at the last meeting. You don’t have to conquer the world, King.”

He lifted his hand and waved away my comments. “Jagger needs to let me focus on growing our business. He talks too much any damn way. He knows what I’m doing and why, so I don’t know why he’s bitching about it.”

That was my cue. When he started talking about Jagger, the Chief Financial Officer, and his brother, things always went south. If he had been cranky before, I knew he was about to become downright unbearable.

“Just have a new dress and be ready for what I need you to do,” he snapped.

Not bothering to answer his high-handed demand, I walked out of his office.

For the past five years, I’d been King’s executive assistant and did any and everything he needed from me: attended meetings and took notes, scheduled all his client calls, and even made sure he had food to eat, both at the office and at home. His housekeeper knew me better than she knew him. Arranging vacations with his family was all on me. Even the break-up flowers to his temporary girlfriends were on me to manage. It was a lot.

He paid me well. Very well. But it was no longer enough.

Not only did I feel something more than I should for a man who was an ogre to work for, but he would never return those feelings. I was a glorified gofer and notetaker. It was time for me to really dig in and find another job. Maybe once I was gone, he would realize how much I did for him and what had been right in front of him all along.

There’d been opportunities to leave before, but they never worked out. For some reason, I never got past the first recruiter interview. My resume was solid, and any company would be happy to have me. I had a bachelor’s degree in business management and spent three years working at a marketing firm before moving to King Tech for higher pay. It was well known that working here would set a person up for life. It was the New York of tech companies. If a person could make it at King Technologies, they could make it anywhere, which is why it didn’t make sense to me that more companies weren’t knocking down my door.

Once I got settled at my desk, I opened the computer and saw a pop-up message from the Boss Be Damned chat room. A laugh burst free as I saw the comment I was tagged in.

To: @EAinHellVA – Have you told your boss you quit yet? Okay, here’s a thought. I think you should fuck him just one time. Get a taste before you walk away and never look back.

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