Chapter 15 The first business trip
Elly got spun by Alex like a toy.
He gave her exactly three minutes to gather all his documents for the business trip, she slammed it all in front of him and ran out of the room. She didn't want to look at his angry face.
Now, Elly was going back home to fetch her stuff, but the only way in was through the window. John Elliott had taken the house keys to the hospital, so she had no other choice but to climb up a tree to reach the window on the second floor.
As she was jumping down after getting her belongings, she sprained her ankle. But luckily, her heels didn't seem to be broken at all.
"What do you mean I only have twenty minutes? Why do bosses always treat their employees like trash?"
Sitting in a taxi, she massages her foot while rushing the driver to go faster: "Please, I need to get there really soon. My superior is an evil man, if I got there late only one minute, he would chop me to pieces."
Elly arrived just in time.
"Did you take a nap before coming here? You arrived after twenty minutes as I told you, can't you come any sooner? Do you know how much time I have been wasting waiting for you? God, I thought you were smarter than this."
"You can just go without an employee like me, sir."
"I didn't want a fool like you to slow me down just by getting on the wrong flight."
Elly's face gradually became redder as she heard all kinds of bad stuff thrown at her from Alex.
Alex kept on scolding her tardiness but looking at her sweaty and out-of-breath face, he unpleasantly turned away and went through the security check of the airport.
Elly pouted her lips then dragged her luggage behind. But she had yet to know that this specific business trip of hers would be the cause of John's anxiety.
John Elliott had just finished a major operation. The operation lasted for hours and it drained all the energy from him. John hadn't had the chance to rest before an unsettling feeling rushed over him.
Even though he said in the morning that he would not cook for her any longer. Having loved and taken care of her for so long, he could not stop worrying about her starving from last night to that morning.
As he glanced over to the window in his office and the letter on the desk, he painfully realized that the love of his life was drifting away from him.
"John, I think we need some time off from each other. I'm going on this business trip with my boss, Alex. Maybe this would be an opportunity to us give some time and clear things out."
John's eyes looked soulless, he felt back on a bed, clinging onto her letter.
He was in fear of losing her if he lets go of this letter, he feared that they would never be the same after this business trip.
John's fear would never reach Elly, as she had so many tasks in a different city.
Elly arrived in Los Angeles in the middle of the night, she had to carry all of Alex's luggage.
Looking at how carefree Alex walked, Elly could not control her temper anymore. She struggled to keep up the pace with him with all those heavyweight.
Elly tripped over a sewage line as she was trying to chase after her boss. Her face slams into the middle of the street.
Passengers didn't even help her, instead, they pointed and laughed at her for falling. Elly's heels had finally given up, they were broken, and so she decided to continue without any shoes on.
As they sat in the car heading to the hotel, her foot started to get swollen, it got worse as time went by. Elly acted all tough and normal because she didn't like her boss to underestimate her again. But she could not hold it in any longer, a soft groan left her mouth.
At the hotel, their luggage has been taken care of, this was especially beneficial for Elly, and she didn't want to carry them all up the stairs again.
Elly hops on one foot after Alex. In this luxurious hotel, each floor was filled with people with money, power and influence. To see an ordinary girl doing such a thing, Elly has become a clown for those people.
Alex finally looked at her while they were waiting in front of the elevator "You are no bird, why are you hopping like that?"
Elly leaned on a wall, lifted her dress up a little to reveal her injury "Look here, my foot is so swollen I cannot walk on two feet anymore."
Alex stares at her long, slim legs and yells at her "You are not a hooker, stop it now."
Elly pouts her lips then let go of her dress.
In the hotel room, Elly massaged her foot while cursing a specific man who caused her all these sufferings.
Maybe her curses were too effective that that devil called her at one o'clock in the next morning.
"Call Andrew and ask for the things you need to buy, now." Alex hangs up after commanding such tasks.
Elly had no time to rest, picks up the phone and calls Alex's beloved secretary - Andrew to ask for that list.
Andrew emails her immediately. The list consists of feeble tasks, but Elly still had to inform Alex that she got it. Alex only has annoyance to reply to her dedication as an employee.
"Do you even have a brain? You got the list, now you want me to help you to get those things?"
As the phone switches off, Elly looked down at her injured foot, she could not bear this harsh treatment no longer. She should have listened to John Elliott, she should have quit working for this devil of a man, if so, she would be relaxing at the comfort of her own home right then.
Bringing along her sorrow, Elly bought all the needed things in a supermarket nearby.
"I'm sorry, this kind of cleanser is out of stock."
"Do you have anything of the same quality?"
Elly settled for a duplicate of the cleanser she needed to buy, hoping that Alex would not notice. She was very sleep-deprived right now, the only thing she wanted to do is snuggle into her bed.
What happened next was as Elly expected, Alex shamed her with awful words which basically woke Elly up from any dream she wanted to have "You are so incompetent that you cannot even buy some miscellaneous stuff. What can you do, really?"
"Heck, I have to walk a long way to buy you things on that crappy list of yours. I even have to chase after you all day just to satisfy your masochistic character."
"You have some nerve to yell at me, huh? Does John Elliott know this side of you? You always take up so much work and then just do half of it. What a waste of my time and John's effort. You should just care for yourself and bother him no more."
Alex's words were like knives cutting Elly open, he had reached her deepest, darkest thoughts and even doubts. She had always felt indebted to John Elliott. He gave all his salary to support her education, even though they were fiancée, she could not get off the feeling that she was a liability to him.
"Alex, don't forget that you were the one who rejected my resignation letter. And you have brought out money to buy me back to the company several times."
"Back then, I didn't know you were this useless." Alex mercilessly mocked his inferior.
"You..." Elly just wanted to bury her head somewhere, away from all this shame.
"If you continue to stay beside John Elliott, you would be nothing but an ornament for the rest of your life. What a waste!" Alex slammed the door shut after finishing the sentence.
Elly shook in anger. Right now, she didn't care about how cold it was outside, she could only feel a burning flame of anger rushing through her body.
"Alright, I would buy that cleanser, Alex, and throw it into your arrogant face."
Elly runs as fast as she could, totally forgetting the injury in her foot.
She searched in every supermarket, shop, convenience store she could find. Until four in the morning, Elly returned to the hotel, freezing, standing in front of Alex's room.
Despite her anger from earlier, Elly started to worry "What if I wake him up right now, would that be the end for me?"