“I think you all should go crash at home,” Ace said as he turned to address Julianna and her team. “We’ll stay here till the first report comes in,” Julianna replied while sounding quite stubborn. “Fine. Do what you want…” Ace muttered in resignation. “Thank you. Don’t worry, we’re fine…” Julianna replied with a smile. I could understand why Julianna didn’t want to go home. If I were her, I would probably do the exact same thing. After spending the entire night working with her team to fix the situation that we were in, who wouldn’t want to be in the office along with everyone else to see their effort bear fruit. I prayed that everything would be smooth sailing and that the result would turn out just as Julianna had expected. “Is there something that I can help out with?” I asked Ace hopefully. “Nope. Nothing at all. Let’s wait patiently for the report to come in. In the meantime, if you have anything to take care of, you can go ahead,” Ace replied casually. There wasn’t much o
This was probably a part of what he had been trying desperately to hide from me. Even after seeing it, I still haven’t discovered what he planned to do except to perhaps have a building constructed. I didn’t even know where the building was going to be located or what it was going to be used for. Suddenly, I felt slightly nauseous, and my temples started to throb as I struggled to deal with the void of emptiness that seemed to have taken shape inside of me. Although I had been trying desperately to deal with it silently and telling myself to be patient, I still hated the fact that Ace was keeping secrets from me. The worst part out of all of this was the piercing painful feeling that sprang up in my chest when I thought that Ace did not want to share his future with me. It felt like I was an outsider, and he was treating me like one. Not telling me anything and always keeping me in the dark. I stared down at the blueprint again as I wondered if the future that Ace envisioned for him
We did it? “Really? Did the amount of donation go up?” I asked as his words caught my attention. Ace smiled warmly down at me before he slowly nodded his head in confirmation. My eyes widened even further, and for a moment, I was at a loss for words. Thankfully, we were finally seeing some positive results and some good news. I let out a sigh of relief before I tried my best to smile up brightly at Ace. “Come along. You can listen to Julianna blab about her success,” Ace said as he grabbed my wrist.He turned around and began pulling me along with him down the hallway. I let him lead me wherever he wanted me to. I was just so relieved that Project Alpha seemed to be back on track. There wasn’t a lot of time left until the announcement of the winner of the competition and then everything that I had been waiting for and dreading would happen all at once. Ace would quit his job and he would no longer work here. I wouldn’t have the chance to work with Ace like this anymore. I stared d
I felt a little bad for her, but I had to admit that Ace’s suggestion was probably the right one. “Everything will be fine here now, thanks to you…” I whispered to her softly. “Fine. I’ll go home. Let’s go home, you guys!” Julianna mumbled before turning to yell at her team members. “I’ll see you all tomorrow…” I said before I thanked everyone who was leaving. Since the results of Julianna’s work turned out much better than we could have imagined, there honestly wasn’t much work to do for the rest of the day but to monitor the campaign. If anything, the people in the war room spent time celebrating their little victory by going out to get coffee or softly chatting to one another while doing some work. Everything was so peaceful until my phone suddenly vibrated on the table. I quickly grabbed it when I saw the notification that I had just received a new message. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that the message was from Ace. I glanced over to see him working diligently on his la
While trying to tell myself to calm down and act normal, I headed towards the exit of the archive. The same guard was there at the exit and that made me feel quite nervous. It went without saying that I had never stolen or inappropriately ‘borrowed’ a document like this before. I flashed the guard a little smile before casually walking past. After taking a few steps away. I honestly thought that I had made it; however, things didn’t quite end as smoothly as I had hoped. “Little lady, if you put that back where you got it from, I will look the other way and pretend that this never happened…” the guard muttered in a low voice. My body froze at his words when I realized that my stupid attempt to smuggle the document out had failed spectacularly. He must have been watching on the security camera and caught on to what I was up to. It was regretful but I had no other choice except to return the document from where it came from. “I’m sorry…” I mumbled a soft apology as I turned around.
“What exactly are you looking for? Do you need some help?” he asked as his eyes continued staring at my face. “Oh no, I’m done here already…” I replied softly. I prayed that Ace wouldn’t ask for more details about what exactly I was doing down here in the archives. My heart thumped so loudly in my chest that it made me wonder if he could hear the sound of my rapid heartbeat. My hands started to sweat, and for once, I was thankful that the guard had gotten me to put back that document. I wanted to talk to Ace about it soon enough after the end of Project Alpha but it would be terrible if he caught me with it now. Ace’s sharp gaze kept on staring at me, and I started to feel like a prey that had been cornered. If only the guard would return from his break now, that would save me a great deal. I knew that that was just wistful thinking. Somehow, I had to find a way to deal with Ace and get out of this situation. While my mind raced to come up with an reasonable excuse, Ace took a few
“Ace…please, let’s stop…” I pleaded desperately. “Stop, what?” he asked with some interest. I bit down on my lower lip in frustration before I glared at him as if doing that would send some telepathic message across to him. My real frustration stemmed from the fact that I was certain that he knew what I was referring to but had chosen to act all innocent. “We can’t do it here. There are cameras…everywhere…” I pointed out without backing down. Ace stared at me for a moment in silence and that made me feel so open and vulnerable in front of him. I wished that he would stop staring at me like he could see through me even if that was how it was really was. It was bad enough that we were this close and already on camera. “Do what?” Ace asked before the corners of his beautiful lips curved upwards into slightly teasing smirk.Slowly, his fingertips stroked their ways down my arm, and I wanted to let out a moan at the fleeting yet pleasurable sensation. He was teasing me mercilessly and
My poor little heart couldn’t help but skip a beat and I had to turn away a little to hide my blush. Ace let out a soft laugh which made me feel even more shy and self-aware than before. “I didn’t think that you two would search for inspiration in the company’s old archive but I have to say that the ideas you two came up with wasn’t at all bad. Seems like it was worth the effort of digging through all those old files,” Ace commented. I smiled a little at him before Ace turned to focus his eyes back on the road ahead. The traffic was unusually light for rush hours during a weekday. While watching the attractive view of Ace’s side profile, I wondered if he knew that all his old works were actually quite carefully stored in the company’s archives. More accurately, I figured that Ace probably wasn’t at all aware because he did mention that he threw everything out. While I had no idea why he did that to his precious work documents, I was as equally curious about who had saved his work an