Free Web NovelChapter 367: Chapter 367
Her mind was spinning now, no longer disciplined and focused the way it had been in Richard’s father’s presence, but racing wildly through a hundred different concerns and complications all at once. The timeline was insane. The expectations were impossibly high. The consequences of failure had been laid out in terms that were frankly terrifying, and she had no clear idea yet of how she was going to pull any of this off.
But more pressingly than any of that, there was another problem sitting right at the center of everything - a problem that Sandra had conveniently avoided mentioning during the entire intense conversation she had just survived.
She pushed herself away from the wall and began walking again, faster this time, her heels clicking sharply against the polished marble floor as she made her way toward the grand staircase that would take her down to the main entrance. freewebnσvel.cѳm
"I can’t be the one at the forefront of this," she muttered under her breath, shaking her head as she descended the stairs with quick, purposeful steps. "I absolutely cannot be the person standing alone in front of this project. Everyone assumes - everyone thinks - that I am the CEO of the company, that I own the business, that the final decisions and the ultimate responsibility rest with me."
Her voice dropped even lower, almost as though she were confessing something shameful.
"But that’s not actually true. That’s never been true. I’m not the CEO. I’m just the face of the company, the person who goes to the meetings and handles the client relationships and presents the proposals." She reached the bottom of the staircase and turned sharply toward the entrance, her mind made up with absolute clarity now. "The real CEO - the person who actually owns this business, who makes the final creative and operational decisions, who has the authority and the vision to pull off something of this scale - she needs to know about this immediately. She needs to know about this project, about this client, about the stakes involved, and she needs to know right now."
Sandra pushed through the heavy front doors and stepped out into the late evening air, the cool breeze hitting her flushed face like a small mercy. She walked quickly toward where her car was parked in the circular driveway, her hands still trembling slightly but her purpose now crystallized into a single, urgent need.
She needed to call her boss. She needed to bring in the person who could actually deliver what had just been promised.
The moment she reached her car and slid into the driver’s seat, Sandra pulled the door shut behind her and immediately reached for her phone with shaking fingers.
At that moment, Sandra sat in the driver’s seat of her car with the engine still off, her phone pressed against her ear with both hands as though holding it with only one might somehow cause the connection to slip away. The darkness outside the car windows felt thick and pressing, and the grand facade of Richard’s father’s residence loomed in her rearview mirror like a reminder of exactly what she had just walked out of.
The phone rang once.
Silence.
It rang twice.
More silence.
Sandra’s free hand gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled tension even though she wasn’t driving anywhere, her whole body coiled with an urgency that had nowhere to go while the phone continued its unanswered ringing.
"Come on," she whispered through clenched teeth, her eyes squeezing shut briefly. "Come on, Cora. Please. Please answer this call."
She pulled the phone away from her ear for a fraction of a second, stared at the screen as though she could will the call to connect through sheer force of desperation, then brought it back immediately. freewebnoveℓ.com
"You have to answer this," she said under her breath, her voice taking on the slightly unhinged quality of someone talking to themselves past the point of caring how it looked. "Cora, I am sitting here completely alone with something I absolutely cannot handle by myself, and I need you to pick up this phone right now. I need you. I cannot do this on my own - I physically, professionally cannot do this without you. Please. Please just answer."
She ended the call when it rolled to voicemail, took one sharp breath, and immediately dialed again.
This time the phone rang for longer - long enough that Sandra had begun composing the voicemail message in her head out of sheer anxiety - before the line finally clicked open and a familiar voice came through, low and measured and carrying the particular unhurried tone of someone who had been interrupted in the middle of something that genuinely mattered to them.
Sandra’s entire body sagged with relief so profound it was almost physical.
"Oh, thank goodness," she breathed, pressing one hand flat against her chest as though physically steadying her own heartbeat. "Thank goodness you answered. I genuinely thought for a moment there that you weren’t going to pick up, and I don’t know what I would have done because I truly have nobody else to call about this."
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, and then Cora’s voice came through again, quieter than before, carrying a faint undercurrent of curiosity beneath its composed exterior.
"Well, I’m quite busy right now," Cora said carefully. "Very busy, actually. And I have to be honest with you - I wasn’t expecting your call at all, because you haven’t called me in months. Genuinely, it has been months since I’ve heard from you directly, and from everything I’ve been able to see, the company has been performing exceptionally well in that time." A brief pause. "So you can imagine my surprise when your name appeared on my screen just now. Even with everything I had going on, something told me I should answer."
Her voice shifted slightly into something more practical.
"But what is this about? Are you calling simply to check in, or is this about the monthly reports? Because if it’s the reports, I want you to know that can absolutely wait until later. I’m in the middle of something rather important right now and I’d prefer not to divide my attention between two things at once."
Sandra shook her head vigorously even though Cora couldn’t see her.
"No - no, this cannot wait until later, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the monthly reports," she said quickly, her voice carrying the tight urgency of someone who needed to be taken seriously immediately. "This is about a contract. A contract that we have just been offered."
