His Intern Kissed Him, So I Destroyed His Company Chapter 08

His Intern Kissed Him, So I Destroyed His Company Chapter 08

He remembered that I had allowed the company to use all of my core patents for free.

He also remembered that the eighty thousand dollars had come from selling the house my parents left me.

Only then did he realize that his own decisions had driven away the only person capable of solving the company’s real technical problems.

He began searching for me everywhere.

He went to the apartment I used to rent, visited the corner restaurant I often went to, and contacted every friend of mine he knew.

But no one gave him a single clue about where I was.

A month later, the industry held an invitation-only technology summit.

I attended as a technical partner at Nova Technologies.

The summit took place at the InterContinental in downtown Seattle.

The event ended at five that afternoon.

Alexander and I walked through the hotel’s revolving doors and headed toward the parking lot.

Suddenly, a man rushed out from behind one of the pillars outside.

His hair was a mess, his face was haggard, and his expensive suit was badly wrinkled. Even the edges of his dress shoes were worn down.

“Erin.”

He called my name in a hoarse voice and grabbed the sleeve of my suit.

I stopped and looked down at the hand clutching me.

Those hands had once been meticulously groomed, with an expensive watch always on one wrist. Now they were covered in small cuts and visibly neglected.

Ethan looked up, and tears immediately filled his eyes.

“Erin, I finally found you.”

His voice shook with undisguised desperation.

The tech executives leaving the summit stopped to see what was happening.

Alexander frowned slightly and took half a step to the side, watching Ethan calmly.

“Let go.”

I looked at Ethan, my voice completely flat.

Instead of releasing me, he tightened his grip.

When he saw Alexander standing beside me in his formal suit, calm and composed, jealousy and humiliation flashed briefly in his eyes.

But fear of his debts quickly swallowed both emotions.

“Erin, I was wrong.”

“I know I was wrong now. I really do.”

“I never should have trusted Sophia or given her your system access.”

“The company is gone. The apartment is gone too. My father was hospitalized with dangerously high blood pressure.”

He lost control completely, sobbing so hard that he could barely force out the words.

“You’re a partner at Nova Technologies now. You must have money, right?”

“Please help me.”

“Cover the shortfall on the private loan, and I’ll marry you immediately.”

“From now on, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll never treat you that way again.”

His promises were absurd.

“Marry me?”

I peeled his fingers from my sleeve one by one.

“Ethan, do you honestly think my job is to carry other people’s debts and failures for them?”

He froze and stared at me, stunned.

“You humiliated me in front of the entire company over an intern.”

“You knew I had a severe stomach ulcer, yet you stood by while your father tried to force me to drink an entire glass of hard liquor and apologize to her.”

I listed the things that had once hurt me, my voice steady.

“What were you doing while I was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer?”

“You sat beside Sophia while she played video games, and you spent the server budget on a twenty-thousand-dollar computer for her.”

“It wasn’t that you didn’t know how much pain I was in.”

“You simply didn’t care.”

Ethan trembled and shook his head again and again.

“That’s not true.”

“She fooled me. That’s all.”

“You were the one I truly loved all along.”

“Erin, we were together for five years. You can’t just stand there and watch me lose everything.”

“You said you would always take care of me.”

I took a tissue from my handbag and wiped the part of my sleeve he had touched.

“I did say I would take care of you.”

“That’s why, over five years, I turned a company with nothing but incorporation papers, no product, and no technology into a business worth tens of millions of dollars.”