His Nineteenth Secretary [✔]

Thirty-one

Surprisingly, after that day, things began to change between Brian and I.

It started with him joining me to eat dinner in the evening and on days he would return from work late, he wouldn't fail to come up to my room to check on me and then I started doing the same. This would turn into half an hour talk. On other days, an hour talk, or even more at times.

*

It was a new week in the month of July, exactly four months since the wedding and it was a Tuesday.

In the afternoon, while we were all less busy at work, Catherine had walked up to my desk with a blinding beam on her face.

"Ruby, I owe you a lot." She began. "Mark has really changed after that day."

The week before, on a Wednesday, we got off work a little late and I had offered to drive Catherine home since she didn't bring her own car to work that day.

I was quite delayed by a call from Brian after she had gotten down from my car to go inside and just as I was going to start the car after the call had ended, I started hearing noises. It was Catherine screaming.

Wanting to know the cause of it, I decided to check what was going on. The door wasn't locked and so I was able to push the door open to get in, only to see Mark beating her up.

I noticed that the kids were no where in sight, probably in their rooms too scared to witness what their father was doing to their mother.

Threatening to call the cops, he stopped beating her and before leaving, I was able to talk some sense into him.

He was beating her up only because she got home late from work whereas she was going to inform him but he was the one who didn't pick up.

"Wow, really!" I asked with incredulity.

"For the past three days now, he's stopped being hostile towards me and the kids, he comes back home early, he would play with the kids, buy things for them. He stopped bringing different women home too."

"Your husband has a soft heart, that made it easy for me." I said.

"Still, you were the only person who succeeded in convincing him to change. I'm inviting you over to have dinner with my family next week Sunday, what do you say?" There was a twinkle in her eyes.

"There is actually no need for that." I shook my head.

"I will really like to repay you. Ellie wants you to come too and Josh will like to meet you, Ellie never stops telling him about you."

"Now, can I say no? I should be free in the evening of next week Sunday."

"Thank you so much."

"It's nothing."

•

The following week at work, however, wasn't one of the best ones. Strange things began happening. There was the day, all the telephones in our office stopped working. We noticed not one of us was receiving any call and we also couldn't contact any of our clients. It wasn't until later when we discovered that the wires had been tampered with.

I got to work before everyone else that morning and the office CCTV including the one in the elevator seemed to have broken down two minutes after I had arrived at work and only began working again when I was leaving the office to get myself some coffee. The culprit could as well have come in during the ten minute sleep I had before leaving the office to get myself coffee to make me seem as the suspect.

The day before, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the telephones and that could only mean that whoever was behind it, did it that very morning and made the CCTV break down while I was inside the office to make me seem like the one behind it.