All Chapters of Thrown Out, Claimed By The CEO.: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

83 Chapters

New Rules

7 45 AM Floor 50Elma’s desk had a new nameplate. Lead Vendor Compliance. No temp. No assistant. Just her name. The folder on her desk was thicker than before. Ten departments. Forty two vendors. Three months of data to review. Spreadsheets, contracts, email chains, delivery logs. It smelled like paper and printer ink.Nathan walked in with two coffees. Black. No sugar. He remembered. You look like you’re planning to move in, he said.I might, Elma said, taking the coffee. Someone has to make sure this never happens again. Nathan sat on the edge of her desk. He didn’t sit often. When he did, it meant he wasn’t in a hurry.You know they’re watching you right, he said.Let them, Elma said. If I’m doing it right, they won’t find anything. Nathan nodded. Good. Because they will look. People don’t like being told their process is broken. Especially when they were the ones who built it.Elma opened the first folder. Finance. The tabs were color-coded. She’d done that herself at 9 P

Hard is worse

4:45 AM – Floor 50Elma’s desk had a new nameplate. *Lead Vendor Compliance.* No temp. No assistant. Just her name. She stared at it longer than she should have. Three months ago that desk had a sticky note with “Temp – Floor 12” written in blue ink. Now there was metal, engraved, permanent. It felt heavy in a way that had nothing to do with weight.The folder on her desk was thicker than before. Ten departments. Forty-two vendors. Three months of data to review. Spreadsheets, contracts, email chains, delivery logs. It smelled like paper and printer ink, sharp and clean. She’d been here since 3 AM. Couldn’t sleep. Her apartment was too quiet. At least here, the quiet meant work got done.Nathan walked in with two coffees. Black. No sugar. He remembered. “You look like you’re planning to move in,” he said, setting one cup down and sliding the other toward her. “I might,” Elma said, taking the coffee. The heat seeped into her fingers. “Someone has to make sure this never hap

10:AM| Federal Court , Downtown

The courtroom was cold. Not from the AC, but from the kind of silence that settles right before a verdict drops.Elma sat in the back row, hands clenched tight in her lap. Nathan was beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. A steady, quiet weight that kept her grounded. She didn’t have to be here. The subpoena had been withdrawn weeks ago. But she chose to be. Because if Catherine was going to face this, Elma was going to watch. Not for revenge. For closure.The doors at the back opened with a soft groan. Catherine walked in.No designer heels. No PR team. Just a plain navy suit that hung loose on her frame like she’d lost weight in the last month. No makeup. Hair pulled back tight. No lawyers walking ahead of her this time. She looked smaller than Elma remembered. Older. Catherine’s eyes swept the room. They didn’t stop on Elma. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe she wouldn’t.“All rise,” the clerk said. The judge entered, robe settling around him like a verdict already written.T

Keep It Boring

*8:00 AM | Floor 50*The office felt different this morning. Elma noticed it before the elevator doors even opened fully. No knot in her stomach. No anticipatory dread crawling up her spine. Just the normal hum of Floor 50 waking up. No tension hanging in the air like a storm cloud. No side glances when she walked past desks. No hushed conversations that died the second she got close. Just the sound of keyboards clicking, phones ringing once before being answered, the hiss of the coffee machine on the far wall. Normal sounds. Human sounds. She stepped out, clutching a single manila folder against her chest like it was armor she didn’t need anymore. _Q4 Vendor Review._ Routine. Boring. The kind of work she used to dread because it meant nothing was on fire. She walked to her desk, and the walk itself felt strange. No one stopped her with a “We have a problem.” No urgent email popping up on her phone. She set the folder down, and the soft thud against wood made her

The Proposal

9:10 AM | Floor 50Monday came quiet. No emergencies flashing red on the compliance dashboard. No flagged audits in her inbox. No urgent calls from Floor 12 about a missing contract. No 6 AM message from Richard with “We have a problem.” Elma set her bag down and let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. For the first time in months, Monday didn’t feel like a fight waiting to start. It felt like a normal day. The kind of day she used to have before Floor 12 and vendor fraud and 2 AM spreadsheets became her life. She opened her laptop, fingers moving out of habit more than urgency. Email. Calendar. Vendor tracker. All green. All boring. All correct. Then she saw it. A calendar invite. *Subject:* Strategic Expansion Meeting *Time:* 2:00 PM *Location:* Boardroom *Organizer:* Richard Hayes Elma frowned. That wasn’t a routine audit meeting. Strategic Expansion didn’t show up unless something big was happening. The last time she’d seen that title, i

Building The Team

8:30 AM | Floor 50The first interview started at 9:00 AM. Elma had cleared her calendar for the whole day. No audits, no vendor calls, no Richard dropping in with “We have a problem.” Just hiring. Just building. Her new office was bigger now. Still on Floor 50, still glass walls, still no door. She didn’t want one. Doors created distance, and distance was how things got missed. If someone needed her, they could walk in. If she needed them, she could see them. Nathan sat in the corner with a second cup of coffee and his notebook. Unofficial second opinion. He wasn’t on the org chart for this, but Elma trusted his gut. He’d been wrong before, but never about people. “Ready?” he asked as the first candidate walked in. Elma glanced at the resume on her tablet. “Ready.” First candidate was a compliance analyst from Finance. Smart. Nervous. Answered every question by the book. She sat up straight, hands folded, eyes locked on Elma like she was afraid of missing a cue. H

The First Training

8:45 AM – Conference Room CThe room was full of managers from every department in the building. Forty-two chairs, every one of them filled. The air smelled faintly of burnt coffee and printer toner, the kind of smell that clung to corporate spaces at the start of a long day. The AC hummed too loud, fighting against the body heat of a room packed with skeptical people who had better things to do.Some sat with crossed arms, posture closed, eyes skeptical. Legal had three people in the front row, all of them with notebooks open to blank pages like they were preparing to document a mistake. Finance sat two rows back, heads bent over laptops, occasionally glancing up as if checking if the presentation was worth pausing their spreadsheets for. Procurement was quiet, but their expressions said they’d heard promises like this before. Operations had Director Patel in the center seat, arms resting on the table, watching everything.A few looked at Elma like they were waiting for her to slip u

Expansion And Resistance

9:00 AM – Floor 50The expansion plan was forty-three pages long. Elma had spent the weekend refining every detail, sleeping maybe five hours total. The document lived on her laptop, on a flash drive in her bag, and in a locked folder on the company server. She’d checked it seven times for typos alone. One wrong number in a budget projection would give the directors a reason to dismiss the whole thing.Budget projections broke down by region, by quarter, by headcount. Staffing requirements included contingency for sick leave and training overlap. Timeline for rollout across Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt mapped out week by week, with dependencies and buffer days built in. She’d learned that lesson from the first rollout—without buffer, one delayed server approval killed two weeks.She walked into Conference Room B with her team behind her. Linda carried the printed copies, three sets, bound and tabbed. Her hands were steady, but Elma saw the faint ink smudge on her thumb from signing

The First Hurdle

8:15 AM – Lagos Regional OfficeElma arrived a day early to oversee the Lagos rollout. She hadn’t slept well on the flight down—too much adrenaline, too many contingencies running through her head. Lagos had always felt faster than headquarters, louder, less patient with excuses. If the system broke here, it would break everywhere.The regional office was smaller than headquarters. Two floors instead of sixty, one elevator that always smelled faintly of fried plantain from the canteen on floor one. But the energy was the same mix of curiosity and doubt. People lingered in the hallway when they saw her, trying to figure out if she was here to help or to police them.Linda was already there setting up the training room on floor two. She’d arrived at 6 AM to test the projector and arrange the chairs in a U-shape instead of rows. She said it made people less defensive. She was probably right.James had the compliance portal tested and ready on three laptops. He’d stayed up until midnight

Proof And Pressure

7:30 AM – Lagos Regional OfficeElma was in the office before anyone else. The floor was quiet except for the hum of the AC and the low beep of the security system as she swiped in. Lagos didn’t sleep, but this building did, and it felt different in the early hours—cleaner, slower, like it hadn’t been touched by the arguments and compromises of the day before.Her laptop was open to the files James had sent overnight. Three folders, labeled “Vendor K Contracts,” “Email Logs,” and “Audit Trail.” She hadn’t closed it since 1:47 AM. Her eyes were dry, but her brain was sharp in that way it only got when there was something to chase.Vendor K had been inactive for twenty-four months. Twenty-four months with zero invoices, zero bids, zero contact. Registered in 2021 for a ₦3.2 million office furniture contract that was delivered and closed. Then silence.Then, in the last seven days, three new contracts appeared in the system. Logistics for ₦89 million. IT equipment for ₦74 million. Offi

1 2 3 4 5 6

...

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP