35. Opportunity
On Thursday, I do not have any lectures, which means that is a workday.
I meet Coraline at Zelt Tech early in the morning, and we embark on our workday. Our schedule is
tedious. today, we need to visit external supplying stations, the factory, or chips all while working on
paperwork, various reports, and attending meetings with the executive board. Executive meetings are
not my favorite as I always feel like the dumbest person on the planet when I was in the company of
others, more. experienced and mature individuals, although I understand their necessity.
I don’t feel as much of a fish out of the water as I did when I began this COO gig. Those early days were
hard because I did not have the experience. I knew the theories, of course, but when it came to practice,
I was basically a big baby. I did not have the opportunity to learn while being at the bottom of the
corporate ladder and most people. I didn’t have the experience of working with my father from a young
age.
Coraline was a great help, as she had more experience than I did. So was Gerald, but he had his own
job. to do and couldn’t babysit me constantly.
The company is still in a state of shock after the shootout. We try to assure the employees of their safety
to the best of our ability, but it is pretty hard when the criminals responsible for the shooting were still
roaming free. There were already resignation letters coming in from terrified employees who would rather
leave their job than die for the job. How can I blame them? I would’ve done the same thing in their
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The executive meeting is largely centered on this topic. In the end, we decide to give the employees a
light pay raise and some bonuses in order to keep them from leaving the position and to give more
benefits to the newly recruited. We also decide to hire more security and send warnings to the
employees to be mindful of their own safety.
Everyone hopes the situation will improve soon. So far, we haven’t gotten a favorable word from the
detectives, but we hold on to hope.
“Man, that was exhausting,” Coraline grumbles as we return to the office after a particularly stressful trip
to the factory, “I thought I was going to faint from the heat. Why did the manager insist on giving us a
tour?”
“It’s a professional courtesy, I guess. It is, after all the first time I visited the place,” I pointed out, “besides
it was cool. I liked seeing the chips being made. It was enlightening.”
“Good for you then,” she chuckles and pulls an iPad towards her. She frowns at the screen, “well, all our
trips are complete. Now we just have to catch up on all the paperwork.”
“Oh, goodie.”
“And then we got to create some reports based off the monthly analytics,” she goes on, “and Gerald
sent. an email saying that some local news stations are trying to get hold of us. There’s a possibility of an
interview or at least a press statement on the horizon. It’s a miracle they even waited this long before
hounding us.”
“Did the detectives call?” I question, dragging my own work laptop towards me. Sure enough, there were
dozens of emails containing the analytics in my inbox.
Coraline shakes her head, “They did call me to ask if I had seen Aiden ever since the incident at the
club.”
“Have you?”
“No. You would be the first person to know if I had, Jace,” she takes a shuddering breath, “I thought I
would be the happiest the day Aiden disappeared from my life for good. But now it feels like the opposite.
I’m horribly paranoid. I feel like I’m waiting for him to pop from the street corner when I walk home with at
gun or something.”
I reach over the table to capture her clenched fist and give it a reassuring squeeze. She looks at me,
eyes dark from emotion.
“We’ll survive this,” I promise her, “just you wait. I hope it’s not Aiden who is responsible for the
shootings. If he is, then the police would get to him.”
Honestly, I don’t believe the last part all that much. But I hope it is the truth. I hope that the outcome of
this would be the opposite of the outcome of the investigation into my mother’s death.
We work on the reports until it’s time for lunch. We have an agreement, Coraline and I, that we won’t talk.
about work or Aiden or anything of that caliber while we were taking meals together. We didn’t want to
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmget depressed, and these topics were prone to induce such feelings. Instead, Coraline speaks of her
olden days in the cheer squad, and I regale to her tales from my days as a waiter at various restaurants.
When we return to the office after lunch and get reacquainted with our work devices, we see that there is
an email waiting for us, which is marked as very important, and from Gerald personally.
“Wonder what this is about,” I murmur to Coraline as I click on it, and she leans over my shoulder to read
with me rather than access it from her own device. No complaints for me on that one. During the past.
few days, I have realized that I quite liked having her close by.
In a non-creepy way. I hope it’s not.
Am I being a creep?
“A new client?” Coraline questions after reading the whole thing, “that’s good news. Gerald was
concerned that we might lose clients after the shootout.”
“The client has a lot of potential to help with the growth of Zelt Tech,” I note, searching the name
mentioned in the email on a sidebar. The client has a household name in these parts of the world.
“Well, then we got to try our best to entice him to take us on,” Coraline grins. She loves this part of the
job, it’s where she shines the most. A natural saleswoman, she is.
We finish up with the reports and spend the rest of the day prepping for the meeting, which would
happen. over dinner. And by the time the actual dinner arrives, we have all our weapons locked and
loaded in our arsenal.