SWNOVELS Chapter 35
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 position.
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 get 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.