Chapter 4 #2
It was innocent enough. I thought I was in the office alone and hadn’t yet figured out how much Natalie liked to overwork herself.
There was a potted plant in my office, a gift from an old friend, and it was dying.
One thing about me—I’m going to revive a plant if I can.
This one just needed a little pep talk, and just as I stuck my finger in its soil to revive it, Natalie walked in.
I could have tried to lie, but honestly, I was relieved not to have to tiptoe around her.
She freaked out but not nearly as much as you would think.
After I explained my abilities, Natalie seemed a lot more relaxed around me, and that was because I was more relaxed.
Not having to hide a part of myself all damn day made it easier for us to work together.
It also made it easier to keep her long-term, considering the few supernatural clients we had. There weren’t many, but sometimes, they caused more trouble than they were truly worth. With Natalie in the know, she could better handle those clients when they came into the office.
The problem that created was the more Natalie learned about the magical world, the more she wanted that power for herself.
Soon, she was stalking magical beings to find her way into their world, which was exactly how she landed in a party to find the unattended grimoire.
She said she found it, but I wonder if Natalie didn’t treat herself to a five-finger discount.
She was lucky this time that the owner of the book didn’t come for her silly ass, but it wasn’t uncommon for witches to cast protection spells on their own books.
Once Natalie started using the spells from its pages, the owner would have been able to locate it and call it back to her.
I only hoped they didn’t change their mind and decide to come smack her upside the head about messing with their magic.
After Natalie left, I did one more walkthrough of the office before settling again in my seat behind my desk. One hour stretched to nearly two before Raymond arrived, and just after seven, I marched to the front entrance to let him in.
The contract isn’t signed yet. Keep it together, girl. This is important!
I wiped the agitation off my face before I swung the door open to greet him. “Hi. Glad you could make it.”
“Sorry about it being so late.” He grinned as if he hadn’t wasted enough of my time.
“It’s fine. Let's make this quick.” I stepped aside to let him in. “I don’t mean to rush, but I haven’t had dinner yet, and it's been a long day.”
Raymond followed me closely as I marched through the office.
I showed him where my office was and, of course, the waiting room.
Then, we walked through the storage space, which was about the size of a four-car garage, before heading to the second floor to the full gym.
I showed him the equipment and the specialized training schedule.
“I like to make sure all our guys are in the best shape possible… and have access to learn anything they may be weak in,” I explained.
“That’s brilliant.” Raymond looked around the equipment. “Not something we currently do, but I’m sure that will be a practice shift for us as well. If you don’t mind me stealing your idea.”
“I’m not the first to do it, and besides, it's better for your men if they have every possible advantage when it comes to their job.”
“That’s true.” He nodded.
“Well.” I clapped as I led him back to the front entrance. “That’s everything.”
“The facilities look great, and I can tell you take great care of your staff here,” he complimented.
“My people are my top priority.” I nodded and reached for the door. “I find the happier they are, the better job they do.”
“That makes you a brilliant leader. Not enough people understand that. Unfortunately, the ones who don’t are usually the ones in leadership roles.”
“Can I take that to mean you’re good with working together now?”
“Not quite.” He rubbed his thick beard with his hand. “How long have you been running this business?”
“Didn’t you say before that you had done your research on me? I’m surprised something as simple as that hasn’t come up.”
“I said your name came up during my research,” he corrected me. “I never said I remembered anything pertinent.”
“Ouch.” I nodded. “I guess I deserve that, but to answer your question, I’ve been in business for about a decade now. I got things going a few years after Rose did. Actually, I had shared my ideas with her, and you can say she took inspiration from my notes.”
“Did she take inspiration, or did she steal your idea?” He raised a brow at me.
“I never said that.”
“You don't have to. Actually, I know a lot more about you than I let on.” The long locs swayed at his sides as he leaned back on Natalie’s desk just outside my office door.
“Rose had a whole folder on you. It contained your original plans for your business, and a few notes about your encounters after you both got started.”
“A folder?” I took my hand off the door and walked over to him. “What else was in this folder?”
“Articles about your success. She kept up with everything you had going on, but I think you know that. I assume that's why you guys weren't that close.”
“How did you know we weren’t close?”
“Jericha, you didn’t even know she had sold the business.” He laughed. “It’s not that hard to figure out. Actually, I'm surprised you called her your friend when you came in. She’s more like a snake, if you ask me.”
“What can I say? I was in a desperate position.” I shrugged. “The things we do to make our business a success.”
“Been there before.” He sighed. “When I first started this path, buying and selling businesses, it was a hard start up. But in just a few years, I’ve managed to make good headway for myself.”
“You’ve been in desperate positions? How desperate?” My eyes narrowed.
A dry chuckle escaped him. “Desperate enough to ask for help from someone I knew stabbed me in the back before, just like you.”
“Happy to hear I'm not the only one. So, what do you think? Is this gonna work out?”
“Everything you sent over looks good. The facilities are great, much better than the ones we're working with.
So, if you don't mind, we'll be using this more so than mine. I'm not really trying to build up that business. I just want to make the books look good enough so someone wants to take it off my hands.” Raymond switched into business mode, and I could already see why he’d been able to garner the success he boasted about.
“There are a lot of things there that we can pull over here, inventory and such. If there was one thing Rose liked to do, it was buy things she didn’t need.
Actually, if we could put that into the contract, I'll sell all of it to you at a discount.”
“What about your other clients?” I questioned. “If you move everything here, won’t that make it difficult for you to do what you need?”
“Our other clients don't require nearly as much stuff as she purchased.
Honestly, I'm not even sure why she has half of this stuff there.
I think Rose got so caught up in trying to look like she was successful, she forgot to actually do anything to secure success for herself.
From the outside looking in, that business is doing great, but when you get into the paperwork, it's just a bunch of inventory, very low sales, and a team of people who are ready to walk out the door. Actually, I already reached out to a few of our guys and asked if they would be interested in this partnership, and they're looking forward to it,” he reported. “That’s what took me so long to get here today.”
“You talked to your team before meeting me?” I raised a brow.
“Hey, you just had half your team walk out the door, right? What good would it do either of us if we sign a contract while my team is on the way out? I had to make sure we could do what you needed.”
“Smart. Thank you.”
“I did question why you would come to Rose instead of one of the other firms in the area. I mean, there are a few, not major ones. Honestly, you're probably at the top of the list in terms of size and capacity. Surely one of them would have been a better fit for partnership.”
I shrugged. “They're all owned by men. I was only the second woman to open the round here, and I would have been the first had it not been for Rose. Actually, because of Rose, I had to work about ten times harder than I should have just to solidify my name in this space. She screwed over a lot of people, and, because we're both women, everyone assumed I would do the same thing. I made a lot of enemies because of Rose since she allegedly name-dropped me to so many people she screwed over. When I finally got into the room with them, they didn’t trust me.” I sighed. “So, my first thought was Rose. She’s not that great at business, she’d be less of a threat to try to steal my contract from under me, and, well, she owes me. ”
“Look, I’m in if you are.” Raymond stood, unbuttoned the sleeve of his shirt, and rolled it up, revealing the tattoos on his arms. They reminded me of my own, but where I had vines, he had what looked like smoke trails. “You said you haven’t eaten. Maybe we can go to dinner together to celebrate.”
“Dinner?”
“Yes, unless you were lying about that just to try to rush me out of here.”
“I would never do that,” I lied. “Actually, I—”
Just then, there was a knock on the door. For a moment, I thought I’d been saved from having to cover my ass, but instead, I turned to see the man now known as Bathwater standing outside the door. Great, now I go from trying to avoid dinner to explaining why a stalker is at my door.
“Are you going to let that guy in?” Raymond asked.
“One moment.” I flashed a quick smile before heading to the door.
Please don’t let this man cause a scene and cost me this deal!