Chapter Three
Aiven
Burnzilla.
I’d heard that countless times before, alongside many other derogatory names my employees had the nerve to call me.
Me—the person who’d made Mystic Distillery the success that it was. I’d created jobs for them, made sure they were paid well, and signed their solstice bonus checks.
How fucking ungrateful.
They acted as though they were doing me a favor by showing up to work.
The way they grumbled and groaned about my policies, the workload I’d set, my management style—it grated against my skin.
Worst of all was calling me out of touch.
It was infuriating. Clearly their little bird brains couldn’t comprehend that running a business took sacrifice and smarts.
Our profit margins were thin. We were being taxed within an inch of our lives.
Every decision I made was to keep this damn company afloat so these ungrateful people could keep their jobs.
If anything, they were out of touch. It was a tragic flaw, but one I would have to live with.
They could only see what they didn’t have.
They complained about working late, not caring that I worked longer hours than any of them while trying to balance the sheets and improve forecasts.
They always demanded more when there wasn’t any more left to give.
It was like working with a bottomless pit of entitlement.
I still paid them and offered them a decent bonus. I still ran the business, but I’d long since stopped expecting gratitude. At the end of the day, that was the real mistake—expecting these people to utter a word of thanks for providing them with everything they needed.
Like Ms. Nayak, for example.
She was the worst of them all, trying to undermine my authority behind my back. Although I’d made it clear on her very first day that she was my assistant, she always made everyone’s problem her own.
It would be easy for her to stay in her lane, clock in and out like a regular employee, but instead, she went around the office trying to involve herself in everyone’s damn business.
“Ms. Burns,” she said as she walked in. The row of gold bracelets on her left hand jangled as she pushed the door shut behind her. She was dressed rather festively today in a green and black checked vest with a white collared shirt. A pencil skirt stopped modestly at her knees.
Her best accessory, as always, was her scent. Some might say it was disarming, but I wouldn’t be among their ranks.
The sweet note that clung to her skin was warm and familiar, a mix of something fruity like peach crescents floating in honey—the kind of scent that human technology would never be able to replicate in a lab.
I had spent far too much time wondering if she knew how others responded to her sweetness. How could she not know? There was a distinct possibility that she used biology to her advantage.
Maybe that was why she carried herself the way she did—always so damn sure of everything and so maddeningly confident. It was likely that she knew her pheromones worked in her favor.
“You wanted to see me, Ms. Burns?” she asked, clasping her notepad in her hands. An impractical pen with a dangling gold chain was poised between her fingers.
“Don’t you mean Ms. Burnzilla?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.
I watched as she stilled, her lips parting in surprise.
“Excuse me?”
I rested my forearms on the leather armrest.
“I heard what you said to Ms. Jacques.”
She glanced over her shoulder as though trying to understand how I’d caught their conversation. She didn’t need to know about the security cameras that were fully equipped with sound.
“How?” she blurted, fingers tightening on the notepad.
Interesting. I’d been convinced she’d deny what she’d said.
I ignored her question and got straight to my point instead.
“Would you care to explain your behavior?”
“Explain?” I watched her throat work.
“It’s not your job to console Ms. Jacques,” I said. “Especially not at my expense and on my time.”
“It was the right thing to do,” she began.
My brow rose, mocking her. “The right thing to do would have been your job.”
“Look,” she said, pushing her curls behind her ears. “Josephine is a hard worker. She works harder than any of us combined. I don’t think she deserved to be chewed up and spat out just because she wasn’t able to fulfill your arbitrary numbers.”
“Arbitrary?” I echoed her word. “Arbitrary implies that the quotas I’ve set are inconsequential—”
“I don’t think they are inconsequential—”
“I’m not finished, Ms. Nayak.” I watched as gloss-lined lips narrowed to a slash at my rebuke.
“You are in no position to decide whether my goals for this company are arbitrary or not. The Winter Solstice campaign was launched for a reason, and I am accountable to shareholders for increased production numbers. The cost of raw materials have also increased by five percent in the last six months, and minimum wage requirements have gone up. Where do you think your paychecks are coming from, if not from the success of campaigns like these?”
She had the good sense to remain quiet, although I could tell by the way she bit her bottom lip that she wanted to say something—badly.
I pushed my sleeves further up my forearm as she squirmed.
“That’s strike two, Ms. Nayak.”
“Two? When did I even get strike one—” she paused, choking on the question. “You mean from three years ago? When I first started working here?”
“You were late coming back from lunch.”
“Three years ago.” Her voice rose incredulously.
“So you do remember it.” I nodded once. “Please do not put me in a position to dismiss you. It would be a shame.”
Something in her gaze told me I had pushed her too far. A flicker of something darkened her gaze—resentment? Disappointment? Fear? Before I could examine the way it creased her skin, she buried it deep.
Instead, anger tightened her jaw.
When she closed the distance between us, her heels were sharp on the marble.
“You know what, Ms. Burns?” she said, slapping the notepad down on my desk with a distinct thwack. “I dare you. I dare you to fire me. I dare you to find someone—anyone—in this town who can do a better job for you than I do. Because I guarantee you can’t.”
“You must think very highly of yourself.” The barb landed where I’d wanted it to. “You’re not irreplaceable, Ms. Nayak. I have seen many assistants come and go.”
“You’ve seen them go,” she said pointedly. “They’ve all left because you’re an unbelievably arrogant tyrant to work for.”
“Then why are you still here?”
There was a pause as her lips parted slightly. No words emerged. Perhaps her brain was scrambling to catch up.
Her brows twitched, caught between shock, irritation and the creeping realization that she didn’t have an answer to my question.
Odd. Ms. Nayak was a feisty one. I’d assumed she’d retort with a response like ‘because I need a paycheck’ or better yet, ‘someone needs to clean up your mess’. Instead, she chose silence.
I wondered why I felt a stab of regret at her less-than-feisty response.
“One more strike and you’re out, Ms. Nayak,” I glanced down at my paperwork, rifling through her meticulous notes. “It would be a shame to lose you.”
My tone made it clear that I wouldn’t care either way.
“Dismissed.”