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“You have fucking lost your mind!”
I held the phone against my ear and couldn't help but tremble all over.
“You sent the email to Levi Boone?” she yelled into the phone. “You fucking sent it to Levi Boone?”
I couldn't believe what was happening. For a second, it felt as though I had suddenly been plunged into a nightmare, and for a long minute, I wondered if perhaps none of this was real. Maybe I had simply fallen asleep in my seat, and I was having a nightmare. Incompetence was a recurring nightmare for me, and I had worked my ass off to ensure it never happened. But now...
“Madison!” she yelled.
“I’m here,” I replied.
“‘I’m here’? That’s all you can say? The entire IT team is trying to hack into their servers right now. Do you understand that we could get sued for this, and that's just the beginning? If this gets out, our stocks are going to be buried.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied, and she went silent. Then she cut the phone.
I pulled the phone down from my ear as I stared out at the magnificent view, wondering how in fuck’s name I could have made this kind of mistake.
I couldn't believe it.
“Of course, I knew the answer. I had been distracted. Talking to Emma about the dress, thinking of my boss seeing me in it. The boss I had now monumentally disappointed and was about to cost millions of dollars either in a lawsuit or as a result of loss from investors.”
I shook my head then and couldn't stop the tears from rolling down from my eyes.
Somehow, a part of me had known that this was going to happen. A part of me had known that his reaction was valid and that my distraction was sooner or later going to cost us. Going to cost him. And now I was fucking stuck in Thailand with no way to resolve this. All I could do was remain on the internet and on Twitter, constantly refreshing the asshole’s page to see if he had posted anything about it on Twitter. That's where it would spread like wildfire. It was fast, it was personal, and he wasn't going to hesitate one bit. I even fucking had him in my mail lists because of all the attempts to contact Hunter for a fight or the other over the years.
He was incredibly salty about all we did and our success, especially because from the very beginning, Hunter had refused to feed him any information. I had just sent our report to our mortal enemy and wanted to shoot myself in the mouth. How could I have made such a mistake?
“How could I have made such a mistake?” I asked myself, over and over again.
Lowering my head and just staying there was commotion behind me. I almost fainted. The sessions for the morning had come to an end. This meant that Hunter would be coming out soon as well, and then I'd have to face him.
There was a talk panel later that afternoon after lunch, and he had to participate in it, but how was he to do any of this in peace when his company was once again in crisis in New York?
Sighing, I turned around and hoped for the best.
I headed back into the hall as most of the crowd had dispersed and found him talking to a few of the conference guests. As always, he was surrounded by acquaintances, but for a moment, in the midst of it all, he paused and looked over at the door at me.
His gaze lingered for a very long moment, and then he turned away to continue with his discussions.
Soon, however, much shorter than ever, he excused himself and headed over to me. As he walked over, looking majestic and expressionless, I wanted to run. Just run so far that I would never have to face him again, but I couldn’t do that. So, I waited and watched him until eventually, he stopped before me. He looked at my face, and in that moment, I truly wondered what he saw and how he felt. Regret was probably at the top of his list; he probably knew that I had been distracted because I would never otherwise have made such a stupid mistake.
But I had, and now we needed to work.
“Is the car ready?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Yes, Sir,” I replied.
He turned away without a word, and I trailed behind him as we headed down to the lobby of the building.
“Let's try to get something under control before lunch is over. And if we can't by then, then I need you to reach out to the conference organizers within the next hour to tell them that I might be late, and then I need you to write this moment to speak to the people and tell them to get ready because we might be leaving for New York later tonight.”
“Yes, Sir,” I replied and wrung my hands so hard behind me that I nearly peeled my skin off.
Chapter Forty-Two
Hunter
She looked like a puppy that had been kicked. Sad, forlorn, rejected. I knew she wasn’t feigning it to get compassion, but that hit was the fiasco that she understood she had messed up and was completely powerless to fix it.
