Page 10 of Bottles & Blades
Her scowl tells me that the other side isn’t giving her what she wants to hear.
Idiots.
I click into my company inbox, read through the emails waiting for me there.
The quantity is always larger than anything I can tackle myself, but Marie and her team of assistants are well qualified at filtering them down for me.
What’s currently sitting in my inbox are the messages I alone need to handle.
There are still too many.
But what I don’t get to right now, I’ll deal with later tonight.
It’s not like I’ve been sleeping much.
Not since Angela?—
“Fine,” Marie snaps. “Then consider this your notice. That offer is rescinded.”
I look up again, see her jab at her cell’s screen.
She exhales, shoves her phone into her pocket, and scowls at me. “You’d think by now these assholes would learn.”
“Need to me get someone on another subcontractor?”
“Ah, ye of little faith”—she rounds the desk and points her tablet in my direction, and surprise (or no surprise, really, because it’s Marie), she has a list of businesses already pulled up on the screen—“this is my top choice”—she points at the second listing—“because they have the infrastructure and experience, albeit at a smaller scale. I think we can really help them expand. But every one of these companies can do the job we need them to do—and without the side order of them trying to fuck with us every step along the way.”
“I’m good with your choice,” I say. “Run with it.”
She nods, leans back against the corner of my desk, and starts going through a list of other topics—scheduling conflicts, meetings to take, others to push, a report on an offsite we’re setting up in Costa Rica, and some budget changes that need approval.
Once that’s done, she sets the tablet aside and sighs.
Fuck.
I brace, know that sigh can mean anything from a threat to quit to a catastrophic equipment failure in Berlin, but also knowing it’s not anything good.
That sigh…it’sneveranything good.
“Band-Aid,” I say.
Her brows lift.
“Rip it off and give it to me fast.”
Amusement in her deep green eyes, but it’s there and gone in a second, and she doesn’t delay. She gives it to me fast.
“Angela tried to bypass the security desk this morning.”
“Fuck,” I mutter.
“Scottie stopped her, but she pitched a fit and started screaming the house down. Mr. Duarte and his associates saw.” She sighs again. “Coincidentally, I was coming in at the same time and able to get them in the elevator, so I don’t think they recognized her as anything other than a random angry Karen—and notyourangry Karen of an ex-wife.”
“Christ,” I growl, rubbing at the throb in my temple. “Did she say what she wanted?”
Marie lifts her brows. “Does she ever have a reason to sprinkle her special brand of toxic bullshit around?”
I think of my short-lived marriage.
