Chapter 109.

“See? She’s scary right?”

Just a little bit.

“It’s just winter… it’s not that bad...”

“To not be scared even after hearing this much... are you some sort of reincarnated hero who knows no fear?”

“I’ve just seen worse.” Haha. You have no idea. Every day has been scarier than little kiddie stuff like that.

“Anyway, let’s not keep her waiting. She might dock us pay if we put her in a bad mood.”

“Right.”

We followed Val into her office and closed the door behind us.

“Mr. Kerparski, do you know what this is about?”

“I think I do.”

“It’s good if you know. I don’t really intend to make a big deal out of it, but I naturally need to set an example. I’m docking you 20% on your pay for this month. You may leave now.”

“Eh? What? That’s it? Shouldn’t I be in more trouble?”

“Like I said, I don’t really care. I just need to set an example, so when you leave the room just act like the world has ended and that will be the end of this matter.”

Peter’s eyes lit up when he heard her words.

Peter stood up fit as a fiddle and eagerly slammed his fist against his chest for dramatic effect. “Boss that’s not a problem. I’ll do my utmost to make sure everyone thinks I’m a broken mess when I leave this room. If all I have to do is just act a bit, I’ll be sure to put on the waterworks to set an example for everyone to be a model worker from now on. I’ll be sure to sing songs of your good name and praise you to the skies in front of my great, great grandkids in the future. I’ll tell everyone all about how I was reformed and how I’ve seen the light thanks to the magnanimous words of my benevolent boss who put me on the path of righteousness!”

“Shut it. I don’t need you to do anything annoying like that. Just leave with your head lowered; when they ask, just tell them you were berated, warned sternly, and received a demotion.”

“Eh? That’s really all?”

“Yes, Mr. Kerparski.”

“If that’s all, why did you call Senior Dio as well?”

“I have some business with him. I didn’t want to have to leave my office a second time or bother my secretary, who’s busy enough as she is with miscellaneous tasks, so I called him in with you to save some time. Too much work has piled up in the last two weeks and I intend to make good use of the slacker who’s been off in the hospital while getting paid for doing nothing. Hahaha. I really don’t like having to pay workers who don’t work you see. Mr. Genovese is going to be putting in a lot of work as my assistant for the next little while, you should inform your team of that.”

“Yes Ma’am!”

Peter shot an obnoxious look of pity my way like he’d gotten off easy in comparison. From the look on his face, I knew that in his eyes, I was the one receiving punishment for being away on sick leave for two weeks. He didn’t say anything in my defense either, he kept his mouth shut and weaseled his way out the door like it was no longer his problem. This guy... I’d definitely remember this.

Boss chuckled when he was gone and looked at me like I was a lamb on a chopping block.

“Now what kind of work should I dump on you, Mr. Genovese? I’m sure you’re quite good at writing technical reports as a former professional Electrical Engineer.”

“Please no, anything but that! I hate writing technical reports!”

“Hahaha. Did you forget you owe me? I knew if I asked you to do this before you’d adamantly refuse since it wasn’t in your job description, but now that you owe me one, do you really think you have the right to refuse?”

I’m going to cry. The thing that scared me the most about my last job was the technical reports. In fact, I’d rather never write any kind of report ever again. That was one of the major reasons I settled for being a repair technician here. Strict deadlines were also a nightmare. Compiling the report into one document was an agonizing process when there were so many people working on it.

“Anything but writing reports. Please spare me from such a horrible fate.”

“Anything? Are you sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Ah. I might have spoken too soon.

“I’m glad to hear that. Then you’ll be going with me on my emergency business trip to patch up relations with a potential partner company that cropped up because I was so busy with you. Since the mess came up because I was preoccupied with you, I’ll ensure you’re the one who fixes this. Make sure you make good use of your presentation skills to convince our partner. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

It was something worse than I could have ever imagined. A meeting with the board of directors of another company to patch up a business relationship. I started to feel sick just from the thought of how stressful it would be.

“Are you crazy? You really expect me to do that on such short notice?”

“Yes.”

“This is completely unreasonable! I have no data, no context, I know nothing at all. I don’t even know who the partner company is.”

“You truly don’t need to worry about any of that, Mr. Genovese.”

She looked at me with a slightly deranged smile before she continued.

“The potential business partner, you know them all too well. You only just recently resigned with them after all. It’s obviously your old firm I’m talking about.”

“Haven’t you been curious why I’d be so concerned with you to the point of staying by your side for a full two weeks while you were in the hospital?”

“It was this?”

“Well, it’s only one of the reasons. As for the other reasons, you don’t need to concern yourself with them.”

So that was why she’d been trying to build our relationship up recently? Was everything a honey trap from the very beginning? If that was the case, was I overthinking everything before about her being that person? Or was that just further evidence to support it?