Chapter 111.

I looked down at my chest and saw a knife plunged into my heart.

I was hit so bloody hard by her assault just now that my thoughts didn’t bother lining up with what really transpired just now. I was so used to insane women that even my thoughts had developed a mind of their own. They just assumed the worst case on their own. What the hell just happened though? I couldn’t even really process it right away.

My mind spun in circles from the abrupt spontaneity of her actions. She was always way too forceful at times. Just when I tried to ask her what she meant, she’d pulled on my tie and gave me a brief kiss on the lips before she pulled away as quickly as she’d attacked.

“Even if you say no, I’ll still do it just to see your troubled face. That is what is a shame.”

I’m extremely troubled and conflicted whenever you do that, so if that was your objective you definitely succeeded.

“If we weren’t at work right now, who knows what a lot more would have been, Mr. Genovese.”

“Can you please hold back a bit?”

“The more you resist it, the more difficult it is to hold back, Mr. Genovese. Next time you should just say yes and I might lose interest in you that way.”

“You’re telling me to use reverse psychology? Wouldn’t you just see through the lie right away and really just take it too far instead of losing interest?”

“Unless it actually happens, I wouldn’t be able to confirm or deny it. Why don’t you take on that gamble for a change?”

“Gambling is a losing game where the odds are always stacked against you. It’s completely irrational to put your fate in the hands of an unlikely probabilistic event.”

“Are you really a man?”

“The biological anatomy inside my pants suggests that I am.”

“What if you’re actually a transsexual or cyborg disguised as a man?”

“Wouldn’t the doctors have said something if I was?”

“There’s also a big old M on my birth certificate, is that not proof enough?”

“Certainly, I did see it with my own two eyes after all. It definitely was rather big back then like you claim.”

“The M on my birth certificate was, right?”

“Certificate? Oh yeah, it did have an M on there for your proof of identity in your citizenship documents; you’re right, I almost forgot.”

“Why does it feel like we were talking about two completely different things just now?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing important.”

I looked at her suspiciously, but she turned away like it was nothing and returned to her desk. She beckoned me to move closer to her desk and take the seat opposite hers. When I took a seat, I saw all sorts of reports and documents scattered across the desk.

“These are documents and reports with everything that could be useful to the partnership we’re trying to strike with your previous firm. This should help you with putting together a compelling presentation, shouldn’t it?”

“All of this?”

“Yes.”

“How long do I have?”

“Two days.”

“Two days?! What the bloody hell, are you crazy?!”

“Yeah, yeah, I get what you’re trying to say, but your firm won’t give us any more time to prepare. They just said there were many other companies they could partner with and if we couldn’t even manage this we had no right to partner with them.”

“Tch, that sounds about right for what I’d expect from the higher-ups working there. The pressure on deadlines was extreme. An extension? Hah, they’d rather push an unfinished product and cut corners to get them out even earlier than intended. Just patch through software updates after release if something came up, that was their favorite motto. They honestly couldn’t care less about hardware problems if there was a potential workaround through software. The work ethic was unbearably frustrating.”

“That’s precisely why partnering with them would be beneficial for us. The flaws that result from that sort of carelessness is exactly what upper management likes to see. They can reel in money through repairs or selling replacement parts while at times even forcing people to upgrade their devices later on down the line. They can even intentionally botch repairs and claim the device is unfixable due to some sort of fault on the user’s end. They don’t want a perfect product that never needs to be replaced or repaired, if they did that, they wouldn’t be able to keep generating revenue in the long run. Disposable products are profitable in their eyes, while long-lasting products are a waste of potential revenue they can capitalize on in the near future.”

“You’re exactly right boss, that was their exact business model. As an engineer who worked for them, it was agonizing to see the firm have that sort of mindset. Us little electrical engineers, software engineers, and programmers wanted to do our jobs, but we never could because of the corrupt management at the firm. We were always the ones forced to face all the public criticism for major design flaws that became apparent only a few years down the line. Even though we were already long aware of the problems before the product was launched and wanted to fix them, we couldn’t due to strict orders in place by management. The evil non-disclosure agreements they made us sign before we started working for them was essentially selling our souls to the devil.”

“Mr. Genovese, If we can land a partnership with them, we can gain a monopoly on repairs for their firm’s products. They can save money by outsourcing us for repairs and they can avoid having to constantly train and hire repair technicians on their own. We can cut them a deal by supplying them with a percentage earned from repairs on their products. How does it sound?”

“I can’t see them being interested. They would need to reveal the schematics for their products to our repair technicians, of which they consider to be trade secrets. It becomes more dangerous for them as the number of people who know of their darkest secrets increases. It would be the equivalent to cutting off their arm and donating it to someone else.”

“That’s where you come in though. You worked as an electrical engineer for years for them, right?”

“You’re not thinking of applying pressure by using me, are you? You realize I’m bound by the non-disclosure agreement I mentioned, right?”

“Even if sensitive insider information mysteriously leaked, how would they prove the source of the information leak if it’s done in an untraceable manner? Mr. Genovese, you should very well be aware of the black markets thanks to your past relationships, correct?”

“You’d really go so far as holding a knife to their necks for the sake of landing a big contract?”

“I’m a businesswoman, I don’t hold knives. I simply use the pieces I have at my disposal to accomplish my objective.”

This was definitely a far more cunning version of the woman I’d recently grown closer to. It was certainly a side I’d never seen from her before this.

“What if I refused to disclose their secrets?”

“You would refuse the request of your boss who cares for your well being so much?”

“I’d be sued if they were able to prove I was the one who leaked such sensitive highly classified information like that.”

“Well, we’ll see how things go. If things go well, there would be no need to play our trump card. Whether it ends up being used or not depends on the presentation you put together. At the end of the day, your fate rests in your own hands.”