A Business Love

chapter 36

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Sylvia walked decisively down the hallway of the fifth floor. She'd requested an emergency meeting with Julian, insisting it couldn't wait, despite his busy schedule. She walked past Nancy, and without smiling warmly at her as usual, she immediately asked if she could enter Julian's office, to which Nancy nodded.

"Ciao Sylvia, what was so important?" asked Julian as he saw Sylvia enter his office.

She sat down in front of him with a serious look on her face. "Julian, I'm gonna go straight to the point here. We've received some rumors. About you. Your personal life."

Julian gave her an intrigued look and she continued, "I wanted to come to you directly, because this news is going to spread very fast, and I need your honest input in order to know what our strategy will be; either to shut it down or fix the situation. Either way, it will have to be addressed as employees will be talking about it."

"What is it?" asked Julian getting slightly impatient.

"One of my HR directors reported to me that you may be dating Jessie Provolone," she said in a slow pace.

Julian's face dropped and he couldn't even hide his shock.

"And...that you may have been in this relationship with her while she was promoted. A promotion that you ultimately approved," added Sylvia with concerned eyes.

Julian's eyebrows furrowed as he rubbed his forehead and by his non-verbal language, Sylvia immediately knew that it was true."

"How...who gave y'all that information? How did that person find out?" asked Julian confused.

"There's a picture of you and Jessie in a restaurant and you're very close."

"What?! Who the hell took that picture? That's messed up!" asked Julian appalled.

"Right now, Julian, we need to focus on how we will manage that situation. You've approved a very lucrative promotion for her. We're talking about a 43% raise, Julian, that's enormous! You can see how that can look really bad for both you and Jessie."

"For the record, that promotion was approved last year, and we weren't together then. And I wasn't the only one to approve it. You were there, Mauro was there and so was Massimo. She was always supposed to get that salary raise."

"You still had to approve it this year in the system. Your name is signed under this salary increase. And she's your girlfriend. I hope you understand that this looks really bad."

"We had broken up when I approved it in the system."

Sylvia looked at him in an unimpressed way, urging him to be reasonable.

"You guys were broken up right when you had to approve her promotion and now, you're back together. I hope you know that this sounds like a big scam, Julian."

"Well, it's the truth."

"People won't believe that storyline. What the hell happened, Julian?!" asked Sylvia not able to hold back anymore. "You know better!"

Julian knew full well that the situation didn't look good at all.

"I know...I know!" he said raising his hands and shrugging.

Sylvia sighed, not understanding how Julian could have made such a rookie mistake.

"I'm going to be honest with you," she said. "I'm not supposed to disclose names. But the person who reported this is Lucy. And I have a feeling she won't let that one slide. She's extremely by the book and by the way she reported it, I don't think she likes Jessie very much."