Just A Little While Later

54

"Can anyone of you care to fucking explain how or why we lost an entire year's worth of wine?" I asked, rubbing my temples as the room was deathly fucking silent.

I don't think I've ever had a headache this big and I had to raise an entire child on my own, and still she has never given me a headache like this.

When I put Francesco in charge of this Italian division, I thought that he had what it took to handle the pressure and hard work that came with running all of this.

But from what I can see, he's obviously failing me and making me regret my decision to ever put him in charge.

"Francesco?" I said, pulling my attention away from the papers in front of me. "Do you have an explanation?"

He was sitting on the other side of the table in the conference room, and he was sweating so much that he looked like he had been dipped into a little fucking puddle. 

Him being this nervous was only making me more mad.

How did he not have an explanation for this or even a fucking logical reasoning that would calm me down for this breakdown I was about to have after losing all this wine?

Francesco gulped, wiping a bead of sweat off his brow. "It seems we...um...misplaced it during transportation."

"Misplaced it? How do you misplace an entire year's worth of our best fucking wine?!"

I could not believe it, but I tried to calm down because I knew that yelling at him wouldn't do anything.

"Mr. Petron, I..I., uh..um." He stuttered, and I glared at him. He must have seen the look in my eyes because he spoke up a lot louder this time. "I don't know how this happened, Mr. Petron."

"You don't fucking know?" I yelled, causing some of the people in the room to look over at me in shock.

I got mad a lot of the time, but there had never been a time when I had been this mad.

 And, I mean, ever, I felt like I was going to explode from how furious I was with this situation.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down. 

Getting mad wasn't going to solve anything, but damnit, I couldn't help it.

Francesco looked like he was about to shit himself, and honestly, I wouldn't blame him if he did.

Losing an entire year's worth of our best wine was a huge fucking deal, and here he was stuttering and stammering like a little boy who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"Listen," I said in a low voice, trying my best not to explode. "I don't care how it happened, but we need to fix this." 

"Now."

Francesco nodded frantically. "Yes, sir, right away, sir."

I dismissed everyone from the room except for Francesco. "Listen carefully," I said sternly. "You need to get your shit together and find that wine before it's too late."