Serotonin

08 I not your friend

Chapter 8

"The Marquess of Headfort isn't complying with our request for renovating his ancestral home as a luxury resort. I believe he might be persuaded more if you contacted him directly," said Robert, the new Head of PR for Whitmore Hotels, in a hesitant tone.

"If I have to contact people by myself, remind me, why have I hired you and your entire team?" I asked flatly. I wasn't a mean employer, but I was frank in stating my opinions and displeasure. They had been assigned one job in the past week and still had been unsuccessful.

I heard an intake of breath on the other end of the call.

"I apologise, please give me another chance. I'll make sure you won't have to hear another complaint," he said pleadingly. I hadn't dealt with Robert before. It had been a month since Mr. Thompson had retired, but clearly, he didn't know me well enough.

"It's just that he was a Marquess, and if he got offended, I'm nothing but a mere employee. Though I assure you, I tried a lot from calling to emailing and even sending a hamper with one of our employees who was not welcomed by them." He finished his rant and his voice quivered, I sighed.

"Robert, I'm not firing you and I have no intention of doing so. But I need you to remember, this won't be the first time you will be dealing with someone as important as a Marquess, and certainly not the last. You're not a mere employee but an employee of Whitmore Co., and we protect our own. So remember that, and give in your best shot. He is a challenging man, but I don't expect you to back down. If he still doesn't comply, get back to me and I'll handle it," I said affirmatively.

"Thank you so much. You have my word, you'll have a positive response in the next three days," he replied confidently, and I smiled.

"Good. I look forward to it," I said and hung up.

Looking back, France felt unreal to me, from getting Jace back home to all my meetings with Adrian Carter.

We met upon a chance encounter. We talked, and we danced. We fought, and we laughed.

It had been a perfect illusion.

But reality had struck in, and we had moved on with our lives.

It had been a week since the ball, and the day we came back to New York. Everything had fallen back in its place and in full swing: the reporters, new business ventures, rise and fall in stock prices and attacks by our competitors and relatives. It was a usual day of running the Whitmore empire.

Whitmore Co. was on the Forbes list for being one of the top ten richest companies in the world. Our company had two components. Whitmore Holdings Company which was a multinational conglomerate holding company. And Whitmore Hotels Ltd. operated the luxury hotel chain with over 100 resorts all over the world. The former was handled by Jace and the latter by me, under Mr. Anderson's guidance.

In Jace's absence, Mr. Anderson had kept everything under control and made me work hard. But now, the work had become almost negligible and that irked me.

Over the years, work had been my only distraction, my only purpose. From maintaining my grades at school to handling business associates and overseeing new projects, I was accustomed to having a packed schedule with no minute to breathe. It kept me distracted from the void in my personal life.

Sometimes when I felt like it was me against the world, it kept me going.

With the amount of work I had, I had even decided to postpone college. But now, that was a far fetched dream, Jace had resumed his role in full capacity as a businessman and my brother. Postponing college wasn't an option anymore. He was back and was staying for good.