...
"Good Morning to you all," Ivan said as he took his usual seat at the head of the meeting table. "First board meeting of the year and we have a lot to get through," he said. "As you all know, Houston is up. They are furnishing the offices as we speak which means we should be up and running as soon as we are done with the hire process," he explained. "At the end of the meeting we'll be picking our head of accounting so whilst we commence with the meeting do keep that in mind. For now we'll start at the top of the table and work our way round. Nicki,"
"Thank you Ivan," she said as she stood and took the clicker from him, allowing her to prepare for her presentation. "I'm going to start by presenting the Mode campaign from Marketing," she said as she passed out a few handouts to be passed around the table so that she could explain each of the designs and hence give each one a fair chance of winning the vote from the board...
"Okay, so like I said at the start we now need to vote for the new head of accounting and finance, Jerome thinks they're both very capable of taking on the role and I have my reasons to believe why one would be better at the job than the other, but it's not up to me. So those in favour of Aubrey," he asked and Grace took count of the hands as usual and made a note of the numbers. "And those in favour of Devon." As expected the votes remain as they had at the beginning of the previous month.
Although she never usually paid attention to board votes, this one had caught her attention. She had placed two and two together following the conversation she had shared with Jerome the day before, but she had somehow hoped she was wrong. She didn't think to bring it up to him because she didn't expect to be correct, but unfortunately she was.
"Nicki, it's your call," he said, drawing her out of the trance she had gone into and leaving her to make a very difficult decision.
All of a sudden she was taken back to the conversation she and the mysterious woman had shared this morning and her words rang clearly in her head. He has a hidden agenda, and the sooner you find it the easier it'll be to let him go. With that she had no issue making her decision...
-
"Ivan would like to speak to you," Jerome said to him as he walked past his desk and headed to his office. Following orders, Drake stood and made his way to the CEO's office.
"Nice to see you sir," Ivan said as he signalled for Drake to sit on the seat opposite his own. "I have some good news for you?" He said with a smile. "You're our new head of Accounting and Finance for the Houston branch. Congratulations," Ivan said excitedly and Drake gave a small smile at the news but didn't say anything in response. "You don't seem too happy, what's wrong?"
Drake sighed and ran his hand over his waves. "As ungrateful as this sounds, I don't think I want the job anymore," he said causing Ivan to sit back in his chair and give him a confused look.
"What changed your mind?" he asked. "Because we had this conversation just before christmas and you said you were all for it. The work you've been doing and the skills you've gained in just the last month have aligned with it too, so what changed?"
"I can't leave now Ivan, the timing is off. And I'll be letting go of more than I can afford to lose," he said and Ivan sighed.
For a moment it was silent as he just thought about how he could convince him to take the offer. "If I moved her to Houston too would that change your mind?" he asked seriously causing Drake to chuckle.
"It definitely would, but she's not moving, so neither am I," he said.
"She's really not because I need her right here," he said, causing Drake to laugh. "How about you do me one big favour then?" he asked and Drake just listened. "Move to Houston for opening, work alongside Devon as co-heads for the next 3-4 weeks as everything gets up and running and if you still don't want the job after that, yours will be here waiting for you. It gives you a chance to at least try long distance before you completely turn down the offer,"
