Pride and Promises ✔

Chapter 12

It had been a week now since my little outburst with Adrian and I'd been going out of my way to avoid any encounter with him. It hadn't been really difficult so far since he'd only been in Eva's three times since then.

He did try to talk to me a couple of times but coincidentally I was quite busy on all of the occasions and hence had to cut the meeting short. But other than that, he hadn't made any comment about my behaviour if he'd noticed anything although I'd caught him staring at me with a weird look on his face. It was as if he knew me more than he let on, which was quite unnerving at times.

To be honest, I was quite ashamed of my outburst. I don't know what had come over me that evening but once I heard him call me by the name which was only reserved for one specific person in my life, it was like coming out from a long duration amnesia. Memories I'd suppressed for so long came back and hit me with fresh waves of grief and sorrow and I'd lashed out on the one person who hadn't deserved it at all.

I knew I should at least apologise to him but I couldn't find the courage to face him. My guilt had increased even more when I saw my car parked in the parking lot of my apartment in the next morning. Which was the reason for my extremely  busy schedule.

But I couldn't avoid him forever. And fate made me realise it by scheduling the shareholders meeting at Adrian's office today. So I was currently on my way to The Stones Inc. with Leah and John from the marketing department. I climbed out of my car and not a second later, Leah and John arrived in John's car.

Adrian's office was every bit of what you'd expect one of the world's topmost company office to be like. This was the headquarter of his company and it radiated power and dominance over the business world. It's exterior as well as interior was like the CEO himself; sophisticated.

This was my first time being here in his office and I suddenly wanted to take a thorough tour of this place. Which was ridiculous since I had never been interested in any other places except the meeting hall in my past visits to other companies.

I dismissed the thoughts as Adrian's secretary led us to the conference room where a few board members were present, talking among themselves. I ignored the old Mr. David Cameron who started sneering the second I entered and took a seat on the opposite side followed by Leah and John on my either side.

Soon, other members started filling in and I gave a nod to some of them. After everyone was settled, Adrian entered with his secretary and just like that, there was complete silence in the room. I both admired and envied the man for this.

Eva's was a multinational clothing brand while The Stones Inc. dealt with multiple things like jewellery, electronics as well as some sports accessories. We discussed about introducing the complete fashion collection by the merger Eva's clothing and The Stones jewellery keeping the young adults as the target people of our products.

Adrian was a really good presenter. He talked about all the prospects of this business and I could see the reason behind his success. He listened attentively to everything anyone had to say and then presented his ideas. Seeing him this way, completely in his element did strange things to my heart. Whatever it was, I named it as pure envy.

The meeting turned out to be longer than expected and by the time it was done, everyone seemed exhausted, including me. Everyone stood up and shook hands with each other as we closed the meeting for the day. Soon everyone started walking out of the room, there were only a few left including Adrian himself.