Laughter echoed in her ears, forcing its way through her vivid imagination.
They were all laughing at her. The stockholders, her brother and his wife, and most importantly the media. Veronica sat in front of her computer, her eyes scanning the page, freshly painted nails clicking against the desktop. She pressed the website's refresh button ten more times before letting her head fall unto her desk. What was she going to do?
The offensive article loomed above her, a menacing banner of her failure. She had failed to keep the company safe and everything was now going up in flames.
"Drug Cartel." That was what her company had been reduced to. Of course it was an exaggeration but that didn't make things any better. What mattered was what people believed.
Other disgusting headlines whirled through her mind, filling her with contempt. "Sydius Entertainment: No Addicting Music But Plenty Addicting Drugs." "Celebrities or Druggies?" "House of Criminals."
It didn't help that their society was more conservative than others. A drug scandal in other places was considered a misconduct, but here it was a death sentence.
Veronica was so lost in thought that she didn't notice a knock on the door. An employee stepped into the office and bent down to whisper something in her ear.
Veronica lifted her head off the desk. "Are you sure?"
The employee nodded.
Veronica reached for the telephone and dialed a number, calling the head lawyer. What she had just heard must not be true.
A voice filtered in from the other end.
"Hello?"
"I'm pressing all charges."
"But—"
"Find her by midday. If you don't, you're fired."
Before he could reply, Veronica slammed the phone down on its holder. She felt the blood rise to her head. Nothing was going as planned. She could do with some chamomile tea.
Veronica slumped into her chair and began to call for her secretary when she realized she did not have a secretary anymore. Clarissa had sold company information in exchange for money. It was the greatest betrayal she had encountered since she had first entered the company. Even worse than when a trusted employee had painted her office an ugly green.
Veronica's office was modern and simple with a sturdy black desk and four stuffed chairs for visitors. A file cabinet that was kept under lock at all times was hidden at the farthest end of the room next to a closet where Veronica kept an assortment of clothes, shoes, and toiletries.
She added notes to the speech she would give at the board meeting and checked the clock. It was almost time for the emergency meeting and the board members didn't like to be left waiting. She didn't want to make them any more angry than they originally were.
Veronica turned to her mirror and removed her makeup. Gone was the sexy eye-liner that emblazoned her brown eyes and her bright red lipstick. She hesitated before removing her false lashes and undoing the intricate braids of her dark hair.
It was time to look remorseful.
Veronica studied herself in the mirror but decided that the lack of makeup made her look too shabby. She donned a pair of tiny earrings, new designer heels and clipped a silver watch to her wrist.
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She took a deep breath before opening the door to the meeting room.
The board members sat in their seats and did not bother to greet her, the room silent except for the occasional cough and harsh whisper. It would be an understatement to say that they were angry.
Veronica held her head up high and took her seat at the front of the room. She swiveled around in her chair and faced them, hands clasped together. The board members were made up of middle-aged men and women that valued money above everything else.
They didn't care who was in charge of the company as long as that person could keep the money flowing into their pockets and Veronica had to be that person. She prepared herself to speak when one of the board members raised their hand. Veronica sighed.
It was her brother's wife Clair, a thin pretty woman who prided herself in throwing elegant parties and owning all the latest fashions. There was no mistaking why her hand was up in the air. Veronica sat back and waited.
"The board members are curious about how you are going to take responsibility for this scandal," said Clair.
Veronica forced a smile. "The person responsible for the situation is being tracked down right now. Once she is in police custody, an investigation will be underway."
"How can you call yourself a CEO when you can't even manage your own employees?"
"My employees are under my care," Veronica replied, "But I can not control them."
"Is that an excuse?"
"It is merely a fact."
Veronica's brother raised his voice. "I don't think you understand the gravity of this situation."
He was a portly man with a round face and a raw ambition for success. Veronica considered him a million leagues below her.
"One of our artists has not only been accused of substance abuse but also of selling it to others," he said. "People are calling our entertainment company a drug cartel. A place that houses druggies. Tell me. What are you going to do about it?"
The board members murmured in agreement.
"Our crisis team is coming up with a solution," Veronica said.
Her brother banged his fist on the table. "This is not something you can fix with just the crisis team. We need to sacrifice to show the public that we are taking this seriously and that such a thing will never happen again."
"We need you to set an example," said Clair. Her lips curled into a smug grin. "As the CEO of Sydius Entertainment you must be willing to give up something for this company."
Veronica bit her lip. This was not how things were supposed to go. Clair opened her mouth to speak again but was interrupted by the erratic buzzing of twelve cell phones.
After a few long moments she rummaged through her purse for her own phone. Her eyes slid across the text on the screen, her mouth slowly dropping open. Clair cast a glare at Veronica before dragging her confused husband out of the room.
As they read the messages on their phones, the rest of the board members left the meeting one by one, a few of them throwing back fearful glances. Veronica sat in silence and stared at the empty chairs. She did not know what had just happened, but she wasn't bothered.
She stood up from her seat and slid a piece of fruit-flavored gum in her mouth. Sydius Entertainment was still hers and no one could take it away from her. Veronica's heels clicked confidently as she made her way back to her office.
She lay on a sofa and turned on the news. The large flat-screen T.V. made her feel less lonely in the stark, echoey room. Veronica watched as a tall pretty lady that looked closer to a supermodel than a reporter gave the announcement. Sydius Entertainment's highest grossing star was still in police custody despite the efforts of the company's expensive lawyers. It was likely he would go to jail, with millions of stock share prices plummeting alongside him.
Veronica wasn't sure whether Adonis had done drugs and neither did she care. She just wanted her money back. All the money she had ever invested in him.
Kicking him out of the company was the surefire way to return things back to normal but she would give him a few days out of loyalty. Veronica turned off T.V. the and left to berate the few law-abiding employees she had left.
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A few days later she sat in the conference room, tapping a pencil against the screen of her laptop. It had become a habit after her many years of reviewing data and studying trends on the device. Applicants lined up outside of the door, each hoping to secure the spot as Veronica's new secretary.
The Director of Finance was hosting the job interview and he seemed quite perplexed as to why he was there.
"Do you really need me to be there?" he had asked her that morning, fidgeting with his bow-tie.
"Definitely," Veronica had replied in an offhand manner. "I can't trust anyone."
"Then does that mean you trust me?"
Veronica had looked up from her laptop for a brief moment, her eyes shining with something between amusement and contempt.
"No. You're just too stupid for me to feel threatened by you."
"So you let a stupid person handle your company finances," he had muttered under his breath, not bothering to fix the pieces of his broken pride.
Now Veronica had spent the last three hours searching for a secretary that fit her needs. And she had many needs. The CEO had weeded out the applicants faster than any weed remover that the Director of Finance had seen in the market.
Applicants were either too short or too tall, too fat or too skinny. Some spoke too loud and others too soft. Some preferred red over blue and others swore that wearing fuzzy sweaters could cure any disease except malaria.
It was more than once that Veronica had screamed at an applicant, ready to tear them apart after they had insulted one of her favorite foods or toothpaste brands.
The Director of Finance did not know what fuzzy sweaters and toothpaste had to do with finding a good secretary, but he could equate the reason why Veronica liked the toothpaste brand to the fact that she found the brand model "totally hot" as she had put it.
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After eight hours and sixteen cups of coffee Veronica still had not found a secretary. She rubbed her eyes, positive that she was beginning to form dark circles. The sooner she found a secretary, the less coffee she would drink and the less coffee she drank, the less likely she would die from caffeine poisoning.
Just when Veronica was about to order her seventeenth cup of coffee, a man entered the room and sat on the chair across from her. Warm brown eyes
looked back at her, gracing an almost boyish face. It was the kind of face Veronica despised.
"Who are you?" she asked, her eyes blinking rapidly. She could already feel her hands beginning to shake from the excess caffeine.
"The last applicant," said the man.
Veronica nodded and flipped through his resume. "Let me see...You didn't go to a good college, have little to no work experience, and basically have no aspirations in life." She looked up at him. "Do you think you can be my secretary?"
"I have aspirations," he said.
Veronica jabbed her finger at a line in his resume. "Live each day as if it were your last? You call that an aspiration?"
The man folded his arms. "You didn't even ask for my name."
"I don't need to know your name," said Veronica. "It's not like you'll be with me until I die."
"Is this about your old secretary?" he asked. "I heard she back-stabbed you and sold the drug story to the press."
Veronica's eyes blazed and she felt her hand suddenly twitch.
The man raised an eyebrow. "You're not planning on hitting me are you?"
Veronica smiled weakly and clasped her hands together to prevent them from causing any mischief.
"One of the applicants left the room with bite marks," the man continued. "You're not into weird stuff are you?" He inched closer. "You're not perhaps a vampire or a werewolf?"
Veronica glowered at the accusation despite its absurdity. She didn't appreciate his jokes. "I'm not a weird person," she said. "And those weren't bite marks. Apparently they were allergic to the bowl of peanuts I ordered placed at the center of this table."
"Why the peanuts?"
"Because I can't have a weak secretary," she said, folding his resume into a tiny square. "All weaknesses no matter how small, must never exist."
The applicant nodded his head slowly. "So basically you're a discriminating psycho."
Every ounce of her being wanted to send him away but she decided to play it cool. It had been a long time since anyone had ever challenged her and it would serve as a good distraction from her current situation.
Veronica tilted her head so that her hair hung to the side like a curtain. "You don't speak like someone who wants this job. Calling your interviewer and potential boss a psycho isn't going to get you anywhere."
"I don't know," he said. "I guess I just feel comfortable around you." He grinned cheekily.
"Well I don't feel comfortable around you," Veronica said. She pointed at him with a well manicured fingernail. "Your ignorance makes my skin crawl."
The man's smile widened. "This is the first time a woman has ever said I made their skin crawl. I'm not sure if I was supposed to find that attractive but I find it strangely insulting."
"I'm not a woman," said Veronica, folding her arms across her chest. "I'm your boss."
"So I got the job?"
Veronica frowned. "That's not what I meant."
The man cocked his head as if studying her. "Do you want to hear a secret?"
"No."
He leaned close and whispered in her ear. "I'm the one who saved you by sending messages to the board members. If you don't want the same thing to happen to you, you better hire me."