29
Camila nodded and he popped up from his chair and hustled away.
When the door closed again Camila looked at Sigrid with a worried expression. “Are we in trouble?”
Sigrid nodded. “We may be ground zero for whatever she has planned for him.”
“We need him!” Camila said meaning the company but she realized it was more than that now. She caught Sigrid’s eye and knew her friend was thinking along the same lines. The Valkyrie frowned.
“VRL needs his technical expertise and now that we’ve experienced the rush of his energy it’s not easy to contemplate giving that up.” Her frown deepened. “We might have to though.”Content property of NôvelDra/ma.Org.
“We don’t really know who the players are in this game! Other than his ‘adoptive parent’ who seems to be the mastermind and won’t be sharing her plan, we don’t know who else is involved, targeted, or will eventually be impacted. From the hints Yuko gave, it seems at least a faction of the Japanese Spirits Combine has taken an interest in him. He makes them nervous-”
The light on Sigrid’s phone lit up and the woman frowned. She pressed the button. “Yes, Margaret?”
“I’ve got Felix on the line looking for Ms. Villamor. She has a priority call from Japan on hold,” the executive assistance’s voice said through the speaker.
Camila stood and headed for the door with a look back at Sigrid who hung up. She opened the door and nodded to Margaret as she headed for her office.
“She’s on her way back,” the woman said to Felix.
Camila stepped into her waiting room and Felix was wide eyed and speaking into his phone. “Yes, she’s just returned to her office. I’ll put your video call right through, Minister Imamura.”
Camila’s eyebrows went up. The official never called her and never at this hour. With her door closed she turned off her cell and collected herself behind her desk. With a press of a button Yuji Imamura, one of Japan’s senior cabinet Ministers was looking out at her from her PC screen. He preferred to speak face to face and wasn’t averse to using this technology.
She was surprised to see he was not calling from his workplace. The room behind him appeared to be some kind of study with paintings and bookshelves. He was also dressed in a… dressing gown?
She dipped her head towards him. “Minister Imamura, my apologies for the delay. I was not expecting your call. Is everything alright?”
“No! Everything is not alright! I do not enjoy receiving calls in the middle of the night from my daughter telling me your CIO has called off their wedding! What kind of man is he to do this to her?”
Camila was momentarily frozen. Yuko… Imamura? She cleared her throat. “This is the first I have heard of a wedding. I will speak to him immediately to get to the bottom of this-”
“He must reconsider and apologize to Yuko. The wedding must proceed. Much is at stake.” He held her eyes so she would understand that what was also at stake was the business VRL did with his government which was considerable. Losing it wouldn’t cripple them but it would hurt… significantly. “I understand. I will do what I can from here-” The man nodded and disconnected leaving her with her mouth open.
Shit.
Marisa smiled as she saw Stanley enter the waiting room. “Good morning, Mr. Garin!” she said with a broad smile.
“Good morning, Pa- Marisa!” he stuttered and smiled apologetically at his gaff.
She gave him a raised eyebrow and he hustled past her to unlock his office. He checked on the latest server builds and felt them humming happily. These servers would be moving into their newly completed server room. He’d stopped by the server room and relished the chilly air. The air conditioner had been installed and the room was ready for server occupation. The workers had installed all the network cables as he’d requested. New lines would be run throughout the building this weekend. Each workstation would have a new cable waiting for it when the new servers were ready to take over. The initial step was to move the existing workstations from the old network cables to the new ones. He’d have to come in on Sunday to make sure all of the workstations connected to the new network. He was also running scripts to transfer the data from the old servers to the new ones on Saturday. The office would be closed completely this weekend for these moves. The following weekend would be the roll out of the new workstations.
Three new servers were being delivered to his office for their software to be set up on them today. As promised the security office servers were being replaced and Mr. Duncan would have them next week.
He walked out to see Marisa taking a call. She finished up and hung up giving him a worried look.
“What?”
“First the good news. Your servers have arrived and are on their way upstairs,” she began.
“Excellent! They’re early! Now, what’s the bad news?”
“Ms. Villamor would like to see you in her office immediately,” Marisa said quietly.
He’d just seen her a few minutes ago! What else could have gone wrong? “That- that’s not necessarily bad news… is it?” he asked.
“She didn’t sound happy,” the beauty pouted uneasily.
“Ok, I’d better go see what it is,” Stanley mumbled and quickly left his office.
Felix gestured for him to go right in and he closed the door behind himself.
Camila got straight to the point. “Yuko’s father just called me. He got a call from his daughter who told him you called off the engagement. Unfortunately, he does a very large amount of business with VRL and he is threatening to pull those investments if you don’t apologize to Yuko and marry her.”
“WHAT?!?” Stanley gasped.
“We have to come up with a strategy that will extract you from this mess and will save her father’s reputation,” Camila said.
“That little BRAT!” Stanley growled. “All of this is Yuko’s fault! She’s been manipulating me from the beginning yet she’s taken no responsibility for her actions at all!”
Camila looked at him. “You’re right, she needs to face the consequences of her actions. Informing her mother will take care of that. There’s still the matter of her father’s pride.”
“Marriage can’t be the only solution to that problem. He has to be ok with my not marrying Yuko!” Stanley gasped.
Camila thought about that for a moment while she eyed Stanley critically. “If we speak with Yuko’s mother and explain what’s been going on she would be on our side most definitely. She could convince her husband that Yuko’s play time in New York is over and she needs to grow up. He’d still be faced with the public humiliation of acknowledging his being manipulated by his daughter… unless you’d be willing to take the fall for him. For them both actually.”
Stanley looked worried. “Uh… what would that entail?”
“You said he’d have to be ok with you not marrying Yuko. If you were willing to publicly declare yourself unfit to marry her and you called off the wedding out of respect for him, he could walk away from this with more respect.” She frowned. “I’m sorry Stanley, I know it’s a lot to ask of you but the young Kitsune created the unstable situation that needs to be dealt with quickly before she makes it worse.”
“When you say publicly…”
“You would address him in the legislature so his peers could hear your confession,” Camila stated calmly.
“In Japan. I’d be in Japan. Standing in the building with them… in Japan,” Stanley gasped in shock.
“It would need to be done face to face. Would you do it?” she asked.
“What would I be confessing to? What makes me unworthy?”
“He would accept you saying she deserves a husband from Japan. The cabinet would love that.”
He blinked at her and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “No. I can’t say that,” Stanley said firmly.
“Second best answer you could give him is that you couldn’t give him grandchildren.”
Stanley’s eyes widened as he looked at Camila in shock. He thought about that. It truly would be humiliating to say such a thing but that would make it all the more convincing he supposed. Could he say that in public? He scowled as he realized he had little choice if he wanted to protect his job and his new… friends. He nodded.
Camila relaxed. “First though, I need to speak to her mother. Let me take care of that.” She looked at him compassionately. “I’m so sorry for this Stanley. We will all owe you a tremendous debt.”
He just nodded stiffly and rose to his feet. He let himself out and made his way back to his office. Marisa looked at his closed off expression and began to rise from her chair when he closed the door to his office. He had computers to configure.
At least they didn’t manipulate him.
Stanley spent most of Saturday with the workers ensuring they had no issues with rewiring the building. The cables for each floor had different colors and the workers understood where each set went. By the time he left at 5PM he’d installed several servers in the server room and had run some tests. The Security department’s servers would be ready to install on Monday morning.
He also had backups running for the existing servers over the fibre links he’d had run from the basement server room to the new server room in the penthouse. That was running smoothly.
He headed home, picking up a few items for the party on the way.
His condo was quiet when he arrived. There’d been no sign of Yuko since yesterday morning. The Japanese furniture was still there but Yuko’s clothes weren’t. Some of his favorite t-shirts were gone too.
He got dressed and headed downstairs a little after 7PM and rang the doorbell on 404.
A few seconds later the door opened and lovely blue eyes were looking back at him as Sandy gave him a wide smile.
“Stanley! You escaped!” she cheered.
“Very funny! I told you I would be here,” he said with a self-conscious grin.
“Are those for me?” she gasped.
He remembered he was carrying the bouquet of flowers and nodded as he handed it to her. “I don’t get invited to many parties, this is my first actually, so I don’t know how it works. I guessed I shouldn’t arrive empty handed.” He presented his other hand which was clutching two bottles of wine. The clerk told him it was very good wine and it certainly cost like it was.
“Ooo! Red wine!” Her eyes widened. “That looks like good red wine! Come in! Only my bestie Dayshia is here so far. The others are on their way.”