The Billionaire's Plaything

Chapter Twenty Nine: Shareholders

ELENA ☀️

As soon as Dante walks through my office door, I bury my face in my hands in a bid to stop the tears that are threatening to pour down from my face.

Seeing Pedro not only reminded me of how stupid I had been and how he had hurt me, it was also a slap in the face to how I had fallen for Carlo in such a short time and even believed his lies.

The man who had claimed that he couldn’t live without me was doing very well without me now and even dared to send a friend to check on me.

Even worse, Pedro now owned shares in my company. For the first time, I was glad that Daniel owned 15% of Nirvana and I owned 55% of it. Kyle owned 15% currently which meant that no matter what happened, 75% of the shares were in safe hands. Hopefully, he hadn’t gotten his hands on more than 10%.

My door opened and Kyle strode in. He paused as he tried to take in my appearance before he spoke.

“I didn’t let him in. The receptionist informed me as soon as I arrived and I was just about to call you to know what you would have me do when he entered.” He explained with guilt oozing off him.

“It’s fine Kyle, he got the Mastercard from the reception. At least, I know where to keep the new one.” I said, trying to make light of the situation.

I used one of my feet to kick off the stilettos on one foot and did the same for the other, my body feeling much more comfortable the moment I had them off.

“You shouldn’t be wearing those.” He scolded while looking at them like they were some demons from hell.

“I wanted to look impressive for the shareholder meeting. Now I don’t even want to be there.” I groaned and then patted the space beside me for him to sit.

I rested my head on his shoulders the moment he sat down and I felt him grow tense.

“Are you okay?” I asked, jerking up to look at him.

Kyle nodded and then looked at me. “I don’t know, it’s just weird that you got those visits from the both of them this morning. It feels kind of weird and disturbing.” He voiced out and I wondered how shocked he would feel when he realized that Pedro was now a shareholder in our company.

“Let’s go through the document one more time so we can easily know what’s wrong when the analysis is being read out.” He nodded and I walked over to my table to get my MacBook.

For the next twenty minutes, we scanned through the tiny letters on my screen to make sure we hadn’t skipped out on anything before now.

Since the news of a collection launch was already out, the shareholders would want to know what this was going to do to the company and what it wouldn’t.

I was at least glad that, by my valuation, we would be about hundreds of millions richer after the launch.

Kyle went back to his office some few minutes before the meeting and I used my en-suite office bathroom to redress my hair and makeup before heading out of the office.

The board room was on the top floor, which was the same floor as my office, and I just had to walk there for less than ten seconds.

Most of the shareholders were there already other than Daniel, while Kyle was seated beside Pedro. He shot me a questioning gaze as soon as I entered and I looked away.

The board room was relatively emptier than it used to be and I could guess that was a result of the different amount of shares Pedro might have bought.

“Good morning everyone, the company is entirely grateful for your support and understanding. Before we go into discussing the important things, I would like to inform everyone that we now have a new shareholder among us. If you would not mind making a brief introduction to the room?” I directed the last part of my statement to Pedro, who shot me a wink that almost had me gagging right there.

He made a brief introduction that I was somehow not listening to up until he got to the part where he stated that he now owned 7% of Nirvana’s shares.

My heart felt like a huge load had been lifted from it as I let out a soft sigh.

****

Contrary to what I had expected as a pessimist, the meeting had gone really well and other than Pedro shooting flirtatious glances at me, he had been silent the entire time.

“Elena,” Pedro called as I was about to leave the boardroom.

“What’s the matter?” I asked snappily, which made him raise his hands in mock surrender.

“Calm down, I’m just still curious as to why you are having a meeting with your husband’s best friend when he hasn’t been home in a month.” His eyes raked all over my body in the most annoying way possible and lingered on my chest.

“Would you appreciate it if I, Yunno, fixed a meeting between you three, you can get your questions answered over drinks and women.” Although I said it casually, my stomach twisted at the thought of Carlo being with other women.

“Still as feisty as ever.” He stated like he was reminiscing, and then walked out of the board room.

I hoped he was going all the way out of company because there was no way I was going to handle any more of his drama.

“The Hr said they are done with the screening and have two suitable candidates.” Kyle said as soon as I came out of the board room. He had clearly been waiting.

“Okay, let them send their files so I can pick who I’ll like to work with.”

Kyle nodded and left while I walked to my office. My stomach growled as I entered.

More than anything that was going on, I wanted my baby to be okay.

***

Mom’s call distracted me as I tried to sort out some designs for new productions. Since they were single designs, they had to stand out in their own way to make it top the charts well enough.

“When exactly were you planning to let me know that Pedro just joined your major shareholders!” Mom bellowed angrily, making me take the phone and put it on hands off.

“And who exactly told you this piece of interesting news?” I questioned calmly. After all, we had just ended the meeting about an hour ago.

Feeling guilty, my mom became silent at the other end of the call.

“Mom, when exactly are you going to let me live the way I want? I’m not a kid anymore mom and I will stop indulging you soon.” I hung up the call and then switched off my phone.

Kyle came in some few minutes after that with some documents in hand. I was already used to him not knocking.

“I called your number to see if you were busy but it was switched off, so I decided to go up.” He said, dropping two files on my table.

“The two best applications.”

I looked through them swiftly, taking in their qualifications and appearance.

“I think I’d go for this Lukas guy. He seemed like he would be able to get more work done. Besides, his fashion experience is actually greater. It would make explaining things to him easier.” I analyzed their profiles one more time and then handed it back to Kyle.

“I do think you need an assistant too. Why don’t you take the girl?” I suggested, thinking of how much work load he had.

“I’m not even offering, you have to take her as your assistant.” I said, expecting him to argue.

“I’ll get one soon. I don’t think I’ll appreciate a woman being around me all the time.” He said with a shrug, and I wondered why he could be so comfortable around me if he didn’t want women around him.

I nodded in understanding. After all, the most I could do was let him know how much I wanted him to have an assistant.

After talking for a while, Kyle left work promising me that Lukas would resume work at my new home tomorrow.

I used the remaining time at work to sort through documents and then went to see how the production teams were doing with each design.

Often, if they had any trouble, the production manager would send for me, but there were times they did it well but not to my taste, so making trips there was often just as important.