Night with The Twin Rivers

Jena headed into her office. Once inside she shut the door and went to her desk. Sitting down she propped her elbows up on the desk and put her hands in her head taking a few deep slow breaths. Today had been stressful. The meetings had been long and tiring. There was another company moving in on her territory and they were aggressive. If she wasn’t careful her company was going to lose more than just money.  Once she calmed down a bit she clicked on her computer and started going through her files and emails. Going through her emails she noticed one she wasn’t familiar with. It was from the new competitor. They wanted to meet to discuss potential business. She sighed, it was bound to reach this point. They wanted to discuss a contract they were forming with one of her clients. They were trying to win them over, and they didn’t want any hard feelings.  Jena took a few moments to compose herself and think of the proper way to respond to the email. Of course she needed to accept the meeting. It wouldn’t be wise to ignore them, but she needed to come up with a counter offer. She needed to think of a way to keep her client. It was time to call her assistant and have them gather some information for her. Grabbing her phone she sent a message to her assistant and what she wanted him to do. Turning back to the email she started compiling her message to accept their invite so they could set up a good time and date to meet.  Once she was satisfied with her email she clicked send and was surprised by how quickly they responded. She wondered if she was even talking to one of the CEO's at all, or if she was just talking to one of their assistants? It wasn’t uncommon to have one’s assistant taking over the emails and communicating with others. She didn’t like that, and she took care of her own emails.  Looking it over, she was invited to come to their office. They would sit down and discuss everything in a formal setting over lunch. It would be in three days time. She agreed and thanked them for their quick response. Looking away from the screen she sighed and leaned back. Only three days to create her counter offer and prepare herself for the meeting. In this time she would need to learn everything she could learn about the client they were trying to win over, and any other clients that she thought they would be interested in inquiring about. She brought her hands to her head again and rubbed her temples. Although she had been the head of this company for almost a year now, she hadn’t had much time to go through everything. This company wasn’t doing too well when she took it over and there were many things she had to change in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, that meant she had been taking their clients for granted while she worked on internal affairs. Now that her internal affairs were doing much better, it was time to focus on her clients and external affairs. This new company came at the wrong time and now she was struggling to gather all the intel she needed.  There was a slight knock on the door and Jeromy gently opened the door and looked at her with a small smirk. “You look like you just went through a huge battle.” She sighed and straightened herself up, “the battle unfortunately is just beginning.” “Maybe you should back off a bit and let them take a few. You can gain more later at a better time you know. You don’t have to feel like it’s a competition.” He said to her trying to reassure her.  Jena shook her head and gave him a small smile, “they are challenging us. We cannot back away from the challenge. If we do, what will the other clients think of us? No doubt they are already thinking if they should stay with us as we have been practically ignoring them for a time while we got ourselves together.” “Nothing you could have done about that.” She shook her head, “it doesn’t change the fact that it happened. If I was them I would be wondering what we are going to be doing as well. Smaller companies rely on us, and if we don’t give them something solid to lean on and reassure them that they will be fine with our backing, they will turn to bigger and better promises. We need to show them that we are loyal to them and we want to keep their business. If we play our cards right it will make us even stronger and the other company will have no choice but to back down a bit for a time and reconsider what they want to do.” She said to him.  He nodded, “very well. I will support whatever route you take. I am just worried that you may stretch yourself too thin.” Jena shrugged, “I like a good challenge. I think this will be good for me. I wont do anything that would be detrimental to my health or the health of this company.” “Very well. What would you like me to do?” Jeromy asked her.  “I would like you to gather as much information on the competition as possible. I want to know everything you can learn about them. How did they start up? I know the two CEO's are twins, but I want to know everything about them. I want to know what their favorite shoes are. If they favor one type of suit over the other. What their favorite cereal is. I want to go into that meeting fully prepared.” She gave him a playful smirk.  He chuckled a bit, “very well. When would you like this information?” “My meeting is in three days time. You have forty eight hours to gather all the information you can about them.” She gave him a challenging look.  Jeromy nodded and bowed a little, “very well. I will do my best. I will have the file sent to you by your deadline. Please let me know if you need anything else Alpha.” She shook her head and gently waved her hand for him to leave, “no. That is all. You are dismissed.” He quickly turned and left.  Jena pulled up the internet and did her own quick search. Better to get a head start so she wasn’t spending her time reading basic information about them later.  In their society, many businesses were run by magical creatures to blend in with human society. She was the Alpha of the Night pack. She spent her life training and studying to take her place among her pack. Their previous alpha wasn’t very bright, to say the least, and he was aggressive, sexist, egotistical, among other things. It took some time and she had to play her cards right for him to lower his guard and she killed him. Took her place as the Alpha and started running the family business. There were very little rules in place within the business itself. People weren’t behaving appropriately for a business setting. There were a few humans that worked in the lower level workings of the business and the wolves within the business were getting careless, sometimes even slipping into their wolf forms and wandering the hallways. Not to mention the sexism and bias that filled the walls. She was quick to start firing people who were violating the handbook. Not to mention she hired a strong human resource professional to redo their employee handbook to make it more detailed and easier to read. Everyone needed to be retrained and she wanted tests done on everyone. She had wanted to know who was competent in their role, who would be better suited for other roles, and who would be good for promotions. There were so many things about the business that had been lacking and disorganized. Luckily, the HRM she hired was amazing and quickly went to work making things right within the company. It took them ten months to get to where they were finally comfortable and confident with the people who were working within. Jena was no longer afraid that anyone within the walls would be trying to tear her down. In these ten months she had earned the trust among her people and they were now supporting her and her efforts to make things better. It was a great feeling to have everyone look to you and respect you.  The competing company came from the East. They were moving their operations closer to the city, which was Night territory. She couldn’t understand why they would make such a bold move. Probably to try and get their hands on the city. The city would certainly bring them more money. They were a similar company to her own, and that they created loans for small businesses, and worked with distributing. They would help smaller companies starting up with trades and giving them connections to other companies, supplies, and networking that they would need. They must have a strong backing and family to be able to do what she was doing. But she wouldn’t let them just come in and take over. This was her territory and she would protect her pack and business.  The competing company was owned by two brothers, twins from the looks of it. Looking at their pictures she could tell that they were wolves. The internet told her of their brief family history of being small town boys that grew up and started their own business. They were successful and have been moving forward. Looking at their last names, something stirred in the back of her mind, River clan. A warring clan from her clans past, back when they were fighting for land instead of businesses. They had been silent for so long, why would they come back now out of all times? Did they get wind that there was a new leader? Did they see that she wasn’t being aggressive with the company and decided to take their chances in challenging her?  Looking them over and felt herself stir a bit. She could feel her wolf hum a little. They were certainly attractive and her body heated up a bit. Taking a deep breath she tried to calm herself down. There was no point in getting worked up over them. They were the enemy after all. She was sure that, although their faces were pleasant, their personalities probably wouldn’t be. They would probably be sexist. Giving her even more challenges as they would test her to see how she would react, thinking that she was too weak to fight back. She wouldn’t let them intimidate her. No one could do that. In fact, she would make sure to intimidate them instead. She would go in strong and poised, and she would take them off guard. Hopefully they were prepared, it wouldn't be any fun if they didn't fight back.