The CEO's Dangerous Obsession

“I’m not taking these from you!” Claudia flung the presentation prints at me across her desk, leaving me to look at them, all sprawled on the floor. “Isn’t it your job to make our proposals look nice and presentable to our clients? We are just an hour away from the meeting with our client, and this is the nonsense you are showing me.” “I know what you are doing. You intentionally want to make me fail so that you will take my position, but I will spell it out to you now: there is no way that is happening.” Tears stung my eyes as I stared down at my weeks of hard work and sleepless nights scattered right at my feet. Claudia isn’t even my boss, and it isn’t her office either. However, there is nothing I can do about it because, in this life, there are people who are born to make a choice and there are those who can’t make one except they do the bidding of those who are eligible to make a choice. And I belong to the latter group. My name is Aurora Miller, 29 years old and a single mother to a 9-year-old intelligent daughter, Ivy. I lost my parents in a car accident when I was thirteen, leaving me in the care of my older sister, Riley, who became my parent until she also died when I was twenty years old. All my life, I've learnt to not rely on anybody but on my abilities to get things done, even if those things seem like a mountain. That way, I can put food on my table and my daughter’s. Today is just one of the many days I get this kind of treatment, but I have no choice but to do what I’m asked to do if I want to get paid. I gave a gentle sniff and ducked down to pick up the printouts and turned to leave, but just before I could reach for the doorknob, her voice stopped me. Almost the same time, the door opened from outside and my boss walked in. “Don’t forget that I will have to deduct the money for those papers you are wasting from your salary. If you like, waste more of it.” Tears had already clouded my eyes this time, and I only bowed my head to pay obeisance to my boss before storming out of the office. Life is so unfair, but what can I do other than try my possible best to survive? And again, even if I walked like a breeze in anger as I walked into the printing room, no one noticed. Not even one person raised their head to see what was going on. It is quite normal at work, and again, I don’t even mind if I am seen or not. I turned on my laptop, which was already in the printing room, and navigated to the presentation again to see what I could change to make it okay like she described. The frustrating thing about this is she wouldn’t even mention what is wrong with the proposal, she just wants to pick a fight. A way to establish the fact that she has more leverage that I have in this company, even if we got in at the same time. I wiped the tear that strolled down my face as I adjusted the hue a little of the primary color I used. Probably, she will find it okay this time around. “Did she reject it again?” Celestina asked, making my heart almost jump out of my body. I didn’t realize she was there. Celestina is the only human I can point at as my friend, and ever since we met here five years ago, she has been of great help and has been a family to me and Ivy. I took a deep breath. “Yeah.” “What’s wrong with it?” “She didn’t say,” I replied. She sighs, “I wish she does all these to me. I would have given her what she deserves.” I shrugged my shoulders. “It isn’t even like she knows about all these things. You do all the grunt work and what they do is give her your hard work for her to present it. I hate it.” She laments. I wasn’t a bit moved by what she was saying, and I only focused on things to change but couldn’t find one since it all looks nice. I sigh and take a last look for the last time, ready to walk into her office and show her what it is that I have done. “It’s better now. I just don’t like how the first page looks.” I’m back to my boss’s office now and that is her honest review again. At this point, I was trembling with my chest, feeling like it was about to explode as I watched her sit on my boss’s seat like she owned the place. Even he sat in the visitor’s seat. Slowly, I lowered myself down to the level of the laptop I’d placed in front of her and zoomed in. “That’s better. I love that. You can go and print out the copies now. And be fast about it. We have only forty minutes left until the meeting.” I sighed, releasing all the tension in my body and also relieved that she didn’t ask me to make a redo. “You should go and get your makeup done for the presentation. You know, I love the way you handle those clients,” my boss finally said. “Definitely. I’m always the one closing the deal, and this one will not be an exception,” she replied, giving me a side look as I picked up my laptop. I know what she was trying to do, but I won’t give her the reaction she’d been looking for. I just want to get past today without drama as usual. Relieved, I set out to print the proposals in the printing room with Celestina rambling about how she wanted to rip Claudia’s hair off her head, when I discovered that there was no more ink in the printer. “This will take about twenty minutes to fix,” David, the maintenance guy, told me. My heart skipped when I heard that. We only have twenty minutes left before the meeting.