“Thank you.”
CHAPTER 14
NERO ZANTHOS
The voices around me are nothing more than further incentive for my irritation levels to hit the ceiling. Apollo and Drako are wrapped up in the same nonsense as always, while Atlas—like me—is focused on his tablet, trying to figure out how to deal with the absolute mess that exploded in my face three days ago, when the power house at Zanthos Exports’ main farm caught fire.
I seriously consider kicking Drako and Apollo out of the room, and I’m just about to decide to do it when Icarus enters my office for what must be the tenth time in the past hour—and I’m not exaggerating.
The man in his early thirties looks at me fully aware that his insistence is only making me more irritable than usual, and I blow all the air out of my lungs through my nose.
“Mr. Nero Zanthos.”
“Yes, Icarus.”
It takes considerable effort not to grind the response through clenched teeth.
“I need to know what you’d like to do about the inoperative machines. Should we arrange for them to be repaired, or will they be sent for disposal?”
The effort I made not to snap at him outright isn’t enough to stop me from clenching my jaw to the point of pain now.
“I swear to God, Icarus—if you ask me one more stupid question, I’ll throw you into one of those machines and make damn sure that, new or old, it’s running at the time.”
The man’s dark eyes widen until his eyebrows nearly hit his hairline.
“Mr. Nero Zanthos, I’m very sorry, but I need your answers. Because if I do something wrong, how many times do I have to die inside a cotton gin before it costs me my job?” he asks, not a trace of humor on his face.
That’s enough.
“That’s a stupid question, Icarus. Congratulations—you’ve hit your quota. Do both of us a favor and get out of my sight.”
He pushes his rectangular black-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose, his mouth opening and closing several times.
Icarus turns and takes two steps toward the door he came through, stops, then turns back toward me. I catch it in my peripheral vision—I’m no longer giving him even a shred of attention.
He sighs and finally leaves.
“And the award for asshole boss of the year goes to—” Drako starts.
I close my eyes and silently beg the heavens for patience.
“Drumroll, please,” he adds, tapping his fingers against the coffee table in front of him. “Nero Zanthos!” he declares, applauding himself.
I ignore him.
I reread the reports open on my computer. The information there is even more irritating than Icarus’s incompetence, because it makes it painfully clear that there’s no one to blame for the absolute disaster unfolding around me.
The cotton gins are the first stage of processing after harvest. The work they do is at least a hundred and fifty times faster than manual labor. The fact that the very shed housing them caught fire can’t be described as anything less than catastrophic.
Because no matter how quickly we manage to replace them, the production delay will still be staggering.
Not to mention that storage facilities will eventually fill up with unprocessed cotton—because the harvest can’t be stopped, or we’ll lose a significant portion of it.
We’ll need external storage, additional logistics, an alternative transport fleet, and a thousand other things.
A fucking nightmare—that’s what this is.
Of all the problems that could have arisen, this is without a doubt the worst possible one.
