Winters (Book Five)

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

I finish triple-checking the PowerPoint and try to relax some. There have been plenty of times I have met with the board of shareholders by myself over the last few years considering how much Alexander travels for this job. But this is different, he isn't in another country, he's in a damn coma and people are going to have a lot of questions that I can't answer. Closing my laptop, I slide my feet back into the heels and straighten out my button-down.

"You are looking sharp today," Click's voice says and I smile.

"Thanks, I have that meeting in twenty minutes," I say as she drops into one of the extra chairs in my office.

"You are going to knock it out of the park," Click says easily and she smiles up at me.

"Are you just going to work in here while I'm gone?"

I ask I finish filing a few things away.

"Yup!"

"Okay if you need anything Lil is out there and she can help you out. Don't do anything illegal while I am gone," I say pointedly and she gives me a shit-eating grin before flicking her laptop open.

Taking the stairs down one floor, I set up in the board room and great a few of the shareholders. John chats my ear off and I just smile at him as he talks about what his grandkids are doing.

"I forgot my clicker," I say out loud before texting and asking Click to bring it down for me. She responds instantly and as the last few members roll in, she pops in.

"Thank you," I say sincerely as I turn the thing on and make sure it works. It needed new batteries and never made it back down here.

"No problem," she says before turning to leave.

"Who's this Lena?" John asks sweetly and I smile.

"This is Calikta Johnson Winters, she's adopted," I say carefully and I glance to see Click smiling at the board room full of mostly old men. I remind myself that they are only here now because they make the company more reputable and that they will most likely behave for this meeting.

"Oh, when did that happen?" John asks, and there is no malice in his voice, rather an earnest sincerity.

"A few years ago," she says simply before giving me a short wave and walking out.

"Does she work here?"

"Not currently, she's finishing her last semester of school and working for a private investigator on the side," I say as I step away from the podium ready to start talking. We wouldn't normally be holding meetings this close but we had our quarterly meeting and now I need to address the massive deals I struck.

"A PI? That sounds like a lot of fun for a college grad," John says excitedly and I smile.

"She's a whizz on the computer, she practically runs circles around some of our engineers. But let's talk about business," I say easily trying to segue into the presentation.

"Before we start Cathleen, we have some concerns," Terence says and I keep a cool composure. I have an incredibly strong dislike for Terrance, he's an over-opinionated pain in our ass and it has taken a lot of restraint to not buy him out of his shares on multiple occasions. Avi and Alexander have personally talked me out of doing it three times in the last year.

"I haven't even given the presentation for you to have concerns over," I muse sweetly but my gut churns.

"Alexander being missing has not been a good look for Voyager and this is the second time this has happened to him," Terence says and I see a lot of the shareholders looking away. Terence is the only one with enough gal to continuously voice these opinions.