From My Love to My Life (MXM) (sequel to From My Enemy to My Love)

Chapter 4

Vincent Kinsington

I unlocked the small office building and stepped inside. I switched on the lights and walked past desks until I reached my own towards the back. It was earlier than usual, but I wanted to meet with the COO. He was usually here before I was and since he wasn't in the office area, I made my way to the larger warehouse behind the office area. When I arrived, I didn't see the COO, but two warehouse workers were already there looking up what orders came in over night. They smiled when they saw me.

"Hi, boss," they said at the same time.

"Hi," I said. "How was your weekend?"

"Watched the game," Felix said. "That was a great shot your boyfriend made."

"Which one?" Rob asked. "He made two goals."

"Both of them," Felix said.

"I was especially impressed with the head shot," Rob said.

I couldn't help the smile that came to my lips. These two knew practically nothing about soccer when they first started here. Once they found out my boyfriend was on the local MLS team, they started watching and now seemed hooked.

"Have you seen Nate this morning?" I asked.

"I'm here," Nate said from behind me.

I turned to see him striding towards us with a large box of donuts in his hands. He handed the box off to Felix. "Share it with everyone," he said, "including those who work in the office."

"Of course," Felix said, but last time someone had brought donuts, they were gone within ten minutes.

Before Felix could take the donuts to the break room, Nate opened the box and pulled out two glazed donuts. He handed one to me. Both of us had the donuts eaten by the time we had made our way back to the office area.

I wiped my hands clean of the sticky glaze before I went to my desk. Nate stopped at his desk to gather the information we were to discuss and then sat in the chair across from me at my desk. We went over which games were selling the best, what we needed to order more of, what shipping supplies we needed to order and the costs, how the warehouse staff were doing, etc.

We went a little later than expected. By the time we finished, Nat, Zoey and David were already there waiting for the creative meeting we were supposed to have.

The five of us met into the bigger meeting room. Zoey and David discussed which game ideas came through last week and if they thought any of them would work.

I had met David my senior year in college. He was an art major. Once my parents kicked me out and I knew I wouldn't be involved with Kinsington plastics anymore, I had always thought I would start my own business. And with the money I had received from selling the house I had inherited from my grandma, I had plenty of funds to start any type of business I wanted. The problem had been, I hadn't known what business to start. I had thought about it all through college. I had thought of plenty of ideas, but none of them had felt quite right until I met David.

He had come in to eat at the cafe I was working at. He had been there before, but the first time I had spoken to him about something other than asking what he wanted to order, he had his notebook open and was drawing monster playing cards. I asked him if it was his own idea or if someone had commissioned it from him. It had been his own idea. He had said even though he wanted to see it become a reality, it wasn't really practical. He didn't have the money to manufacture the cards or to advertise them.

The more I discussed it with him the days he came in, the more I learned that there were actually a lot of creative people that came up with their own board game ideas or card games and for lack of money, couldn't make their great ideas become reality. There were crowdfunding options, but unless you were lucky or could advertise your crowdfunding, most of those failed. The other issue was that they wouldn't necessarily have people around them who could look at their projects objectively. Some of the game ideas had fundamental problems that the creators too close to the projects couldn't see. They needed someone to objectively tell them what didn't work about their ideas so they could correct them.

I had a lot of money and no idea what to do with it. I could take those projects and creators, put them under my company, get the games manufactured, have a warehouse to store and ship the games from and advertise the games. The creators were given contracts as independent creators/designers rather than being employed directly by my company. Zoey and David worked together to look through the weekly game requests we received to weed out the ones they thought could work from the ones they thought couldn't. They gave polite responses to the ones we didn't take. Some were flatout rejections, some were advice of things to change to make the game acceptable and to try again and some were accepted. All games were to be play tested before they were submitted to us.

We all met at the beginning of the week to finalize the ones we were accepting. Nate was in charge of working with the manufacturers to get everything correct as well as overseeing the warehouse. Nat and Nate were both part of the process on Mondays of fully accepting or rejecting game requests because they both loved games and had a lot of good insight.

We also donated a portion of proceeds to charity. Nat was in charge of that process. She enjoyed it because she only came into the office a few days a week. It allowed her time to travel to see Kannika or even Kiet on the few times she was able to meet up with him.

The warehouse was set and wouldn't move if Chet happened to get transferred to a different MLS team and we had to move, but everything I did could be done away from the offices. I thought it was better to meet my employees and have these meetings face to face, but I would move with Chet if he had to move and all the meetings and discussions I had with my employees, I could do online. I had thought that through before I had finalized my business plans because I wasn't going to set up a type of business I couldn't move away from if Chet got traded.

One of the ways we advertised was by going to various gaming conventions around the country. I was the one to go at first, but I didn't like the time away from Chet. That was when Zoey got hired. She helped David sort through the games requests we received, but she was the one to book the conventions and go with the merchandise. One of the new game creators was invited to go to one of the conventions with her because who could better hype up the game than the creator?

I had the final say in things, though I trusted David, Zoey, Nate and Nat about their opinions of games more than my own. Nat and I handled the accounting and I handled the contracts with the creators. There were two types of contracts. One where we paid the creator a large sum up front for their creation but after that, they wouldn't get anymore from the proceeds. The other contract was that the creator did not receive a large sum for their game, but instead they would receive a small portion of the proceeds for as long as their game was generating money. The second contract could make the creator more money in the long run, but sometimes the creator needed the large sum of money immediately. I let the creators choose which contract they preferred.

When the meeting was through, we had decided to take on three of the games as received. Five more we would reconsider if the creators made the changes we had all agreed during the meeting that they needed. Zoey and David would go back to those five creators with the suggestions. I went back to my desk to contact the three we accepted and start working up their contracts. Nate went back to the warehouse and Nat went to her desk to work on the amount going to charity that week.

By the end of the day, two of the creators had gotten back to me that they wanted the contract that would pay them out of the proceeds instead of the lump sum. The third one was still thinking about which contract they wanted. After working on more of the accounting, I was one of the last ones to leave for the day.

When I got home, Chet was already home from soccer practice. He was wrestling on the living room floor with Goldie. Goldie was happily pouncing on him. When she saw me, she broke away from Chet to run in circles around my legs.

"Hi, Goldie," I said. I bent to scratch behind her ears. She pressed into my legs as she looked at me fondly with her tongue hanging out of her mouth and a wide smile on her face. "Want to go for a walk?" I asked her.

She gave a little bark and her tail started wagging fiercely. "How about you?" I asked Chet. "Do you want to come with us?"

"Sure," he said and stood up.

I put Goldie's leash on her. The three of us made our way out of the apartment and walked around the neighborhood.

"How was your day?" Chet asked.

"Good," I said. "Your dad brought donuts."

"And you didn't bring me home any?"

"They were gone in ten minutes," I said. We walked hand in hand as Goldie trotted happily alongside us.