Aisleland Paradise

Chapter 11

Anna worked over a hundred hours through the next six days, but, if her estimates were even close to correct, then she might make literally over a billion dollars for Schaeffer's Groceries, saving Todd's empire. Every day she was in a store from 6am until at least 10 pm, later if she could make a manager think he was required to stay late, then rushing home and sleeping from hopefully 11pm until 5am at the latest. Her job was to go into each and every one of the hundred-ish store locations and give the training team a crash course on how to run the self-checkouts, as well as making sure that the store management had completed their assignment to let the required number of associates go and motivate the survivors to be more efficient. Each cooperative manager got a thousand dollar thank you from Anna's personal pocket and every single one had played along so far.

She was living with Craig but never once saw him. She could tell he felt neglected but she made sure to text him at least a couple times a day and every now and then sent him a sexy pic, and that really seemed to do it for him. It felt nice to be worshiped, even if only virtually. Todd, however, was a different issue. She knew that he was having high-level meetings with the corporate lawyers this week, but she'd only gotten three texts from him in the last couple days and that was it. He had no way of knowing what she was up to, she had covered her tracks way too well for that, but still; she understood his situation and the pressure with everything going on, but she deserved a little more than three texts in a week. When she could take it no longer, she texted him.

"Hey, so I get off Saturday at ten and I have something I need to talk to you about, can we meet late that night?"

"Ok, I'll be home at midnight, meet in your hall then?"

Her hall. If only.

After this hellacious week she figured she could manage to kill an hour relaxing in an opulent mansion for an hour or two.

The entire week was a blur, looking back she would only remember bits and pieces of it. Saturday came and she finished her hundredth speech to her hundredth bored training team at the hundredth store she'd visited. She'd made the same hundred jokes, taken the same hundred dumb questions, prayed that a hundred store directors would fall in line and let her save their jobs, and all hundred did as they were told. She reassured her hundredth store that if they had any questions, they could call the IT department 24 hours a day, made her hundredth order for a pizza party for the crew, and gave her hundredth fake smile as she said goodbye. She walked out to her car on instinct alone. All of this, in just six days. She sat down in her car and felt drunk. Her head was spinning, she was clinically exhausted, she couldn't focus on anything. She had done it, the whole project was almost done, all she had to do now was make the thirty minute drive to Todd's without falling asleep and driving off a cliff.

It took everything she had to stay on the road in her mental state, white knuckle gripping the steering wheel and blindly obeying whatever the gps instructed. Somehow, she made it to the mansion at around 11pm. She opened the gate, drove to the main entrance of her old wing, and unlocked the door. She fumbled with the keys for a second when she realized that these weren't the right set. They were similar though, Todd must've accidentally tossed his own keys to Anna the other day instead of her set. It's no big deal, except...

Ohmygod. No way. She couldn't be that lucky. Running on a rush fueled by the last drop of adrenaline her body had to give, she closed the door behind her and hustled straight down the hall to the main building of the house. She put her ear to the door and listened... nothing. Carefully she tried key after key and finally one worked. The door to the main building slowly creaked open. She couldn't believe it. She knew that she didn't have long.

Anna explored the building for a few minutes, the whole thing was fairly similar to her wing, decorated in a way that was supposed to look old and classic but it was all new stuff just with a vintage design. She snooped around, taking a few minutes to explore and really appreciate just how ludicrously wealthy this guy was, eventually finding his office upstairs and in it, his personal computer. She looked at the clock, it was 11:45pm. She was burning through time. She opened it up and looked at the business folder first. Interesting. Todd was aware that something big was going on in his company, but memos suggested that he really didn't know what. She'd already felt guilty that she had added to his stress by being needy this week, now she felt straight up bad that she'd made him conduct a whole secret investigation into her secret project. Then she felt kinda awesome that she'd gotten away with it without the CEO being able to figure it out. And any lingering sads were washed over with excitement from knowing that her efforts were worth it and that she was actually going to be able to make things better for him like he had for her.