Dirty Erotica

Twelve

Bea's POV

Damien and I have been engaged in our little affair for about three months now. We have decided to keep it a private thing for a while. Reason being that the media is a bitch. Just imagine the headlines: "Former super model and current CEO of 'Exquisitely Exotic', Damien Summers, is now dating the daughter of Jonviére Argent, his recently deceased wife."

How scandalous.

We don't need that bad publicity at the moment. Not when we are about to have one of the most outrageous fashion releases E&E has ever accomplished. The new release is predicted to be a big thing— major marketing— and it's already gaining a lot of attention. Plus Damien and I both know that the rest of the share holders on the board won't be pleased.

Some won't care, others will be ecstatic as they never really liked Jonviére, but some— who are Jonviére's closest gossip babies— will totally oppose. If shit gets serious they might even want to withdraw from the board. But that bit is unlikely; the disadvantages and losses are too great. And if there's one thing I know about those fuckers, it's that they'd do anything for extra money, and everything to prevent the loss of it. Greedy bitches.

But that's business. Then we have another issue with the E&E branch in New York City. Turns out that somehow the shipments weren't arriving at the correct location but going to who knows where, and the only other person able to redirect the arrivals is the manager. He has already been fired and a law suit is being filed against him.

Damien was pleased with Flora's discovery, so she has now been promoted to the manager position she was originally required to hold.

But she also discovered that the previous manager was being paid by someone to sabotage the store's productivity. Turns out that there's a smarter party involved in the whole scheme— someone with a lot of money, that is interested in purchasing the land that the eastern NYC store stands on. This unknown person was smart enough to know that we'd close the store if sales didn't pick up, and they'd be able to steal the property right from under us by simply purchasing the deed for the land from us as soon as the store closed.

We're still working on revealing their identity. Anyways, on to different matters. Damien and I are going to Rome! He has a business matter to deal with there for a few days, then well stay a little while and call it a mini vacation. The chances of someone we know seeing us is close to none.

We're going to have a lovely time on our short break.

***

When we arrived we went straight to the hotel that we booked our rooms at for our stay. We won't do any exploring or site seeing until Damien's meeting is settled. This is a business trip after all. Both Damien and I will be attending a meeting with Raphael Hertz, the publishing manager of a major European fashion magazine, to discuss matters as it relates to our new collection being featured in the 'What's Hot' article in their next magazine.

—

The deal has been sealed and finalised, about time too. The whole negotiation took us two days to settle. Now we could go and explore. We first visited The Capitoline Museum in Piazza del Campidoglio, and then went to Flavian Amphitheater— the largest structure left of Rome antiquity.