Chapter 53 Bad Luck

Chapter 53 Bad Luck

Emily's POV

Maybe it was my sincere words that moved Conrad. He hesitated for a moment, "Alright, I'll give you guys a chance. Hope you won't disappoint me. Come on, let's go to the workshop and have the engineers test it with professional equipment."

Hearing him say that, I breathed a sigh of relief, already feeling like this deal was in the bag.

We arrived at the production workshop. During the sample testing, Conrad proudly showed us around their company's production line.

After about half an hour, an engineer found us and handed two reports to Conrad and me separately.

I picked it up and looked - it was covered in numbers that I mostly couldn't understand. I only caught a few key terms - tensile strength, pressure limit - and the values marked next to them were less than a quarter of what Benjamin had mentioned before. I didn't understand the technical stuff, but I could read his expression.

Benjamin beside me lost his cool. "Impossible! Our steel can't have such low compression capacity. You must have made a mistake. What do you mean it's worse than ordinary steel? Someone must have tampered with it!"

I looked up at Conrad. He was staring at the report, his smile frozen, and all that politeness from before completely vanished.

"I gave you a chance out of goodwill. I thought you could really surprise me, but wow, what a surprise this turned out to be!"

After saying that, he muttered something under his breath. I didn't catch it all, only vaguely heard words like "crazy" and "ridiculous."

Security guards in the workshop moved to kick us out. I took Benjamin and left the workshop.

On the way, Benjamin still looked like he couldn't believe it. "Ms. Johnson, it's impossible. I suspect they switched our steel."

I shook my head, thinking that was unlikely. If that were the case, he might as well have kicked us out from the start.

I thought of another possibility. "What if we brought the wrong steel? What if we brought ordinary steel by mistake?"

"Well..." Benjamin hesitated too. "We shouldn't make such a basic mistake, right?"

"See, even you can't be sure, which means there's a good chance we did bring the wrong samples. Okay, it's getting late today. Let's go back first, and tomorrow we'll bring several more samples and continue negotiating."

I sighed, couldn't help thinking - could it be because Joshua didn't come with me? Is that why my luck was so bad?

Looking at it this way, Joshua must have pretty good luck.

Looks like from now on, even if Joshua gets drunk, I'll have to bring him along for business deals.

I was lost in these random thoughts as I got in the passenger seat. Before I'd even sat down properly, someone kissed me.

I punched out with my right fist almost instinctively.

My arm was caught firmly, and a teasing voice said, "What? You trying to murder your boyfriend?"

I looked at him, couldn't control my joy and hugged him. "Christopher, how come you're back?"

The moment I hugged him, I froze - what the hell was I doing?

One second of silence in the car. I could feel his body stiffen, his heartbeat coming through his clothes.

Then he looked down at me, his mouth slowly curving into that smile that made me want to punch him.

"Didn't expect you to care about me this much. Have you really fallen for me? Come, let me kiss you."

I felt my face burning. I pushed him away, fumbling with my words. "Who... who likes you."

"Then just now you..."

"That was... that was..."

I thought for a long time but couldn't come up with a good reason.

Christopher said to someone behind him, "Are you getting in or not?"

I turned around and only then saw Benjamin standing outside watching all this.

Noticing me looking at him, his mouth twitched. "Um, Ms. Johnson, I'll take a cab back. You two go ahead."

Christopher raised an eyebrow. "Smart guy. What's your name? I'll give you a raise."

"I'm Benjamin, hello Mr. Taylor!"

"Good. The company will reimburse your cab fare."

With that, he started the car and drove off with me.

I said angrily, "You think you're still the same person you used to be? Giving raises - what are you going to use to give raises?"

Christopher grinned mischievously. "Joshua told me you closed a six hundred thousand dollar deal. Isn't that money?"

I got fired up hearing that. "Damn! You think six hundred thousand dollars is a lot? Unpaid wages, unpaid electricity bills, plus fines and repairs and other expenses - this money isn't nearly enough."

"You make promises so casually, giving people raises - what kind of irresponsible boss are you?"

"Don't be mad, babe. My bad." Christopher coaxed me like he was coaxing a child.

"By the way, how did this deal go? Let me guess - it worked out, right? After all, I have great luck. I came specially to surprise you, so it must have worked out. How much was this one for?"

I rolled my eyes. "Stop bragging. It's because you came that I failed. You're a jinx."

Christopher's voice went up a notch. "Impossible. How could it fail?"

I got annoyed just looking at him. "Don't even mention it. Just watch the road. I get annoyed just seeing you."

"Okay, I'll take you to negotiate tomorrow. I still know a few people in Silverlight City. Oh, and my mom and them are here too. Let's have dinner together tonight."

"What?"

I panicked instantly.

I didn't understand why I was so flustered. Anyway, whenever I saw Christopher, my emotions were like a roller coaster, going up and down.

We drove back to the company in silence.

As soon as we got to the company entrance, we saw a group of Black people making a scene.

Someone in the crowd shouted, and once again I was surrounded by everyone.

I quickly used the car's speaker function to call Samuel out. Whenever there was trouble, I went straight to him.

Samuel quickly stood in front of the car. I rolled down the window just a bit. "Get them to let me in first. Whatever it is, we'll talk after I get inside!"

Samuel shouted for them to be quiet, but not only did the crowd not quiet down, the noise got even louder. Some people even picked up stones from the ground and threw them at the car.

Seeing the situation getting out of control, I quickly told Christopher to gun it.

One press of the gas pedal scared them, and Christopher took the chance to rush into the company.

I shouted, "Quick, quick, close the gate!"

I thought helplessly - if this kind of situation happened every day, I might as well just stay in the company and never go out.

The employees outside were still making noise. I just had security bring out a megaphone from the guard room. "Samuel, get them to quiet down, then come find me in the conference room. If you can't do it, you can get lost!"

With that, I went back to the conference room.

"What's going on?"

I glared at Christopher. "Shut up! Say another word and I'll beat you to death!"

Right now I got annoyed just looking at him. As soon as he showed up, my luck hit rock bottom.

Christopher obediently shut his mouth.