Chapter 34 Work

Chapter 34 Work
Charles POV

I arrived at my company a few minutes after seven that evening.

Everywhere was quiet except for the low murmur of the security men talking amongst themselves near the gate. The moment my headlights swept across the entrance, the chief security officer straightened up immediately.

“Good evening, Sir,” Mohammed greeted, moving toward my car.

A tired smile tugged at my lips and my hand lifted in a soft wave. He bowed respectfully and I drove through the gate straight to the garage.

As I stepped out of the car, my eyes traveled upward to the building standing tall in front of me. Kane Enterprises. Twelve floors of glass and steel rising clean against the darkening sky, the company name mounted in bold silver letters across the front panel, lit from beneath so it glowed even at this hour. The wide glass entrance reflected the city lights and the landscaped pathway leading up to it was lined with low solar lamps that burned steadily through the night.

I stood there with my hands resting on my waist and let my eyes do the scanning.

This company was one of the greatest things I had ever achieved in my lifetime. It had earned me a reputation across the whole of Maple City as the youngest man to establish a booming enterprise with over two hundred employees before the age of thirty. The memory of the day I received the award from the Governor still flashed through my head from time to time.

“Sir, can you tell us the secret behind your achievement?” one interviewer had asked during the ceremony.

“There’s no secret behind anything I achieved. Just sheer hard work,” I had replied.

“I understand, Sir, but there must be a driving force behind it all. You built a company at twenty-three. It sounds almost impossible,” she persisted.

I had chuckled softly. “Well, I must say the driving force was the death of my mother. I wasn’t fully grounded then. I went through highs and lows. But consistency and discipline were my secret weapons.”

“Your mother would be proud of you wherever she is right now,” the young lady had said.

“Definitely,” I had nodded.

A gentle tap on my arm pulled me back.

“Sir, I’ve been standing beside you for a while now and—” Mohammed said.

“You can see that I was lost in thought,” I cut him short, my voice sharper than I intended.

“I’m so sorry, Sir. I just wanted to check if everything was alright. You were staring at the building for quite some time,” he replied, lowering his voice respectfully.

“Mohammed, how is that your business?” I asked.

“So sorry, Sir. I was just concerned. I haven’t seen you around the office in a few days,” he said.

I let out a long sigh and shook my head gently. “How has everything been at the office lately?”

“Honestly speaking, Sir, everywhere has been dry. I also heard some unconfirmed rumors that the Jenkins family has withdrawn their partnership with us,” he whispered.

“Rumors?” I replied, keeping my expression completely neutral.

“Sir, it spread throughout the whole company. Almost every member of staff is aware,” he said.

“Ignore all rumors, Mohammed. This company still stands no matter what happens,” I replied dismissively.

“But there is no fire without smoke, Sir. Some workers are already planning to leave. You need to address the situation,” he said carefully.

“Every organization goes through hard times, Mohammed. The only way to identify genuine members is to see who stays when things get difficult,” I said.

“Yes, Sir—”

“Enough. Return to your post. I have things to sort out inside,” I said and headed toward the entrance.

The lobby was dim and empty at this hour, the cleaning staff having long finished their rounds. I took the elevator to the tenth floor and walked the familiar corridor to my office, the soft hum of the building the only sound around me.

I settled into my chair and woke up my computer.

The screen filled immediately with a backlog that would have made a lesser man close the laptop and walk away. Unopened emails numbered in the hundreds. Pending reports from three different departments. Supplier inquiries that had gone unanswered for days. I cracked my knuckles and started from the beginning.

The first thing that hit me was the customer activity report. The numbers told a story I had been dreading. Three of our most consistent long-term clients had reduced their orders significantly over the past week. Two had placed their accounts on hold entirely. I opened their individual profiles and traced the timeline. The withdrawals had started almost immediately after news of the Jenkins family’s exit began circulating, quietly at first and then more boldly as confidence in the company dropped.

Then came the emails.

Seven messages from investors across the past four days, all carefully worded but carrying the same underlying tone. Concern. Hesitation. Two of them had explicitly requested a meeting before committing to the next quarter. One had gone further, using language that made it clear they were already exploring alternatives.

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment.

Then I sat forward and began to work.

I started with the customers. I drafted individual emails to each account that had gone quiet, tailored specifically to their history with the company, acknowledging the silence on our end and outlining in clear terms what Kane Enterprises was doing to stabilize and move forward. I made no excuses. I offered no dramatic declarations. I simply communicated with the kind of directness that had built these relationships in the first place and reminded them, firmly but respectfully, of what we had built together.

Then I moved to the investors.

This required more care. I restructured the quarterly projection figures based on the adjustments I had been calculating in my head for days, accounting for the Jenkins withdrawal and mapping out three alternative partnership pipelines I had identified as viable replacements. I attached the revised projections to each response and proposed new meeting dates within the week. For the investor who had been most direct about his concerns, I picked up my phone and called him personally despite the late hour. He picked up on the third ring and we spoke for forty minutes. By the end of the call, he had agreed to hold his position until our meeting.

I moved on to the internal reports next. The heads of three departments had flagged issues that needed decisions only I could authorize. I worked through each one methodically, signing off on budget adjustments, approving a revised supply chain proposal that our operations manager had submitted and declining two expenditure requests that were unnecessary given the current climate.

By the time I surfaced from the documents, the wall clock across the room read half past two in the morning. I stood briefly, stretched my back and drank what remained of a bottle of water on my desk before sitting back down.

There was still the matter of the staff list.

I pulled up the performance records I had been monitoring quietly for months. There were names on that list that had been coasting for too long, workers who treated the company’s difficult season as an opportunity to do even less. I drafted the termination notices carefully, ensuring each one was clean and legally sound, and set them aside for Harvey to process in the morning.

Then I compiled a complete briefing document. Everything Harvey would need to understand the steps I had taken overnight, the customers contacted, the investors responded to, the internal decisions made, the termination list and the reason behind each name on it. I laid it out clearly so that when he arrived in the morning, not a single minute would be wasted on explanation.

My head began to spin somewhere around five in the morning.

“Almost done,” I told myself, though my body was making very clear arguments to the contrary.

I raised my head and looked at the wall clock again.

Six AM.

I ignored the warning my body was sending and pushed through the final set of documents. Then sleep arrived without announcement, heavy and complete, and took me before I could even reach the couch at the other side of the room. My head went down on my folded arms right there at the desk.

The persistent knocking at my office door dragged me back.

I lifted my head slowly, my neck protesting immediately. I stood on legs that felt like they had been filled with sand and made my way to the door.

Harvey stood on the other side, already dressed and alert. His eyes moved over me and his brows pulled together.

“Good morning, Boss. You’ve definitely exhausted yourself,” he said.

“Good morning,” I mumbled, my voice still thick with sleep.

“I’d suggest you take the day off and rest properly. Your eyes are dark red,” Harvey said, his concern visible and unguarded.

“How’s Linda?” I asked, the sleep clearing from my eyes instantly.

“She’s worried,” he said.

“Worried? Why?”

“About you,” he replied, dropping his gaze briefly.

I rubbed my forehead and walked back to my seat. Harvey followed and settled into one of the visitors’ chairs across from my desk, a sleek charcoal grey seat with clean modern lines. He leaned forward and placed both forearms on the edge of the table, his posture attentive.

“She’s expecting you. She doesn’t feel safe considering her condition,” he said.

“You know?” I looked at him, surprised.

“Of course. And I’m fairly certain John knows too.”

“How would John know?”

“He visited the hospital after you left. We forgot to close the medical file on the bed and he made a smart move. That’s when I realized he had seen the results,” Harvey said.

“God.” I held my head in both hands. “This is going to complicate things further.”

“How? You ended the merger. What happens between you and Linda now is none of their business,” Harvey said with the kind of certainty that told me he had not fully accounted for how vicious that family could be when cornered.

“You think Nikki and Jessica will simply let everything go? They will come for us, Harvey,” I reminded him.

“I’ve never known you to be a weak person, Charles. You have always fought for what you want regardless of the storm. If you truly love Linda, not even the Jenkins family can stop you,” he said.

I held his gaze for a moment then looked away.

“I need to address the workers. Are most of them in?” I redirected.

“Most of them, yes.”

“Good.” I picked up the list I had compiled overnight and handed it across the desk to him.

Harvey’s expression shifted the moment his eyes moved down the page. “I understand that these workers have been underperforming and conducting themselves poorly, but this is not the right time to be letting people go. What happens to their positions?” he protested.

“I would rather have a smaller team running at full capacity than a crowd of passengers. No further questions, Harvey,” I said firmly and returned to the remaining documents on my desk.

Harvey held the list for another moment then set it down carefully, knowing the conversation was closed.

I spent the next twenty minutes walking Harvey through everything I had done through the night. The customer outreach, the investor responses, the revised projections, the internal approvals and the investor I had called personally at midnight. Harvey listened without interrupting, taking notes on his tablet as I spoke, his expression shifting from surprise to quiet admiration as the scope of the night’s work became clear.

When I was finished, I stood and straightened my shirt.

Addressing the staff took another forty minutes. I gathered them in the main floor hall, stood at the front without a podium or a prepared script and spoke to them plainly. I told them the truth about the Jenkins withdrawal. I told them what I had done overnight to begin correcting the course. I told them that the company was not falling and that anyone who had already decided otherwise was free to act on that belief and clear their desk. I told the rest that what I needed from them in the coming weeks was not perfection but presence, focus and the kind of commitment that had built this company in the first place.

The room was completely still when I finished.

Then one of the senior staff began to clap and the others followed.

I nodded once and dismissed them back to their stations.

Exhaustion settled over me like a second skin the moment it was over. The only thing keeping me upright was the quick breakfast Linda had packed for Harvey that morning, which Harvey had quietly set aside on my desk when he arrived. I had eaten it cold between emails and it had been, without question, the most important meal of my entire night.

I picked up my jacket, said a brief goodbye to Harvey and walked to the garage.

The moment I slid into the driver’s seat and felt the engine come alive beneath me, something in my chest loosened for the first time in days.

I was going home.

And Linda was there waiting.

I pressed down on the accelerator and drove.