Chapter 89 A Waste Of Time
Chapter Eighty-Eight.
Nathan’s smile paled as he heard those words.
The room went silent in the next second as everyone was still processing what saying.
The next instant, they grabbed their reports and started scanning it eagerly, including Nathan.
There was something like that in the reports?!
Nathan’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head as he finally saw what Aria was talking about.
“What the…” he muttered under his breath, his eyes reddening at once.
How on earth could he have missed this? What the actual hell?!
He looked up at Aria with those reddened eyes. His hands that were holding on to the sheaf of papers started shaking as he clenched the paper tighter, crinkling it at the edges.
“You’re just guessing, right?” He asked, catching at straws, anything to make him keep his head straight at the moment and his pride intact.
He swallowed hard, “You can’t go far with making mere assumptions, Aria.”
Aria shrugged.
She’d expected him to outrightly reject whatever it was that she said. If he doesn’t then he wasn’t Nathan. Then he wasn’t as shallow as she’d thought and that was going to a problem.
She did not want that.
She needed him to be as shallow as possible.
She tapped on the papers once more, “Try not to be so insufferable, Director Nathan.” She drawled in a lazy tone, “Of course I’m not guessing. No. Did you see what happened to their last two expansions five years ago?”
She looked round at the others, and they immediately went back to their papers.
Their expressions were sclerosis and focused, fainting from alarm to fake interest.
They all were scanning it once more as though they had secretly placed the clause in there and it had somehow jumped at them and ran off.
Nathan narrowed his eyes at her, annoyed beyond measure but anything he did right now would backfire at him, hard.
Aria went on, tired of Nathan’s stupidity, “Those last two expansions underperformed. If you’d just dug a little bit deeper from the surface, you’d have been able to see this part,” she uttered with slight disgust in her tone, “Their last two expansions underperformed. It was this same developer and the same clauses. Let’s open our eyes people!”
She threw the papers down on the table, then casually folded her arms, as though she’d not just went through an entire well prepared report and brought it down like shreds.
Their mouths hung open in shock when Aria was finished and they saw clearly what she was talking about.
They were even more astonished with the fact that she knew anything about the project.
She’d seen through it and picked up something like these in such a short while.
Something they’d been working on for ages and they’ve not even thought to think about it.
Nathan was breathing hard now, his eyes glowed with unbelief and defeat.
“y…you..this…This is impossible…” he breathed, shaking his head hard, “No…this was impossible….” He slammed his hand down on the table before him, then faced the other team members, “How can there be a clause like this and we don’t know about it? Are you sure any of you actually read this report through?!”
Typical, he started yelling and accusing and blaming the team members to try to save his own face.
The team members sat quietly, their eyes lowered and their faces solemn. Even though Nathan was at fault as much as they were, they could very well not point that out.
“It’s an admirable thing for one to accept their own mistakes and admit they were wrong,” Aria put in , raising her voice slightly so everyone can hear her, “It’s a shame to know your mistake but still go ahead to blame others for it. Never admitting it.”
Nathan stopped and swallowed hard for a second, refusing to acknowledge Aria’s words.
Aria stared hard at him, “Admit your mistakes and stop trying to make it seem like the team members were the ones at fault,” she drawled. “You are mostly at fault because you were heading this team before I arrived. They only follows your instructions.”
At that moment, the tension in the air seemed to lighten a bit. The employees smiled warmly at Aria’s words.
They could not believe she’d stood up for them, instead of acting all smug because she’d seen through the inconsistencies in the reports.
She’d shut down Nathan’s screaming in an instant, and also helped them to save face as well.
It was awesome.
Aria did not know the thoughts that were going through the team members head at the moment.
She turned to Nathan who still remained silent. His fists were clenched as he stared at one particular spot on the table, breathing hard from humiliation and defeat.
“Aria Beaumont,” he thought in anger, “I’ll make you pay for this humiliation.”
Aria, of course knew what he was thinking but at the moment, she’d already taken victory, “So the next time you prepare a report like this, go through it thoroughly will you?”
She looked round at the others, “We are dropping the Crown Avenue project.” She uttered looking round at them, then paused, arching a delicate eyebrow, “Any objections?”
The employees cleared their throats, shuffled their papers and avoided her gaze.
Seeing that there was no objections, Aria smiled, “Carry on then. Go on to the next project you’ve prepared for,”
The marketing manager stood up with shaky feet, then walked towards the screen once more.
The other employees sat up straighter, keeping their reports right in front of them, while going through it with the utmost concentration.
They had seen enough drama that morning to know that Aria was not someone to mess with.
The marketing manager started, “Next up is the the logistics startup. Nexus.” He paused, “Uhh, it’s a small one and did not look very viable when we started out so it was dropped…”
“Why?” Aria put in seriously, and the marketing manager started nervously.
“Well…because it’s a complete waste of time. It’s got low revenue and no reputation.” He supplied, “Also, if we bid for this project we would be going up against Vaughn Empire. That’s not something we want to venture into.”