hating!
“Are you Ms. Fontini?” an efficient looking woman asked as soon as Eva stepped off the elevator.
“Yes. Is Damon available? I don’t have an appointment but it’s rather urgent. And I promise I won’t take up much of his time.” Eva tried hard not to growl, but she was gritting her teeth with the effort.
The woman smiled and shook her head. “Mr. Kelopatros called, letting me know that he’d received your voice mail but hasn’t been able to get back yet. His helicopter is in transit but asked me to show you to his office and not let you leave until he’s spoken to you.”
Eva thought about leaving, simply because Damon had instructed his assistant not to ‘let’ her leave. But this was too important.
She paced back and forth in the office, trying hard to smile as the woman came in occasionally to place something on Damon’s desk or to find a file. After twenty minutes of pacing, the woman stopped. With her hands folded in front of her and looked curiously at Eva. “Perhaps there’s something I can do to help?”
“Not unless you can empty that man’s bank account so he can’t harm any other communities,” Eva snapped. At the surprised expression, Eva sighed and stopped pacing. “I’m sorry. I’m taking my frustrations out on you and it’s really Damon I’m furious with. Between the destruction of the Savos family and trying to buy up all the people around the rec center with the promise of jobs so they won’t cause problems with his next billion dollar project!”
The woman smiled kindly and shook her head. “Well, I don’t know all the details, but it’s Kelopatros’ standard operating procedures to offer positions to any qualified applicants to the communities that are impacted the most. We’ve done it on several projects and it’s been a significant help. We get a large group of skilled employees that live close to the building, loyalty is high which means they are satisfied employees and are more productive. Most of those employees advance more quickly so Damon has instituted this process across all his companies for any project that impacts a community. I don’t know how long it’s been in place though. I can talk to Lila Monroe, Damon’s head of human resources if you’d like.”
Eva looked at the woman, stunned and embarrassed. Everything she was saying was absolutely true and it was even something she encouraged her students to look for in a company when they’re investing. A strong workforce with high morale had a much better chance of surviving than a company that pushed people down and took away their benefits.
“The other issue,” she tapped her chin with her finger as she tried to remember, “I know that Leroy Savos was the man who killed Damon’s mother about ten years ago. Horrible tragedy,” she said as she shook her head. “Leroy Savos was drunk, speeding down the road and Damon’s mother was coming home from a friend’s house. She was hit by the man’s car while he swerved onto the sidewalk. There was nothing the doctor’s could do to save her. It was a horrible time in Mr. Kelopatros’ life. I’d just come to work for him and I could see that he was torn up about it but he never spoke about it.”
Eva was stunned at hearing this news. She’d asked him about the saddest day of his life two nights ago and he’d never answered her question. But losing one’s mother, especially in such a tragic and completely avoidable manner would have ranked very high up on anyone’s list. “Why didn’t Leroy Savos go to jail?”
The woman tsked and shook her head again, her motherly instincts coming out. “According to a report I saw later, Mr. Savos had some very good lawyers, said that he hadn’t been drinking, claimed that he wasn’t driving, even though the police photos clearly showed him at the scene of the accident with a cut on his forehead and the initial blood alcohol level was well over the legal limit. It was shocking,” she said with emotion.
Eva stood there, her mind whirling around what she’d just learned. Every time she’d found something about Damon to hate, it turned around on her. What was she doing? Why couldn’t she just…give in and admit that she was in love with him?
She gasped and looked around her. Damon’s secretary was moving out of the office, still shaking her head at the memory of the previous legal battle despite more