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‘We started our company EVA with Isaac right after college and we’ve been working on a new…’
There was a distant ping and then a loud crash and an audible curse that cut off Michael’s words mid-sentence. Everybody, including Michael, glanced towards the door right as Charlie barged in with a shoe in her hand and then froze halfway into the room.
Her eyes found mine first. Then she quickly stood a bit straighter and forced a smile on her lips as she focused on Michael. Her cheeks were blushing.
Closing the few steps between them, she limped towards him – seeing as she wasn’t wearing one of her shoes – and thrust him her free hand.
Already feeling a headache coming on, I started rubbing my temples.
I glanced up to see Michael looking at her with uncertainty.
Finally they shook hands. ‘I’m so sorry for being late and… well for the shoe. I was trying to run, but the elevator wasn’t having it so I just broke my heel and now you’re looking at me as if I’ve lost it. I didn’t, I’m just rambling, I’m sorry. You must be Michael Ashton.’ Right at the tail of her words, she turned herself into an impromptu pretzel to put her broken-heeled shoe back on with her free hand.
‘Yes, uh, I am. And you are…’
Michael gave me a quick look before addressing Charlie again. Charlie just kept smiling at him as I watched them in shock and bewilderment.
I stood up. ‘Michael, Miss Davis was about to leave…’ I started, but Charlie interrupted me.
‘I’m in Mr Carter’s team. Charlie Davis. I was held downstairs by something unexpected, but I ran up here as fast as I could.’ Pausing to take a breath, she pushed her hair behind her ear, somehow warmed up her smile even more and kept going. ‘I’ll just take this seat,’ she continued, tiptoeing her way over to a seat. She took the one that was two chairs left of Michael and sat down. She angled it so her whole body was facing towards him. ‘I hope I didn’t miss too much, but I’m all ears now, Mr Ashton. You keep going and I’ll catch up.’
The smile still stuck on her face, she turned to us, the rest of her speechless team, and lost the spark of her smile a little when our eyes met. ‘I’m really sorry for interrupting. It won’t happen again.’
Begrudgingly I sat down. ‘Thank you, Miss Davis.’
‘I… had just started,’ Michael commented.
Charlie’s smile got bigger and she turned her attention to Michael from me while starting up her laptop.
‘Really? That’s great. Okay, Mr Ashton, how can we help with your problem?’
Feeling like I’d already lost control of the situation, I cleared my throat. ‘Please, continue Michael.’ After a quick and meaningful look at Charlie, I started studying the documents that were in front of me as Michael began again.
‘As I was saying, we started EVA right after college and it took us over ten years to develop the technology we’re using in our electric cars today. We are – or I should say we were – really close to… No, actually, Isaac suddenly left the company, I bought his shares only a month ago. So my people and I were rushing to get ready for the launch when everything went south.’
‘Why did Mr Isaac leave the company so close to the launch?’ Gayle asked, finally taking a seat right next to me. I settled back in my seat, satisfied because she was asking the right question. Even though I’d gone over the work of every single person in the room before I accepted them into my team, this was still the first time I was going to handle a case with them. It was going to take a while to trust my colleagues completely to do their jobs.
‘We were having problems. Personal ones and some other disagreements about our work. I never would’ve thought he’d leave because of some minor difference of opinion, but he wanted out.’
‘You’re still in contact?’ Gayle continued.
Michael rubbed the back of his neck. ‘That would be a no.’
Gayle scribbled some notes on her notepad as she kept asking more questions about what kind of difference of opinion they had and then nodded for him to keep going when she was satisfied.
‘Anyway,’ Michael continued. ‘We used a technology nobody was giving a chance and we knew it’d take us a long time, but we managed to get where we wanted. We developed this prototype of functional city cars. We already started working on our marketing campaign a year ago. People are sceptical because the technology we’re using is so innovative, and we’re going against well-established automobile manufacturers. We made a huge impact with publicity. I’m the face of our social media campaigns because we thought that’d be the best way to show people what we’re doing and what we’re hoping to achieve.’
