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“I-I understand, Mr. Oryolov, b-but I have no control over—”
“Who stole it from me?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Two tons of an extensively manufactured industrial chemical doesn’t just disappear into thin air. Someone purchased that container and I want to know who.” I’m pacing across my office so chaotically that Kirill has to lunge out of my way.
“I, um… That information is classified, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
Silence.
And then—dead air.
Did that son of a bitch just hang up on me?
I roar, flinging my phone across the room. It hits the door and flies apart, the cracked screen catching the dying sun and winking up at me.
Breathing heavily, I turn to Kirill, who’s already pulling out a brand-new phone from one of the drawers of my desk. “I’ll just transfer the SIM and you should be good to go,” he explains. “As always.”
Suffice it to say, this has happened enough times to warrant a standard operating procedure.
“This has Adrik’s fingerprints all over it,” I fume. “Thatmudakis retaliating for the beating I gave his ego.”
Kirill is busy trying to pluck the SIM out of my broken phone. “You really think he has the balls? Or the resources?”
“That idiot’s only goal in life is to take me down. What better way than this? Undercutting the development of a drug that I’ve already spent who-the-fuck-knows-how-much on?”
He hands me the new phone as it powers to life. “Point taken. My question is, what do we…?” He trails off as I stalk out of the office. “Where are you going?”
“To fucking deal with it,” I reply. Emma is sitting at her desk, all wide-eyed and concerned at the sounds of mayhem she must’ve overheard. “Cancel all my appointments. I’m working out of the office today.”
I don’t linger to wait for her response.
The journey from Bane to the chemical facility is punctuated by a series of vivid and violent fantasies. All of which involve Adrik suffering a messy and painful death under the heel of my boot.
But as satisfying as those revenge fantasies would be, my first priority is Venera. I need to make sure that this setback doesn’t affect the rollout. I can deal with delays if we’re talking a few days. But if it stretches into months, that’s going to be a significant hit to my bottom line. Which means I need to go into Damage Control Mode.
I don’t even bother with the bullshit white coat when I get to the facility. I storm into the lab as I am and bellow for Sergey at the top of my lungs. He stumbles out of the storage room, his face pale and his brow already sweaty.
“We’ve lost the last container of B47,” I inform him icily. “How much Venera have we manufactured so far and how imperative is B47 to the formula?”
Sergey's mouth twists into a strange, crooked shape. “Uh, well…”
“Spit it out, Sergey. I don’t have time to waste.”
He wipes his brow with the back of his hand. “I may have a solution.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Go on.”
The man doesn’t look the least bit encouraged. He shifts from one leg to the other, all his nervous tics pinging at the same time. “I have been… experimenting. I did so without your authorization—and I do apologize for that, sir—but I wanted to see if I could improve on or erase altogether the lesser side effects of Venera.”
On any other day, I would have been pissed. But I’m not about to bite off the hand that’s throwing me a bone when I need it.
“In one of my attempts, B47 was one of the chemicals I removed from the existing formula. I switched it out with a different compound. Its scientific name is—”
I hold up a hand. “I couldn't possibly care less. What were the results?”
