Page 51 of Strictly Business

CHAPTER37

Wyatt

I’m so angry I could smash this whole room up, but I keep my game face on and remain professional as I go through the rest of the pitch. I present the pitch properly – the perfectionist in me won’t let me do anything else – but it kind of feels like a waste of my time at this point as it’s obvious we’ve lost this client before we ever even had them.

I can’t believe Serena has let this happen. The number of times she double checked the pitch and it still ended up in there says to me that somehow, she thought that was the right logo, which says to me she thought it was an ok logo and didn’t think it was ugly. That is so much worse than her just not knowing it was in there. For her to think that ugly ass thing suited the Bellisario’s brand really worries me.

As much as I love spending time with Serena and as much as I want her in my life, I know I’m going to have to fire her. I can’t have this kind of mistake happening at this level. This deal was going to be worth billions of dollars to the company, and I can’t just let it get thrown away. I would be more than happy to still date Serena, but I doubt she will want to speak to me after I have fired her.

I still have to do it though. I accept that it’s partly my fault. We both have been flirting and carrying on a bit, but I really thought we had this thing nailed. And yes, I was encouraging the flirting, but I am not the one who fucked up. I thought Serena was better than this – that’s my major mistake.

I wonder absently if this is going to go down better or worse with Craig and Martin. Firing her or fucking her. Which will cause the biggest ructions. Maybe they’ll end up hearing about both. I hope Serena is mature enough to separate business and pleasure because if she tells her dad I fucked her and then fired her, it’s not going to look good for me and no amount of explaining would make Martin see me as anything other than a right bastard after that.

My pitch finally comes to an end, and I have never been more relieved to finish a pitch than I am with that one.

“Do you have any questions gentlemen?” I ask.

I’m almost certain there won’t be any. They don’t need to ask questions of a firm they aren’t going to hire about a campaign they aren’t going to use. I’m surprised then when one of them asks me a question about social media and whether I think using influencers is a good idea.

I explain that it has its good points – more people will see the brand being the chief one - but that it also has it’s not so good points. Most of the people who will see the brand through the Instagram type influencer are teenagers with no disposable income and I also explain that it makes the brand less exclusive if it looks like they have to give stuff away to get Z listers to wear the brand. Blogs on the other hand, I explain, are more credible and their readers tend to be adults with money to spend.

We go back and forth a little bit about how it all works, and they seem satisfied with the answers. They ask me a couple more questions and then Roberto asks Serena a couple of questions, all of which she handles impeccably. How did this polished girl who knows so much about this brand get that logo thing so wrong?

“OK, thank you for your time, Wyatt, Serena, Ruth,” Roberto says, nodding at each of us in turn. “My colleagues and I would like to have a discussion about your services. Would it be rude of me to ask you to stay until after the discussion just in case we would like anything clarified for us?”

“No, that’s not rude at all. We are perfectly happy to wait,” I say.

Somehow, it feels like we might still have a chance at this. I don’t know how but surely they wouldn’t go this far just to be polite. If they wanted to be polite, they would say they’d let us know then send a no thank you email in a day or two in my experience.

I don’t know which way this meeting is going to go anymore but I still know what I have to do, and I want to get it over with quickly before I can change my mind, because even if we get away with it this time, I can’t risk it happening again and if I have to double check even the simplest little things that Serena does, then what’s the point in having her around? I may as well just do the work myself.

Roberto and the others leave the conference room and I turn to Ruth.

“Would you pop out and get us some coffees please?” I ask.

“Isn’t it a little hot for coffee?” she asks. “We’ve got juice and water here.”

“And you are free to drink either of those when you return. In the meantime, I would like you to fetch me a coffee please,” I say, barely keeping my temper.

Ruth seems to sense that this isn’t the time to argue with me. I mean she is right – it’s not the weather for coffee, but I don’t want an audience when I fire Serena. I owe her that much that this will be dealt with quietly and privately. I watch her leave the room and the second the door closes, I turn to Serena.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” I demand.

“What?” she says, looking taken aback that I’m shouting at her.

“That fucking logo. I don’t remember it even being a thing we drafted up let along anything I would have approved. How the hell did it get left in the presentation for the client?” I demand.

“It didn’t,” she says. “Or at least it didn’t get put in any version I saw. I have no idea where that came from, I swear it.”

“So, you’re saying I put it there, are you? That I decided it would be fun to sabotage my own company and make myself look like an idiot in front of other people?” I ask.

“I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that I didn’t put that slide in there and I don’t know how it got there,” Serena says.

She seems so genuine and God how I want to believe her. I almost do believe her. But there has only been me and her putting the pitch together and I know it wasn’t me so by the process of elimination, it has to be her. Right?

“Ok. Let’s pretend for a second that it just magically put itself in there should we? Why didn’t you spot it before you sent the slides over?” I ask.

“Why didn’t you?” Serena fires back.

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