Werewolf CEO 4, page 15
“Not entirely,” I pointed out. “You’re insisting on contributing.”
“Yeah, but do you really think I could even consider renting a place like that on my own?” the curly-haired human snorted. “Today’s been great. Minus the drugging of my best friend, of course.”
“Well, I’m glad you had a good time,” I said as I opened my arms out to him.
Matt wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug and patted my back. I could feel his heart beating against his chest, and I could tell that he was still worried about me. I couldn’t blame him. If the roles were reversed, I’d be freaking out, too.
“I’m alright, man,” I said as I patted his back, too. “I promise.”
“Alright.” He pulled back with a nod. “Make sure those girls take care of you, or I’ll be having stern words.”
“We will, Matt!” Emily called from behind the front door.
“Oops, I forget you guys have super hearing,” Matt said with wide eyes. “Well, goodnight Josh, and his three, beautiful, amazing, incredible wolf girlfriends who definitely wouldn’t tear me apart for being rude to them.”
“Goodnight, Matt!” Hallie called back with a giggle.
“I’ll see myself out,” he said as he jerked his thumb back to the elevator. “See you, bro.”
“Bye, Matt,” I said with an amused smile as he frantically clicked the button to open the doors.
I waited until he was inside and saluted at him before the doors could slide close. Once he was on his way down, I turned to my door with an exhausted sigh. I was only a few feet away when it flew open, and all three of my girls rushed out and gathered around me.
“What happened?”
“What did Matt mean you were drugged?”
“Was it Mitch?”
“Why are you covered in blood?”
“Hold up,” I said, and I held my hand up to stop their barrage of questions. “Let’s get inside so I can collapse onto something soft.”
“Jeez,” Emily said under her breath. “That bad?”
“That bad.” I nodded and let the cherry-haired Beta grab my hand and lead me inside.
She tugged me all the way to the bedroom. Mia and Hallie were hot on our heels, and I collapsed down onto the soft mattress with a sigh.
“Tell us everything,” Mia said as she perched next to me.
“Yeah, we wanna know,” Hallie said as she climbed onto the bed behind me.
“Well, I helped Matt move today,” I began. “I got him an apartment in the Upper East Side.”
“That’s great.” The blonde Omega nodded. “But what about the important part?”
“You don’t want the build up?” I asked with a lopsided grin.
Mia shot me a look and raised an eyebrow, and I knew what her answer was.
“Alright.” I sighed in defeat. “We went to Josie’s, and the hooded guy was watching us through the window. So, naturally, I chased him.”
“And, let me guess, you ended up down an alleyway?” Emily asked as she crossed her arms.
“Bingo,” I said. “I managed to get him this time, but he injected himself with serum. Turns out, his name is Doctor Mitchell Moore.”
“So, we’ve got a full name,” Hallie said as her hazel eyes widened in surprise. “That could help.”
“Did you find anything else out?” Mia asked hurriedly.
“Well, he’s definitely got a vendetta against me because of something my dad did,” I said. “I don’t know what, but he’s got one hell of a grudge against him.”
“Anything else?” Emily asked as her eyebrows tugged down into a sharp ‘V’ shape.
“He didn’t want to kill me,” I said with a shiver. “He wants me to be his ‘magnum opus.’”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Hallie frowned.
“He said something like ‘I’m better than Whitlock,’” I said as I replayed our encounter in my head. “That he could still use me.”
“Sounds like Arlo was his own personal experiment,” Emily said. “He was making a monster.”
“And now he wants Josh to be that,” Mia finished with a hard swallow. “He drugged you?”
“Yeah, I’d gotten him pretty good, and I was hellbent on finishing him off in that alley, but he blew some weird gas at me and vanished,” I said. “It felt like I was dying. I lost feeling in my body, and I was hallucinating and--”
I cut myself off and shook my head to rid myself of the images of my dad standing at the side of the road. I wasn’t going to let it get to me. I wasn’t going to let Mitch have any kind of power over me. Not anymore.
“So, where do we go from here?” Mia asked. “We have a name, and we have a motive that we need to figure out.”
“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” Hallie suddenly said. “Something that’s been bothering me for a while.”
“Go on, Hal,” I said as I sat up and turned to look at her. “What is it?”
“The missing person cases,” she said after a deep breath. “The people who have vanished that we never pinned to the Guild or to Drake… what if they have something to do with Z-TECH?”
“The tests,” I mumbled in realization. “He’s got to be getting his subjects from somewhere.”
“And plucking them off the street seems like a pretty easy way to go about that,” Mia said.
“He’s just like Drake,” Emily said with venom. “A lazy and evil asshole.”
“I can do more digging,” Hallie added. “But I have limited resources.”
“We have PC Hutch now,” I said. “Maybe he can help by letting us look at the files? Last known locations, stuff like that.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Mia agreed. “If anyone can help us in that field, it’s him.”
“You should message him tomorrow,” Emily said. “By the sounds of it, we need to explore every avenue we can before Mitch can get to you.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t even want to think about what he wants to do to me.”
“Or what he’ll turn you into,” Mia added with a visible shudder.
Arlo was just an arrogant Alpha, and an old one at that.
But I was more than that.
I was a Supreme Alpha.
And if Mitch turned me into one of his zombies, I’d be his most dangerous weapon yet.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Chapter Eleven
I didn’t want to stay up worrying about what could happen if Mitch got his claws into me, so I decided to take a shower and head to bed. The girls were more than happy to follow suit, and once I’d scrubbed off all of the dried blood and got into my pajamas, we all climbed into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.
I woke up the next morning like I’d never slept at all. It was like I’d blinked and was suddenly awake again, although I counted my blessings that I didn’t have any horrific nightmares again.
I slipped out of bed and made my way into the kitchen to brew us all some coffee before work. It was back to the grind, and I knew one day off was more than enough. I wanted to update Victor on everything, and I would definitely need the distraction to keep my brain from imploding.
As the coffee brewed, I decided to give PC Hutch a call. I rang the police department first and asked them to patch me through. I said I was an old friend who had some pressing matters to discuss with him, and I managed to schmooze the receptionist enough to get her to oblige.
I was on hold for around a minute before he finally picked up, and the Police Commissioner cleared his throat before speaking.
“Good morning, Joshua,” he said politely. “What can I do for you?”
“Hey, Hutch, I’ve, uhh… I’ve got a breakthrough,” I said. “I’ve got a name, I’ve got a face, and I’ve got something you might be able to work with. Can we meet up?”
“That’s a lot of things,” Hutch said in a slightly breathless voice. “You’ve found all that out?”
“Well, I came face to face with Doctor Mitchell Moore yesterday, so it was straight from the horse’s mouth,” I weakly joked. “I almost had him, but he… he got away.”
“Figures.” Hutch sighed. “He’s a slippery bastard, but I can do a lot with a full name. I’ll see what I can pull up in the files until we can meet. Are you free later tonight?”
“Yeah, I can definitely make time,” I said.
“Alright, come by the police station at seven o’clock,” the Police Commissioner said. “And let’s see what we can do.”
“Sounds good to me,” I replied with a hopeful smile. “Thanks, Hutch.”
“I should be thanking you, Joshua,” he said with a hearty chuckle. “You’ve given us something more to work with.”
“Call me back on this number if you find anything out before we meet,” I said. “I wanna know as soon as possible.”
“You got it,” he said. “Take care.”
“Yeah, you, too,” I said before I put the phone down.
With that out of the way and planned, I felt a little better about having a normal day. The business still needed taking care of, and I couldn’t neglect it because there was a madman running wild with a crazy wish to turn me into a monster. If I did that, I’d probably never get any work done, and it felt like, at this rate, we’d never actually catch a break.
Once the coffee was brewed, I poured myself a big cup. The caffeine didn’t affect me like it did when I was human, so I had to have a lot more of it to even feel a buzz. It was the same with alcohol, and that was probably one of the weirder things I missed about living as a regular human.
After my third cup, though, I was feeling a lot more awake and ready for the day, and the rest of my girls were starting to stir. I texted Matt letting him know I was okay today, even though I knew he wouldn’t read it until after midday. Then I went back into the bedroom to start getting dressed.
The girls groggily woke up and started to do the same thing, and we all had our respective jobs to get to, so the morning was brief and filled with quick kisses and goodbyes.
Mia and I headed to Lunar Corp. once Hallie and Emily left, and I was feeling somewhat excited about getting stuck into something. Mia informed me there were a lot of meetings lined up for today, but Victor had offered to push them back if I needed more time. I’d never declined an offer so fast in my life, and I knew I’d need a busy day to keep my mind occupied.
When we arrived at Lunar Corp., we went straight into the first meeting, and I was so wrapped up in all of the talk about profits and sales pitches that I completely forgot to mention Mitch’s name to Victor.
For once, the business was taking priority, and I honestly didn’t mind it. Juggling the CEO life and the Alpha life was tough, but I knew there had to be a balance somewhere, and today marked that.
We split up for lunch, and once Mia and I had eaten a hefty amount of salad and hamburgers from the cafeteria, we headed back up to the conference room for the next round of meetings scheduled.
“Alright, what’s next on the agenda?” I asked as I sat down at the head of the table with Mia at my side.
“Robert Payne,” Victor said with a tight-lipped smile.
Robert Payne, the thorn in my side and Lunar Corps’ biggest competitor as of right now. In the throes of everything with Mitch, I’d forgotten about the fight to keep our place as the most successful pharmaceutical company in New York.
“God, he’s like the gift that keeps on giving,” I drawled sarcastically. “What’s he done now?”
“Well, your speech helped tremendously,” Victor began. “Not only did we have a spotlight directly on the company, we also had a lot of sympathy for you and your journey as CEO.”
“So the orphan card worked, huh?” I hummed. “Thanks for the tip, Collins.”
To my surprise, the greasy-haired Treasurer gave me a fleeting smile and nodded his head, before he turned back to the tablet in his hand.
“While the speech helped with exposure and with sales, Robert Payne is still soaring in profits himself,” Susan added. “He’s on a steady upward trajectory, and he is quickly becoming an even fiercer competitor.”
“So, the question now is, what do we do to keep ahead of him?” Victor said as he leaned his elbows on the table and threaded his fingers together. “Something needs to be done if we are to remain one of the largest and most successful pharmaceutical companies.”
“Yeah, we can’t let him just snatch that away from us,” I agreed. “Not after how hard Mom and Dad worked to get us where we are.”
“We haven’t had much time to brainstorm on our own, so we are open to any suggestions,” the gray-haired wolf said. “Any at all. And that includes any from you, Mia.”
Mia’s eyebrows raised in surprise before they quickly furrowed as she tried to think of any suggestion. It was a tricky situation, because we had been doing everything right so far. Now, it was a matter of figuring out how to be better than what we already were.
I racked my brain for anything that could help, and all of my years in college studying business felt like the most important thing I’d ever done.
When I first started here, I was under the impression Lunar Corp. was a company that made drugs for humans, just like a large majority of the world. I’d had no idea the real reason and focus behind the company was drugs for werewolves.
The human side was a ruse, in a way, and had never really been the true focus. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like we were making shitty drugs for humans, but we put more of our resources into the werewolf side of things, and that’s how it had always been.
Robert Payne was a human, as far as I knew, which meant he had every single one of his resources pouring into human pharmaceuticals. That was the one thing he had the upper hand in, and that had to be the reason why he was storming ahead of us in terms of profits.
“I’ve got it,” I said as the realization hit me like a truck. “We’ve been neglecting the human side of Lunar Corp., and that’s the one-up Payne has.”
“What do you mean, Josh?” Lexi asked in confusion.
“We’re a werewolf drug company, but obviously we can’t broadcast that out to the public,” I said. “That’s where our priority lies, which is great for sales from our own kind, but what about the humans who use Lunar Corp. products, too?”
“We do devote a portion of our efforts into developing human drugs,” Victor said.
“A portion,” I emphasized. “And from what I’ve seen from the reports, not a large portion.”
The Board’s eyes widened as they finally realized what I was getting at.
“We can’t have an imbalanced split anymore if we want to keep up with competition like Robert Payne,” I said. “We should analyze some of Payne’s products and see what we’re up against. Then we need to hire more people for the human side of the company, and start developing in that field rather than just focusing on the wolf side.”
“That would be a first in Lunar Corp. history,” Victor said.
“Clearly, my mom and dad didn’t have much competition before,” I said with a shrug. “But we do now, which means we’ve got to do something about it before we become second best.”
“We’ve never considered devoting more resources to the human side before,” Lexi pointed out. “Maybe that’s where we’ve been going wrong.”
“I think Josh is right,” Susan added. “This could give us the advantage we need. If we are able to improve the human side of the company and even produce more drugs for our human customers, we’d be putting ourselves ahead of Payne.”
“Collins, run the numbers,” Victor said as his brow furrowed in thought. “I want to see if this is viable.”
“We’re a good company,” I said. “The best, in fact. But we’re currently only focusing on one part of Lunar Corp. I know the human side has never been our priority, and it’s just a front, in a way, but I say we turn it into an integral part of Lunar Corp.”
“It could work,” Collins said as his fingers tapped on his tablet screen. “This could be immensely profitable if we win the race against Payne.”
“Well, there you have it,” Susan said with a proud smile as she looked over to me. “Well done, Josh. I think you just might have saved Lunar Corp.”
I couldn’t help the rush of pride that blazed through me. It felt good to have my ideas appreciated and recognized. Especially ideas that were potentially business saving. Even if we did become second best, I was sure we had a good enough reputation that we’d be financially okay, but it was the thought of Lunar Corp. losing its place on the podium that made me feel sick.
“Then I suppose we’d best see to those developments immediately,” Victor said with a warm smile. “This could be a real turning point for Lunar Corp. For the better.”
“I think it will be.” I nodded in agreement. “Once we make this change, I say we don’t go back. Even once we’ve crushed Payne, I think we need to help regular humans more, too.”
“A noble prospect,” Lexi said. “And an admirable one.”
“Yes, it is,” Victor agreed. “I suppose we’ve never really had to be too concerned with the human side of the company up until this point. But I’m glad, in a way, that it’s been brought to our attention.”
“It’s all about adapting, right?” I said. “If we don’t adapt, we’re doomed to fail.”
“You sound like your father,” Victor said with a soft chuckle. “Although, usually his ‘adapting’ concerned his questionable golfing methods.”
“Yeah, that sounds like him,” I snorted. “How that man was an Alpha and could only hit a slice is beyond me.”
Victor huffed out a loud laugh at my words, and I couldn’t help the amused smile on my face at the thought of my dad getting pissed off that he’d sliced the ball, yet again.
“That was one of the few things in life he could never master,” the gray-haired wolf said fondly. “Much to his dismay.”
“I bet,” I chucked. “Alright, can I leave you guys to arrange everything?”
“We’ve got it covered,” Collins said as he carried on typing away. “I’ve already started arranging the funds.”
“Great, thank you,” I said sincerely. “And thanks for listening to me, guys.”
