Never Judge

Ian sat impatiently at the lobby of Constellation's hotel as he waited for the two other assistants to arrive. They were normally not late, so it was odd that he had arrived before both Dave and Mae.

He walked around the hotel, saying hi to a few employees and some familiar guests.

Ian had helped Cedric's multiple teams seal the deal with most of the clients and he was a required signatory for the contracts of the more difficult ones. So it was only natural that they all knew him on some level.

He wanted to make sure that Dave had covered all the bases, so he checked on all the staff present and spoke with the hotel management.

Dealing with Constellations Resorts was, of course, quite easy for Ian. They knew he was the boss' assistant and it's current general manager was one of Cedric's friends from his poverty training.

As he returned to the hotel ballroom he suddenly felt like something was off, it was an hour to the event and something was missing and he couldn't point out what.

After speaking to a few more people he suddenly realized what it was and began to worry.

Dave, who was supposed to be in charge of everything, was running late, and on top of that they had a huge problem ahead.

Seeing as he was in public, Ian collected himself and kept a calm exterior. He spoke to a few guests and staff members before finally finding the opportunity to excuse himself and leave.

Ian found his way to the lobby and quickly searched for Dave's name in his contacts and gave the younger assistant a call.

After a few rings Dave finally picked up.

"Where are you?" Ian asked in an annoyed tone.

"Parking." Dave said quickly.

"Well both of you better hurry up, I think we might have a problem." Ian said as he dropped the call and took a deep breath before finally returning to the ballroom of Constellations Resorts.

There were several businessmen that quickly came up and shook Ian's hand. 

Aside from his involvement in their own deals with the Reyes Group, almost everyone was aware that he was the father of Nicole's son. 

As a matter of fact there were even rumors circulating about Ian's and Nicole's upcoming wedding, something that was not true. He knew that Nicole refused to simply follow what her family wanted. 

He and Nicole had fought over finally getting married many times. Of course, if there was no pressure coming from her family, Nicole would have agreed to get married. But she was stubborn and complicated, even Ian didn't understand her refusal to tie the knot.

Nicole was hell bent on going against everything that her family wanted her to do, from her business choices to her marriage she wanted to go against them. It was something that frustrated Ian to no end.

As Ian continued to entertain the guests he kept checking the entrance to the ballroom. There was still no sign of Dave and Mae or the people he was looking for.

He had already sent someone to check where those people had gone and he was waiting for the bodyguard to come back and report what he had found out.

It took another five minutes for both Dave and Mae to join Ian in the hotel's ballroom.

"Why are you both late?" Ian asked as he pulled them aside.

"We spoke about things." Dave said with a frown.

"Ian, don't get mad at Dave, it was my fault." Mae told Ian as she tried to take the attention away from Dave. "I found out that you were having him investigate my past and I became unreasonable."

"Why?" Ian asked as he looked Mae in the eyes. "Cedric and I told you we would help, why would you act like that around Dave, isn't he part of the team too?" Ian asked. 

"I- I-. . ." Mae began to stutter.

"He knows." Dave groaned as he realized he never mentioned to Mae that Ian had figured out that they were dating and sleeping together.

"He knows what?" Mae asked in an angry tone.

"I know that the two of you are dating, so grow up and act like professionals." Ian scolded the pair. "If Cedric finds out that you are acting like children because of your relationship he will not hesitate to do something about it." 

"What? Why?" Mae asked with a confused look on her face.

"The Clarins had a very traditional opinion of dating in the workplace, I'm not sure how much it has influenced Cedric since this has never happened before." Ian explained.

"Mia and Leon?" Mae asked as she remembered the two bodyguards were a couple.

"By the time he found out Mia had already died and he can't say anything against it." Ian said with a shrug. "Add to that the fact that Leon and Mia didn't work as closely as you two are now."

"Oh." Mae said, wide eyed in shock as she never expected anyone from the Reyes Family to hold such traditional views. 

"Anyway, let's move on from that, you have an even bigger issue at hand." Ian said as he pointed at the ballroom.

"What?" Dave asked as he looked around, everything seemed to be in order, nothing was off. 

"You really don't see it?" Ian asked Dave. 

Dave took a look at the room and still couldn't see what was wrong.

"No." Dave and Mae both said.

"You, I will excuse you since you had a long week." Ian said as he pointed at Mae. "But you Dave, if I hadn't agreed to come, you wouldn't have noticed that something was wrong." 

Dave frowned as he heard the disappointment in Ian's voice. He had always worked hard to get Ian's approval, he simply wanted to be as good as the older man so that he could prove himself to his own father.

Ian sighed and shook his head as he realized that Dave still didn't know what had gone wrong and what was missing.

"Dave, you have a lot of the people that signed the contract here, but only the smaller companies." Ian pointed out as the tables closer to the front remained empty.

Mae gasped as she noticed what Ian was referring to. He was right, there may have been a lot of guests but most of them were the smaller companies and those that were true market leaders were missing.

"What do we do?" Dave asked as the panic became evident in his eyes.

"Right now, this is something that even I can't fix." Ian said with a sigh as he took out his phone and called a number.

"Who are you calling?" Dave asked Ian.

"Who else, the only person who could probably solve this, Cedric." Ian said as he waited for Cedric to pick up.