Offer To The CEO

Friday, continued

Hou Yi, responded in a somewhat angry tone, while trying not to take it out on Amanda. He knew the rules that she and Yao Tan had regarding her work, and Tan was determined not to cross them "He changed a meeting to a face to face meeting, here, and Anna is asleep the suite attached to my office. I do not want to leave her alone."

Amanda, despite not wanting to get involve with XF International business given she still had her job at Hou Enterprises, overheard Tan last night on the phone. She was uncertain who he was talking to but gathered that he had invited this person to a meeting that had been changed to a face to face meeting at the last minute. Damn him, he was playing games and risking her job. He knew that until she fell pregnant and they had children she wanted to remaining working as her independence to date had been hard won.

"Boss, not a problem, but can you have someone let the head of the department know. The last fortnight has been an issue for me, as I have been accused of using my connections to have more leave than necessary, and I do not need an argument. If there is a problem while you are in the meeting, I will interrupt you, and if my husband is annoyed, I will take it out on him for disrupting my boss' plans and my work at home."

"Leave it with me. Head up as soon as you can. Assistant Wang will be waiting for you and let you in when you arrive."

With that Hou Yi ended the call and gave some immediate instructions before heading to the meeting. As soon as he opened the door, there was a surprise waiting for him. Yao Tan had brought King, Lion and Snake with him. He now officially was ready to kill his friend. Blindsiding him like this and bringing King to the meeting. The last think however he needed to do was to let everyone else in the meeting know how annoyed he was.

King, however had seen the fleeting glance go across Hou Yi's face, and knew that he had scored a win. He was, however, somewhat guilty as the Queen and Empress had on Monday met him under the cover of a business meeting to have him stop the fighting with Hou Yi. The Empress told him about her pregnancy, the difficulties it had, and the fact that the tension between him and her husband was adding to her issues. He felt guilty with that, particularly give she had just fallen pregnant when she was assaulted in the police station. How lucky were the Empress and the Toff that they did not lose their baby before they even knew she was pregnant.

Yes the Toff, that b*stard, should have said something when he observed his wife in and out of the cancer treatment centre, so that he could have spent as much time he could have with his wife before her death, but as they finally got through to him, that was the underlying reason for all the issues between the two of them and business disputes were simply an excuse. Anna's comment as she was leaving was right, he needed to examine himself for what his wife would have wanted.

King that night sat down and looked at a photograph of his wife. He could not believe that someone with her background had consented to date him, let alone marry him. She had grown up in a family compound near the Hou Ancestral Home, and always had seen Hou Yi and Yao Tan as little brothers. She liked them more than her own two younger half-sisters and cousins, who treated her horrendously. Her half-sisters and her own stepmother always saw her as a threat to them and their position within the family, so she ignored them and developed relationships with the younger children of families who were close to her mother and both sets of grandparents.

Putting himself in her position, he could see that she trusted Hou Yi to keep her secret, and in the end, he realised that she wanted to enjoy whatever time she had with him, rather than it being a misery. He remembered that the things particularly in the last 12 months of her life that she had done, and they had enjoyed life to the full. That he would not change for anything, as they were good memories.

It was that which made him realise that Anna was right. Remaining angry about things is not what she would have wanted. So, he swallowed his pride and sort out Yao Tan to put forward a proposal that he knew would lead to a meeting like this. Business wise, he was always good at seeking out land with the others ripe for development.

The land they had purchased seven or eight years ago well outside Studio City was now ripe for development. Becoming involved with bringing down Lu Corporation through that land had always been something on their mind, but they now had the perfect base to ramp up the destruction. Lu Corporation had been environmentally reckless in their studio city developments, and despite it still being somewhat unfashionable to consider the environment in developments they always had, now it constantly reaped business benefits.

Hou Yi biting his tongue spoke first "CEO Yao, I see we have CEO Ru, and Directors Can and Mo joining us. Is there something I do not know about?"