CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

PAST

Despite the extra staff, which ultimately meant less of a paycheck for me, things continued to spiral down, falling at such a descent that I was unable to stop it no matter what efforts I made. My formerly dedicated staff continued to make ridiculous mistakes – some of which had the potential to cause significant problems and losses for the company.

Finding good English speaking staff in Bulgaria was not easy – but Angel, my wonderful, highly intelligent, fluent English-speaking girlfriend was always by my side to help me out. It was Angel that was now gathering the evidence as to who was to blame and for what and so when the mistakes caused a huge loss for the company, she insisted I fire the guilty party. Of course, she so adequately found and provided me proof of who was at fault and by this time I was desperate to get the company on an upward spin.

Time revealed, as it always does, the bitter truth. Angel, MY girlfriend was actually sabotaging the work of the employees and fabricating the evidence - which SHE was bringing to me having “discovered”. This enabled her to take over several key roles in the company making her indispensable. She happily destroyed the lives and careers of several people to achieve that simple aim.

Angel loved to save the day. She wanted all the prestige of doing everyone else’s job, she wanted the “locked in” element, but she did not actually want the hassle of DOING the jobs – she just wanted all the credit.

In less than a year my dynamic, well-run company that had doubled its turn over every 9 months, was having to re-trench and consolidate, close down foreign markets, close down product lines, subcontract work previously done in house as more and more time was spent firefighting problems and catastrophes.

Even though I had promoted Phoenix and hired his “wife” temporarily, I was STILL working 18 or 20 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep on top of things. In order to handle this schedule, my super helpful girlfriend was there by my side to help me, this time with amphetamines “just to help you get through this tough patch.”

Then as the amphetamines started to take their toll and cause shaking, she was there again at my side to help me, this time with a chilled glass of white wine - “just to take the edge off the shakes so your employees don't see it and ask questions.” And when I was exhausted and unable to pull myself out of bed “here’s some meth, just to get you through the day so your business doesn’t tank.” Months went by when I don’t think there was more than a twenty-minute stretch of me NOT being ON something and it was truly wreaking havoc on my body.

During the first few weeks after hiring Angel, I was sure that Angel was the true source of the problems with the company. But as the months passed, and then the years…. my mind was infested constantly with one vice or another, my thinking ability diminished. Not to mention Angel’s crazy logic about who did what and who was to blame had tainted my ability to see coherently. I had never been spun in so many directions while trying to get to the bottom of a business problem, the way Angel had the capability of spinning the facts.

The only good that came out of my soon to be dwindling employees was the fact that there were less and less people to blame for her mistakes and the real culprit was made obvious.

Which is exactly what happened today.

We needed to send regular shipments of one large box a week to Amazon in the UK from the office in Bulgaria - this cost about $50 dollars. Angel had all week to ring TNT and organize the pick-up. She didn’t do it, since when does Angel do ANYTHING she is instructed, so by 6.00 p.m. on Friday she realized she had not done it, despite my numerous reminders.

After many flare ups, vicious arguments about the business both privately and more than once publicly in the office, she knew without a doubt I was going to be upset with her. So, what was her solution so as to avoid my wrath??

Well, she hired a private Lear Jet to fly the package to the UK. She ordered a private jet to fly a cardboard box to the UK! SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!! SHE SPENT SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to cover up a small mistake rather than be found out.

“WHO TOLD YOU?” She inquired as if THAT mattered.

“WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?” I screamed.

“It was Hanna, wasn’t it? She’s just jealous AND WANTS MY JOB. Can’t you see what she’s trying to do, they’re trying to take over OUR BUSINESS.”

I want to say that her logic was so stupid it wasn’t worth my time of day, but by this point her ludicrous excuses now had the ability to shoot my anger and anxiety from a one to a ten in a millisecond. This crazy logic, it was like an itch in my soul, I couldn’t ignore it, I couldn’t even believe the words were coming out of her mouth. And I honestly thought I was going insane at how viciously she defended her insane logic.

“OUR BUSINESS??” I screamed. In fact, I out right laughed out loud. “You mean MY business. The only thing you are doing with this business is FLUSHING IT DOWN THE TOILET!”

“Then YOU should have told PHOENIX to do the job. You know I forget things. If YOU were a BETTER BOSS THIS would never have happened.” Her eyes glared at me, daring me to dismantle this outrageous and pathetic excuse. ”AND if his wife had kept her MOUTH SHUT you would’ve at least been happy THAT I figured out a way to have it shipped ANYWAY.”

“THE BANK CALLED ME ANGEL,” I was in her face and scared of what I could be capable of. I never hit a woman in my life, would put my life on the line if I ever saw a man raise his hand to a woman. But this rage, this emotion inside of me was nothing I was familiar with and I was scared of what I could be capable of.

“At least the box was delivered, by ME,” She stated as if she had won the Olympics and I should be bowing before her. There was no getting through to her, there was no getting her to understand why I was angry that she spent SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to cover up a FIFTY DOLLAR mistake.

She refused to even contemplate seeing my side of the story. I had never argued with someone so unreasonable, which is why the argument lasted so long. My mind could not wrap itself around the fact that she was incapable of understanding why on Earth I was even remotely upset. I tried to get her to see it, in fact we argued for 10 hours about being in the right. The next day I was hoarse and unable to speak audibly.

 

—- § —-

 

I desperately needed to get a handle on where all this utter catastrophe and chaos was coming from so I had all offices and even the house fitted with CCTV cameras.

Now the purpose of the cameras was to help me get to the bottom of what was going, and who was at fault with the business tanking, but nothing prepared me for what I was watching.

The CCTV showed that my girlfriend was going onto the Amazon system, printing off all the orders before the staff arrived, shredding the time-consuming ones and then marking those orders as dispatched -when no one even knew those orders ever existed!!

I immediately called her into my office.

“Angel we are missing orders, do you know what’s going on?” I asked as if I myself was clueless and needed her. “You are here first, you, more than anyone else, know what’s going on in the office,” with each compliment she seemed to stand an inch taller, “do you know what’s going on?”

“I’m telling you Lee,” she said as though confiding in me a deep secret. “There’s something not right about Hanna. I’ve been telling you for a week now she’s trying to ruin this business.”

I took a deep breath. How could this be happening? I have given her the world, better yet I have opened up a world to her that she never had a taste of before. She wore the most expensive designer clothes, indulged in luxuries that had always been out of reach before – WHY WAS SHE SO INTENT ON DESTROYING IT? ON DESTROYING ME?!?!

Another deep breath. I couldn’t speak, I was afraid I would lose it…. AGAIN! And one thing I’ve learned is that despite the screaming match which would no doubt ensue, nothing, absolutely nothing would be resolved.

I simply beckoned her to come to me and watch the footage with me on the CCTV, of her clearly shredding orders just printed.

“What?” She asked innocently.

“Do you not SEE YOURSELF shredding the orders that were printed?”

“I was NOT. I loaded the paper the wrong way when it printed,” she said with such sincerity, with no shame or guilt that even though I had the evidence before me I doubted myself.

“What about the footage of you going back into the system and marking the orders completed?”

She put her hand on my shoulder as if to reassure me.

“I was simply double checking to make sure I had reprinted the correct ones,” she replied again with zero guilt and a tone that suggested I was being paranoid to even be questioning her.

“Well, then why is it that the number of orders dispatched do not equal the number received?”

“Because we were out of stock,” she replied so quickly that I wondered if she rehearsed what she would say if she ever got caught red handedly. I couldn’t believe it. There was ALWAYS a reason, no matter how flimsy. You could clearly see her, she could clearly see her, in HD, on a 40” LED TV, doing exactly what she was DENYING doing and offering a ridicules feeble explanation - but never once did she back down on any issue.

“You know Lee,” she said as she was walking out of the office even though I had not dismissed her yet. “if YOU did not have to walk your DOG 3 times a day you would have had the TIME to run your business properly without all of these problems.”

Silence. Except for the sound of her Jimmy Choo stilettos clacking across the floor, clack, clack, clack, clack before the SLAM of the door.

I sat there in disbelief. I was living in the twilight zone and nothing seemed real. Had this conversation even occurred? Did I just conjure this up in my mind? Was she seriously BLAMING THE DOG for my failing business??

I was barely hanging on to reality. My mind seemed to be engaged in an intense tug of war with one side ready to trash this relationship, cut the gangrene out of my life, count my losses and move forward. But the other part, the part more closely associated with my heart, refused to believe the outrageous lies that were literally smacking me in the face. That side refused to want to let go of the fact that Angel was the same woman that had taken me to the highest of highs, was the same woman that made me feel as if life could never possibly be any better than it was. I could not grasp that the woman that was destroying my business was the same woman that spent three hours preparing for me, wanting to look perfect for me, to please me – or was it for her? NO- it was for ME – wasn’t it?

Yes, she had the ability to enrich my life the way I had never experienced before, but I was sick of the destruction that I had to endure in order to taste that enrichment. It was no longer worth it for me.

I realize now that even when she could see that her actions were destroying the very thing that brought her the resources to be the envy of every girl in the city, she was unable to stop. Why?? Because her actions also destroyed me and somehow that gave her a tremendous amount of power. Ultimately breaking me seemed to outweigh her need for money or prestige or admiration or even love and I was tired of being broken.