Page 1 of Serendipity
He felt like home.
CHAPTER1
My eye was twitching.
And not that cute little twitching you see in cartoons, or on those pretty girls in movies that seem just slightly annoyed. No,nope. I started counting to ten, approximately fifteen minutes ago, and I knew, I just fucking knew, that no matter what I did, no matter how many deep breaths I took, I was going to strangle this motherfucker.
But like a soft strangulation—I still needed this job.
“Do you understand?”
I did understand. I fucking understood the first fifteen thousand times he repeated the same shit, but the man’s ego was the size of Mount Everest and it seemed to be only growing as time passed by. The problem wasn’t if I understood—it was him.
You need this job.
You need this job.
“Understood,” I muttered. If I survived today without getting fired, I was going to get myself one of those trophies, or I was going to get drunk tonight—one of those two things. I could already taste the burn in my throat from all the vodka cranberries I was going to down tonight. I didn’t have it in me anymore to keep arguing with a person who couldn’t understand simple things.
Our director of purchasing kept standing in front of me, wearing a smirk on his idiotic face, because both of us knew that I couldn’t say anything back to him. My boss was on vacation, and my human resources file was thicker than any other.
It really wasn’t my fault. People often annoyed me. No, annoyed was a mild word for the emotions coursing through my veins when they weren’t capable of doing the job they were getting paid for. I mean, how hard was it to just open their computers, log into the system, and click a goddamn button that quite literally had the description if they just hovered over it?
So, yeah, my mouth got me into quite a lot of trouble. and I swear, our director of HR ran the other way every time she saw me.
But this fucker in front of me… He didn’t deserve my forked tongue. He deserved to be punched in the throat.
I could already see the front page of theHotelier Monthly—Alessia Devine, a Front Office Manager, Arrested for an Assault.Yeah, my mom would be so proud. On the other hand, my younger brother would probably high-five me.
But today wasn’t a good day to get arrested or to get fired, so I bit my tongue. I smiled at Jonas, taking a step back, then two, three and four, slowly inching closer to the exit door. Half of the office was staring at the two of us, no doubt waiting for me to explode.
“Have a wonderful day.” I could be nice, even if every word dripped with sarcasm.
I didn’t wait for his reply before I stepped through the door and started marching down the dimly lit hallway, breathing in and out. In and out.
Motherfucking piece of shit.
I thought that working in the industry that was people facing, customer-service oriented, would be tough because of our guests, but no. I was surprised I still didn’t suffer from an aneurysm after all these years. This was why I couldn’t quit smoking—okay, this and the fact that I really didn’t want to.
People passed next to me, other associates, and I tried to keep a smile on my face, even though I was pretty sure that it had a psychotic look to it. No wonder most of them just scurried past me without a second glance.
Out of all days for her to take a day off, Nina had to take it today when I needed someone to rant to. Olivia was running all over the hotel with the Quality team. Mariana was probably running from restaurant to restaurant to check if everything was ready for Corporate to visit tomorrow, and Eric was on vacation. The rest of my colleagues were not the type to which I could tell that I wanted to commit a homicide today.
I pulled my phone out and groaned when I saw three missed calls and two messages on the screen. From the missed calls, I could see that it was our call center team that tried calling me earlier, and I could also see why.
A guest, staying in the Spectacular Suite, was complaining about the view, requesting to speak with the manager as soon as possible. Of course he was, because our marketing team took an entire year just to reply to a fucking email to change the description on our website. It didn’t matter that we constantly had the same headache, repeatedly. It didn’t matter that today wasn’t the day for me to deal with a guest that didn’t appreciate being lied to about the view.
I could’ve called him now, but when I looked at the time, it was already four o’clock. When my stomach started rumbling, crying out because I hadn’t managed to eat today, I typed that I would contact him in fifteen minutes.
The cafeteria was already closed, but there was a nice little bistro across from the hotel where I could grab a quick sandwich, a coffee and a cigarette, then return.
A complaining guest could wait for a couple of minutes, but my stomach couldn’t. Besides, me getting hangry was not a pretty sight to see, and I would rather not risk getting called back to HR because another snowflake that worked with us couldn’t handle being told that they did a bad job.
Passing next to the security office on my way out, I waved to Hisham and started walking upstairs, ready to breathe some fresh air. Our staff entrance was on the backside of the hotel, but almost all the offices were located in the basement area—apart from our food and beverage department as well as rooms.
The buzzing of cars, warm, fresh air, and people passing on the street were the first things to hit all my senses. I didn’t even mind the mild humidity that started gathering in the area with the approaching summer. At least I didn’t have to look like a polar bear anymore, with fifteen layers of clothes on me, because winters in Ventus City were a complete disaster.
The sign forDanny’s Bistrowas visible from this side and as I started walking toward the opening to the main road. I could almost taste the mozzarella sandwich I was going to order, with fresh chicken breasts, and just enough dressing to make my stomach sing hallelujah.
