Chapter 22

22

MASON

“ T his is bad, Mason,” Colin said beside me as we walked into the distillery. The place was a mess of activity. Anyone who’d taken vacation time this week for the upcoming holiday was back, punching in overtime, trying to make sense of the news I got right as I left the office last night at nine o’clock.

It had been one of the worst calls I could have taken. I’d been sliding my thumb across the screen to answer a call from Fia, excitement gripping my chest knowing she’d just received the flowers I sent, when I got a call from my foreman at the same time.

I let Fia’s call go to voicemail.

I regretted it.

“Fuck,” I growled as we pushed through the double doors into the shabby, commercial conference room. Two of our board members were already seated, and my foreman was standing with his arms crossed, looking glum. “How bad?” I asked with no preamble.

“The entire batch of our cinnamon whiskey that was sent out last week was affected,” the foreman replied gruffly, raking his fingers through his hair. “A hundred thousand units.”

I rolled my lower lip between my teeth and nodded because it was the only thing I could do. Last night, I’d gotten a call that several of the barrels used to age our special edition holiday whiskey had tested positive for menthol, which meant an entire batch of whiskey was contaminated. Worse yet, that batch had already been sent out to consumers all over the globe.

My foreman shook his head as he pressed his palms to the table. “The barrels were clean before we started the aging process last year.”

“I know. We have the documentation of that,” I grumbled, scratching my jaw. “But we missed something.”

“Were these the barrels we purchased from Crafton and Forge a few years ago?” Colin asked. “They were cheaper than our usual suppliers. Could this have been some kind of chemical reaction?”

I pondered his question. Yeah, we’d gone with a more affordable supplier to cut costs for that one batch. The development of the holiday edition whiskey had been three years in the making by that point, and we were running out of time waiting for our usual barrel supplier to meet our need, so we went with someone else, someone who could throw several hundred barrels together quickly. We needed to start the aging process to get the whiskey to consumers by this Christmas.

But at what cost?

“Glue. There may have been glue in the wood seams,” the foreman muttered with a shake of his head. “Shit!”

“Menthol in glue?” one of the board members said under their breaths.

“It doesn’t matter now.” I rubbed my eyes. I hadn’t slept at all. I spent all night making phone calls, stopping shipments, covering my bases, and doing the right thing by contacting the FDA and consumer compliance officers. “The whole batch has been recalled. That’s done. But this can’t happen again.”

My phone rang for the hundredth time today, and it was only two. I let it go to voicemail.

“I want every single barrel tested, no matter what point in the process it’s in. Everything gets pulled until we can ensure our product is safe for consumption.”

“You’re talking about a total recall?” One of the board members scoffed. “Pulling everything from not only our warehouses but stores as well?”

“Just until we can check serial numbers and determine what might have been affected,” I replied hotly.

“That sounds unnecessary if the barrels in question weren’t used for every batch?—”

“I don’t care. I want it done.” I turned to my foreman. “This wasn’t your fault, okay? This was my fault for approving the new barrel supplier. You and your guys aren’t in trouble here.”

He looked relieved but solemn as he nodded and turned for the door. I stared at the men left in the conference room and sat down, resting my hands on the vinyl surface of the table. “This is what we’re going to do.”

Days passed in a blur. This was a CEO’s worst nightmare. Just a week before Christmas, my entire company was at a standstill. Stocks plummeted. Investors pulled out. I watched my employees spiral into uncertainty about their careers.

No one was going to lose their jobs. I’d already started pumping my own money back into the company, keeping it floating while I had every bottle of whiskey pulled from market shelves.

I sat on a stool in front of a green screen, adjusting my tie for the umpteenth time. I’d just recorded my company’s formal public apology video, something that would no doubt make the rounds on social media and the news in a matter of hours. The green room was empty, quiet, but I couldn’t move.

The man standing in the doorway closed the door behind him as he walked in, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his tailored slacks.

“I don’t need you to tell me I had this coming,” I told my dad.

“I wasn’t,” he replied, taking a few steps in my direction. He looked around the room. “But I did warn you about going against tradition.”

“I didn’t go against tradition. I made a decision for the good of my company.”

“And now look at you, having to give the public a bland apology, going on and on about your dedication to consumer safety, to quality, while you cut corners behind the scenes.”

I woke with a start, sweating, the sheets kicked down to my foot of my bed. It was a dream, the same nightmare I’d had for the past three nights. I checked my watch and found it was hours before the sun would be up on Wednesday, the day I had to walk into my office and make the same video I’d been having nightmares about.

I sat up, smoothing my hand over my face, then grabbed my phone.

I hadn’t been purposefully avoiding Fia, but I hadn’t had the time to reach out to her. After the first day went by with no contact, I’d felt like sending her a text telling her I was just busy at work wouldn’t cut it, but I hadn’t had a single second to myself since this nightmare began. I’d returned from the office two hours ago and fallen face first into bed in the clothes I wore to work. Two hours of sleep wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.

I took a shower. I made a pot of coffee and picked through my emails. I read the script my marketing team spent hours writing.

Fia. I was being awful to Fia right then. She was the only thing taking up space in my mind and the thought of her was making it impossible to focus on what I needed to be doing—saving my company from ruin.

But I couldn’t help it. I wanted her. I wanted to just talk to her. So, I called her, at four in the morning. It went to voicemail, of course.

“Fia, I’m so sorry to call you this early but I need to explain that I’m not avoiding you, not at all. Something happened at work and—I’ve been busy. I’ll call you tonight, I promise. I’m sorry—” The voicemail cut off. I set my phone on the counter and rubbed my tired eyes before finishing my coffee, dressing, and going to the office.

The day passed in another blur of activity. The city street, decorated for the upcoming holiday and dusted with fresh snow, betrayed the frenzy inside the office. I sat on the stool in front of the green screen and used that practiced voice that haunted my dreams to tell the public I was doing everything in my power to ensure quality assurance, and that Heritage Spirits was still a trusted name, a trusted business.

When the lights cut out again and the office emptied, it was well after ten at night, and I found myself walking the streets home to my apartment, kicking snow with the toes of my shoes. A couple crossed the street in front of me, arm in arm, smitten. The man kissed his girlfriend, or wife, on the cheek. She giggled in return, her shopping bags full of last-minute gifts for family and friends jingling as she turned to face him.

Jealousy ripped through my chest, hot and endless. I passed them swiftly, crossing the street into Central Park.

It was mostly empty. No teens throwing snowballs greeted me. I eventually found myself sitting on the same bench where I’d kissed Fia, alone, staring at a frosted-over fountain and the skyline beyond.

I hadn’t checked my phone in hours. I pulled it out, finding a text from Fia. My heart leapt with relief as I opened the text and scanned the contents.

“ Everything okay ?” she’d asked six hours ago.

I started to text her back, some long diatribe about how everything was peachy keen, that stuff like this happened all the time, that I wasn’t feeling the weight of my family’s expectations and disappointments over staining our name and whiskey recipe, but I stopped, my fingers hovering over the screen.

“ No ,” I replied.

Three little dots appeared immediately.

Fia replied, “ Come over . Tell me what you need from me .”

I wanted nothing more. I swallowed past the lump in my throat and began to reply that I was on my way when Colin’s name flashed across my screen. Guilt settled heavily in my stomach for several different reasons.

“Hey,” I answered, trying to banish Fia’s image from my mind.

“Hey, are you at the office still?”

“I just left, why?”

“I have Japan calling in about twenty minutes. You should probably be on the call, too. Can you meet me here? Conference room A?”

I closed my eyes. My heart was screaming for me to say no. My feet were already walking in the direction of Fia’s apartment.

But my mind won out.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’ll have coffee waiting. Be prepared for a long haul.”

I slid my phone in my pocket and turned back the way I came, following my footprints in the snow. Japan was our third largest market. This call was important. We had offices in Tokyo. I had to be on the call, no matter what.

I pulled my phone out again when I reached the lobby of my building, waiting for the elevator.

“ I have to go back to the office. Can I call you tomorrow morning? ” I stared at my text exchange with Fia, waiting for those three dots.

They didn’t come, and as I rode the elevator to my offices, I realized with startling clarity what I was about to lose.

And it wasn’t my company.

Colin was already seated in the conference room, his laptop propped open, coffee in hand. I sat across from him, running my hand over my face. He looked up and asked, “Are you ready?”

I was ready to throw all of this away for his little sister, but he didn’t know that. How bad would it be if I just told him now, while everything else was already going to shit?

“I’m ready,” I told him, pushing back the exhaustion clogging my thoughts.

I went home three hours later with no new texts from Fia.