By then, she had become a professional. She
knew every single trick to travel, no matter if it had to do with packing her
suitcase or buying the best hygiene products for herself. She knew which
airlines offered what, the amount of room she had on any plane and the time she
had in every single flight to work, sleep and relax. You could say she was a
little bit to rigid with her life but Christine would have answered that she
was just very well prepared. And that’s why her bosses loved her.
Not only she was very practical in her
travelling life, she was also like that with work. She travelled around the
country and to other parts of the world, helping companies with their problems
with technology and innovation. Christine went everywhere to hold meetings and
conferences to anyone interested about how a company could survive in the new
digital era. She knew about every single new development and was very well
versed in the finance world too.
Some people saw her as a danger to their way
of doing things, specifically those people that were just corrupt and had
arranged the system to work for them instead of working for everyone. During
her fifteen-year experience, she had been responsible for unmasking a very high
number of corruption scandals on many different companies. No matter if they
produced video games or handled supermarkets, there was always someone trying
to make more than the rest.
That possibly was why so many people hated her
too. In her world, in her order of things, there was no such thing as personal
interests. She couldn’t understand how someone could put themselves in front
and leave everyone else behind. Granted, she was not the best to speak about
group efforts as she never did them herself, but she knew the value of having a
good team to make a company go to directions no one else had ever gone. She
tried not only to make them all win money and be successful, but Christine also
wanted them to have a heart.
That made her enemies very angry and that’s
why many companies that had once asked for her help, suddenly rejected her and
even campaigned against her actively in order for her bosses to be tempted to
fire her or something but that never happened. Not only because she was really
good at her job, but also because they feared her. They knew that if she was so
good, she must have had something on the company she worked. It was only
natural that she did, to protect her own interests.
But that was where they didn’t understand her.
She didn’t have anything on anyone in the company. She had even checked on
that. And it was because she believed a relationship based on trust was much
better than one based in fear. So from her side, everything was just fine. From
their side not so much, but she had decided long ago that she couldn’t be worried
about things she had no real control over. There was no way she could convince
them that she wasn’t going to turn on them one day.
Real problems came the day her enemies, people
that had robbed millions, sued her in court with allegations of her work being
unethical and, also, for receiving money in order to help improve conditions in
some companies and not in other. They said that she refused to help their
companies because she was under orders not to let them have any part in the
business. They were very specific in their statements and even presented
evidence of every single thing they were claiming.
Christine would have wanted to laugh and she
did when she got home but certainly not in the courthouse, where everyone’s
eyes were fixed on her. She tried not to make any telling expressions and only
limited her words to denying what those men in suits were saying. She was very
calm and one could even say she didn’t care much for having to loose time there
when she could be doing something much more interesting. Her rivals even
pointed that out but the judge seemed not to mind much.
The
actual trial was set to begin two months later. She would have to keep working
until then because she had many prior commitments. But her company had asked
her to please hold any engagements until after the trial was done because they
didn’t want any of their clients to feel they could lose not only money but
also their prestige in the business world. Of course, she understood perfectly
what they were asking of her. So the day before she went to trial, was the same
day she finally stopped at home and realized how her life would change now.
The trial was very well publicized because
many people in the media had been bought by the owners of the companies that
were suing her. So it was obvious what their position was. They wanted her to
be turn to shreds by people too, which was very hypocritical as those same
companies were the ones that robbed everyone of their savings and their hard
won money. She had some big lawyers on her
side too but the ones in the other side were particularly vicious. So much so
that, on the second day, they even dared to attack her personal life, which was
preposterous.
Her lawyer told her not to say anything about
that and she didn’t but it was the first time she seemed out of control. She
wasn’t happy, at all, that her enemy was so visibly desperate that they wanted
to find a weak spot wherever they could see it. Their questions and allegations
hovered around the fact that she was an unmarried adult woman that lived her
life travelling around. They called her irresponsible and immoral, which was
perfect for the always religious people in juries. There’s always a couple.
The trial went on for weeks. Whenever she
thought they had been discredited by her very well built case, they came again
with claims of bribery and corruption. It was then when she really got tired
and decided not only to do her own defense but also using their own tricks. She
would go personal and to the facts they were attacking on her. She was very
tired and she had never felt that way. Christine was a very strong person but
know, for some reason, she was beginning to feel the weight of years of work.
The first day, in which she defended herself,
she attacked them head on with proof of their own corruption. She had the
papers and the data, which she always kept on her records to bring them down.
One by one, one by day, she destroyed their credibility in front of the judge.
Of course, they came against her hard with more personal questions and other
attacks but Christine was ready, she had prepared herself thoroughly for that
occasion, so she had brought the big guns.
Did they want to talk about hidden children,
lovers, weird fetishes and many other things? Fine, she went there with proof.
During her years as a woman in business she had also made a lot of good
friends, friends with enough talents to actually uncover things about people
that they would have never thought no one would ever know about. But those good
friends, many of those owed a lot to Christine, came to help in her hour of
need. They really did the best they could to help her win that damn case.
The day she actually won, the papers suddenly
went silent and she went back to work. She decided to work now for smaller
companies in order to help them be bigger and better. Christine wanted no more
juggernauts in the game. Instead, she wanted to help where she was really
needed. And she knew that they would let her do that because now she was a big
name. Now they knew who she was and what she could do: bring empires up or down
to the ground. There was clearly no one better in the game and Christine knew
it very, very well.
