Harsh

Everyone at the table had turned completely silent when Noah's phone rang, including Noah himself, even if it was for a brief moment. He picked up the call and answered a bit coldly, saying just a one worded syllable, "Yes."

On the other side of the call a trembling voice said, "Mr. Stephens, I am sorry to be bothering you after you have gone home for the day but we wanted to inform you that we were unable to stop Miss Smit today." Noah's eyes narrowed a bit and with a clenched jaw he replied, "I know." This caused the other person to become even more nervous and turned his trembling into something closer to a stutter.

"W-well, you see. We had everything prepared and we sent the message but we forgot that we were too close to the room where Mr. Andrew and Mr. James were sitting. In order to make sure that they wouldn't be able to message Miss Smit first, we had borrowed a signal jammer from the tech department. Though it had worked well in keeping their calls and messages from leaving the building, it apparently also prevented our message from going through. So, she never saw our message and now we don't know what to do." The man on the phone left a moment of silence here in case Noah wanted to respond, he hoped that his boss would say something but when he realized that he wouldn't be so lucky, he continued his explanation for his failure.

"Right, uhm. The problem is that we don't know what to do right now. We are afraid to turn the jammer off or move our phones. We fear that if we take our phones away from the positions they were in at the point that we realized, the message we tried to send earlier will go through. But if she has seen you already during that time, then it will only cause Miss Smit to ask questions and make us lose our credibility. But at the same time, we have no idea how to retrieve the message. We can hardly leave our phones here all day in order to prevent if from being sent, so we decided to call you from the main line and ask you for help."

Noah was already annoyed at what had happened but this caused him to go over the edge. With as much control as he could exert and in a voice that was so calm and cold it could freeze a person to his bones, he said, "So let me get this straight. First you do something as stupid as using a jammer without my permission, when I asked you to put a bug on their phone so we could overhear their conversations and read their messages. Then you cause a mess that could possible jeopardize everything we are trying to achieve in the first place, making the task I gave you lot futile. And now? Now you have the audacity to ask me to fix your mess, while you were supposed to be helping me to compensate for your initial betrayal." After that he slid his phone over the table towards Steve and told him, "You deal with these three. I have no patience for this level of stupidity."

Steve grabbed the phone with a bit of a surprised expression on his face since he had not expected this reaction from Noah. But this didn't last long and his expression quickly made place for a serious look as he took Noah's phone and took over the call while he walked to the living room to find out how big the damage was and salvage what he could. Meanwhile Laila and Maria had an equally surprised expression on their faces and they didn't move a muscle as they kept their expressions strong and stared at Noah in disbelief.

The reason everyone was in shock was because Noah was usually a very calm and collected person. Even though he could be a bit cold at times when he spoke to others, especially when they had done something wrong, he was never this harsh to the people who worked for Steve and him. Though in a way it should come as no surprise as it sounded like the people on the other side of the phone had indeed messed up pretty bad. Plus, since Noah spoke of 'betrayal' it mean that they already had a point against them for their earlier actions. But for Laila it appeared that none of these reasons could count as an excuse for the way he was handling the situation.

Seeing that Noah was about to get a talking to, Maria made up an excuse to leave the room as even she didn't want to see Noah going through that. While averting her eyes she said, "Oh I think I will go look in the kitchen if they have something good to snack on. That impressive high tea seems to have lit a spark in me for sweets. I have a hunkering for some more." Without saying another word or waiting for a reaction she walked out of the room and headed towards the kitchen, leaving Laila and Noah to themselves. Normally she wouldn't be so kind but she felt that quarrels between a married couple needed to stay between the two people in that couple and no one else. Not even a friend of any kind.