Single Father (Ziall Horlik) AU

Chapter 17

Zayn's POV

I was just packing up all the things Laila had used throughout our work day when Mr.Scott decided he wanted to call me into his office. Laila was just watching me as I carried her into the office, but a deep gut feeling made me wish I would have taken Niall up on his offer to watch her just so she wouldn't have to be here while whatever was happening wad going to go down.

We had both moved in perfectly fine with Niall in his flat. It had been one full day that we lived with him and we were already unpacked. He wasn't really allowed to work because of his whole hospital situation but even if he hadn't gotten sick with being overworked then he still wouldn't have worked because it is Christmas Eve. He had offered to me before I left to work this morning to watch Laila instead of her having to come to work with me, but that overprotective father came back and I didn't want to leave her with anyone. It was fine though because it was only a short day of work because we could all leave at noon to go on with our holiday stuff.

"Zayn, I need to speak with you about something only you have probably seen within the business." Mr.Scott started off. I set down the carrier and sat in the chair in front of his desk. He slid over a huge stack of papers and nodded for me to look over them.

They were papers dating back to the beginning of this year. It was for a certain type of medication that I had been seeing the price go up and up for a few months now. It wasn't something I really paid attention to, but when I looked at what the prescription was for was when I got a little offended.

"This is a life or death drug to some people. I may not be a doctor, but this is medication for HIV/AIDS. Why is the price being inflated so much?" I asked him. He sat back in his chair and rubbed his face roughly then looked at me like he wanted so badly to not have to explain this. I looked through more papers until I found hundreds of letters demanding the price to stop going up and asking how we were exactly making the drug within our factory. I knew that was wrong because we don't make that one here.

"Somewhere in translation, companies traced this drug back to us. We only warehouse this product, but now they all think we make it and there are threats of our facility to be shut down. I don't know what to do about this." Mr.Scott said. I went through the files a little more before I found the address of the actual factory that makes this. I gave that to Mr.Scott and pointed at the totals they had paid to us and how much each unit cost.

"This is the company everyone should be hating. What you're going to do is send back a nice personal letter to eat his complaint and attach this companies information to it so they know that's where the contact is. I know with this I'm only a secretary so it's a little wrong for me to be correcting these people, so you're going to have to do this all on your own. If I were to get too involved in something like this it would be a bad wrap because it's your business. You did nothing wrong so you need to point out the person that did do something wrong." I told Mr.Scott with a strength in my voice I've never used before. He nodded and turned away to get something from under his desk. He pulled out a Christmas wrapped box with a white envelope on the top.

"I figured you would know what to do with this, so I kind of got you and Laila a gift. Thank you for always being dependable and also thank you to yir daughter for not really being loud or anything. Merry Christmas, Zayn." Mr.Scott said. I nodded and stood from my chair to shake his hand. Instead he walked around and pulled me into a hug. All I did was pat his back then get the box off his desk before getting Laila's carrier.

"If there's anything else you need, give me a call. Have a nice Christmas." I said just as I reached the door. He nodded and waved to me before I left. I am feeling sure to get the makeshift diaper bag from my desk and cover my daughter enough before heading out into the cold snowy weather.