The Royal Wilder Hotel Pt 04

Nathan's flight returned home later than usual. Bad weather conditions plus a passenger offload in London had caused a significant delay; of up to four hours before it was ready to return to the UK. Nathan was relieved that he had the foresight to book an extra day off after his flight returned home to rejuvenate before returning to work.

"Nathan." Said a message on Nathan's phone screen. He had assumed that it was from Natalia, hence why he didn't take the time to check the sender was on his WhatsApp; Natalia did not have this information to hand. The message, as Nathan was quickly disappointed to realise was from Dimo. Nathan knew that by "reading" his message Dimo would know on his end that he had seen it.

"I need you to cover tomorrow morning. 6am to after lunch." Nathan was taken aback by this second message, Dimo knew he was out of the country. He had followed Nathan on Instagram for some time and had even seen Nathan's posts from the airport in Madeira earlier that day. Nathan hurried a respo-

"Sir, turn your phone off please." Came the brash comment from a flight attendant. Nathan had become so quickly invested in the text from Dimo that he had forgotten he was interrupting the safety demonstration on his flight home.

"Sorry ma'am, do you mind if I just-"

"No, you may not finish your text. Turn the phone off or you will get off the plane."

Jesus, what an attitude she had, Nathan thought to himself. Still, he didn't really fancy paying more money for a rebooking and just left Dimo on read. He couldn't avert the flight attendants gaze so placed his phone on airplane mode. It was a very early Saturday morning when Nathan finally returned home to his flat, and given how uncomfortably he had slept in his middle seat, Nathan had slovenly removed his clothes and sank into his bed.

Nathan rose at just past 11am that same morning, averaging a decent 6 hours of proper sleep. He reached for his phone to check the time properly. His clock read 11:07am, with the little Airplane in the corner of his screen still showing. Nathan finally switched airplane mode off almost an entire 10 hours since it was activated.

He then found his phone inundated with more messages, texts, calls and all manner of communication from work, most of which were from Dimo, each more aggressive, questioning and demanding as the last.

"Hey Nathan, how you doing? How was your holiday?" Came a much more relaxing voice from that of Blair. Nathan had decided to immediately call work to explain what had happened.

"Yeah I wouldn't worry mate, that's Dimo's fault for not checking the roster properly. Take the rest of your day off today and we'll see you when you're actually meant to be in."

Nathan was much more calmer now with Blair's reassurance. It turned out that Dimo, despite seeing proof of Nathan's flight mishap had not managed to take that into account when choosing cover for Becky, another morning colleague of theirs. Dimo had also chosen to just arrive on the conclusion that Nathan had wilfully ignored his message about covering even though typically this was not Nathan's behaviour.

This didn't stop Dimo from forming a poorer opinion on Nathan though. Like Blair, Dimo was constantly chipping at his armour, looking for an exploitable weakness just to exercise his seniority and to more importantly stroke his massively undeserved ego. Others had cracked at Dimo's constant pressure and had simply left for sunnier climates. But Nathan wasn't ready to quit just because of this cunt with legs. When he did finally return to work on Sunday afternoon, he found Dimo waiting at reception.

"Hello Sir." He said, eyeballing him like a hawk as Nathan entered the foyer. "How was your holiday?"

"Was good, thanks." Came the quick, short reply from Nathan. He meandered around him and toward the staff elevator. Dimo stood out from behind reception, making it obvious he was still observing Nathan with the loud clicking of his polished work shoes against the pristine marble flooring. Nathan could see in the mirror of the elevator that Dimo was watching, almost studying him intently. This was another page out of Dimo's "alpha tactics" book. He was trying to establish dominance by staring down his "prey". Yes, Dimo had referred to a former colleague as prey before. It was sad beyond all rational belief, but the colleague had also made the error to take the bait Dimo laid out for him. Dimo had a great time showing how better of an employee he was to anyone who gave him the chance, and it had unfortunately led to this particular colleague quitting not long ago. It was a massive shame, the kid had potential, but the environment Dimo had created made it almost unbearable to work in.

Nathan was about an hour into working when Dimo arrived up in the Cauldron. He noticed Nathan was polishing cutlery and glassware. It was a slow Sunday afternoon, and when he wasn't running food, Nathan was tasked with more tedious, but most appreciated cleaning work for restaurant utensils.

"Busy today buddy?" Dimo asked, with his arms folded in his typical interrogative manner.

"Nah, only been a few orders so far. I'm almost done with this batch here if you want to run these to the restaurant." Nathan pointed to a tray of neatly arranged, and polished to perfection forks which the restaurant would need for the dinner service later on. Dimo waited longer than usual to make his response.

"Sure thing!" He finally retorted, with a strange level of over-enthusiasm in his voice. Dimo collected a clean tray of forks before making his way up to the restaurant, and Nathan returned to polishing more wine glasses. He was almost ready to-

He heard an almighty crash of metal coming from the room Dimo had to cross in order to get to the restaurant. Nathan poked his head around and saw Dimo stood over a pile of disorganised forks that he had just spent almost an entire hour polishing.

"Oh no!" Dimo said. "I must have tripped." Nathan helped to collect the forks up, but as he did he noticed Dimo stopped collecting, and got as close to him as possible.

"I guess you will have to polish all of these again." Before casting another one of his intimidating glares directly at him. Nathan knew exactly how the forks got on the floor. It was no accident, he also wondered how Dimo got into a position of management in the first place. That surely wasn't an accident either. Surely.