Simon carefully weighed his options and quietly made up his mind.
Coming back to his senses, he noticed the Housekeeper beside him still looked stiff. He asked with a smile, "Do you want to quit your current job and join Ygritte early?"
Alice tilted her head slightly and asked back, "Will you let me leave, Boss?"
"If you leave early, the 10 million dollar Vase Fund will be gone".
The two business plans this time did not use the Vase Fund share under the Housekeeper's name. On one hand, 10 million dollars was indeed too little, not even enough for the promotion subsidies of the online payment system. On the other hand, Simon would not allow these two business plans, which were crucial to Ygritte's development and expansion, to be operated separately.
The Housekeeper didn't care too much about that 10 million dollar fund. However, she quickly realized that the boss was teasing her again, so she simply stopped responding.
Just as Simon was about to say something more, the Female Assistant's voice came from nearby: "Simon, are you coming up to rest?"
Turning his head, he saw the Female Assistant standing at the top of the stairs wearing a bathrobe.
It was definitely not an option to refuse to go up.
Simon quickly nodded. "On my way".
Jennifer didn't move, her gaze still fixed on him. Simon had no choice but to stand up immediately and follow the Female Assistant upstairs.
Alice sat where she was, watching the two figures disappear, and a sense of envy couldn't help but well up in her heart.
Upstairs in the villa.
Jennifer entered the master bedroom, walked straight to the large bed, and started flipping through a magazine while lying on her stomach.
Seeing Jennifer ignoring him, Simon smiled and walked to the bedside, lying down next to the woman, and leaned over to kiss the Female Assistant's cheek.
Jennifer only dodged slightly before being kissed on the cheek by the man. Then she gave him a push: "Go take a shower".
"How about joining me?"
"I just showered".
Simon didn't force it and headed to the bathroom. After washing up, he came out again. The bedroom was now only lit by the bedside lamp, emitting a soft, pale yellow light.
Jennifer had changed out of her cotton bathrobe into a pink silk nightgown. She sat at the head of the bed, pretending to still be flipping through the magazine in her hand, but her gentle gaze, which occasionally drifted over, carried a hint of anticipation.
Having been repeatedly drained by Janette recently, Simon actually wanted to do nothing and have a good night's rest.
However...
Feeling the Female Assistant's hopeful gaze, he certainly couldn't say no at a time like this.
Just as the morning light pierced through the gaps in the curtains, the bedside phone rang. A fair, jade-like arm reached out to grab the receiver, but then turned it and placed it by the man's ear.
A voice came through the receiver. Simon chatted briefly with the person on the other end and quickly hung up.
The news was good news.
During the morning working hours on the East Coast, the Department of Justice officially approved Daenerys Entertainment's acquisition of MCA.
Simon had already known the general outcome two days ago; today was just the official announcement. Therefore, it was neither exciting nor unexpected, it was just everything falling into place.
Right now, sleep was the priority.
He had been exhausted last night.
Held in Simon's arms again, Jennifer had lost her sleepiness. She pressed her hand against the man's chest and whispered, "I'm getting up first. Shall I prepare breakfast for you?"
"Mm..."
Jennifer listened to Simon's feigned weak response and gave a soft laugh. She actually knew about Janette's increasing urgency to have a child. If she hadn't felt a bit jealous seeing him tease the Housekeeper last night, she wouldn't have pushed him.
Now...
Hmph!
Let's see if you still have the energy to flirt with other women.
Wriggling her body slightly, the Female Assistant easily slipped out of the man's embrace, not forgetting to lean down and peck him on the face before getting out of bed and heading to the bathroom.
After washing up, Jennifer dressed quietly and left the bedroom.
Just as she reached the hallway outside the bedroom, she saw a graceful figure standing in the hallway leading to the stairs, mopping the floor.
The figure was wearing a suit and a tube skirt, with her blonde hair pinned up, revealing a fair neck. Her slender waist seemed small enough to be held in one hand under the well-fitted women's suit, and further down, the tube skirt stretched over an alluring curve. The long legs wrapped in black silk stockings were equally seductive.
She couldn't help but take a soft breath.
The Female Assistant thought...
If a certain guy walked out of the bedroom right now, he definitely wouldn't be able to resist approaching. He wouldn't spank her, but more likely press a hand down.
And then they'd be right there in the hallway.
What a vixen.
What a bastard.
Sensing movement behind her, the figure turned around.
The Female Assistant roughly remembered that this girl's name was Zoe Parks.
Seeing the Female Assistant walking out of the bedroom, Zoe Parks' expression showed no flaws at all. She leaned on the mop and stepped aside slightly, greeting with a smile: "Good morning, Jennifer".
"Morning".
The Female Assistant responded softly but didn't give a smile, passing the girl with a cool expression as she headed toward the stairs.
She felt a bit of regret.
She should have drained a certain guy one more time last night; it would be best if he couldn't get up all day.
Downstairs, there were two other girls also cleaning.
The Female Assistant greeted them indifferently. Just as she was about to go to the kitchen, the Housekeeper walked in from outside the villa, holding a stack of newspapers. Seeing her, she also offered a greeting.
After thinking for a moment, the Female Assistant stepped forward, took the newspapers from the Housekeeper, and instructed: "After you finish cleaning, take them out for breakfast. Don't come back until after nine o'clock".
The Housekeeper was stunned for a moment, then nodded, subsequently pointing toward the kitchen: "Do you need my help?"
"No need".
The Female Assistant said, heading toward the kitchen with the stack of newspapers.
The Housekeeper stood there watching the Female Assistant's figure disappear. Instead of joining the cleaning crew, she turned back to her own bedroom.
A Compaq laptop was on the desk by the bedroom window. The Housekeeper sat down, opened the laptop, and waited patiently for it to boot up. The machine was installed with the Windows 3.0 system released by Microsoft last year; however, this machine wasn't the latest model, and the screen was still black and white.
After booting up, she connected to the network and opened the ie browser software.
Looking at the simple software interface she had set to a default text-only version, the Housekeeper couldn't help but feel a bit sentimental again. It was truly remarkable that a graphical interface browser software could be adapted to all mainstream systems like Macintosh, Windows, and DOS through different versions, and could also perfectly adapt to old and new models from different years.
If Ygritte could raise the price of the IE browser for specialized commercial operation, this company would already be earning a very considerable income.
Now, after investing so much manpower and resources to adapt to so many versions of machines, and with a rich content platform like Ygritte Portal as support, each set of software was only charged 10 dollars, which was practically giving it away for free.
Take the current situation for example: even though she had set it to the text-only version because her laptop's configuration was insufficient, the content layout of the Ygritte homepage could still be described as pleasing to the eye.
The Housekeeper had, of course, experienced this software on other machines as well.
The villa at Point Dume Manor had a dedicated computer room, which was like the internet cafes that had rapidly emerged in the last two years. It housed more than thirty mainstream PCs of various types on the market, from civilian versions costing one or two thousand dollars to small workstations worth tens of thousands of dollars, from old machines from the seventies to the latest desktops released by IBM, it had everything.
Her boss had set up such a computer room specifically to check the compatibility of the IE browser with different machines and operating systems in real-time.
After a quick browse of the portal's homepage, the prominent headline news was still the war dynamics in the Gulf.
The reason America Online had been able to gain 2.3 million pre-registered users in the past month was inseparable from Ygritte Portal's timely reporting of Gulf War information.
Even if traditional media realized the potential threat of the Ygritte platform and intentionally reduced reporting on news related to Ygritte Portal, the spread of this brand new content platform among the public was not hindered in the slightest.
For a monthly fee equivalent to a newspaper subscription, users got not only richer news and information but also various highly practical additional features like online games, blog sites, and email. This was very attractive to users.
This also happened to be the key selling point that Ygritte and America Online focused on when placing advertisements on various platforms.
In San Francisco over the past two days, she had also seen that Ygritte was developing richer multimedia functions such as music and animation. Once fully enabled, the Housekeeper felt that traditional print media platforms would indeed have no great reason to exist.
After lingering briefly on the portal content, the Housekeeper opened her email.
She was currently recruiting to expand her team, planning to hire at least 10 more girls, all of which she personally handled. Additionally, a manor was being designed and built in Miami, which she was also overseeing, along with various trivial matters related to her boss's properties across North America. Aside from laundry, cooking, and making beds, she was actually very busy.
Now she also had to balance the work for Ygritte.
She couldn't help but think back to her boss's words when he teased her last night, about whether she wanted to get out of this job early.
Of course she did.
However, as much as one receives, one must give.
She still understood this principle.
Otherwise, no matter how high a degree she had, if she entered the workplace, she could only start from the bottom. After all, her family had no deep background that would allow her to skip the starting line of ordinary people.
After browsing all the emails and replying to them, she had been busy for over twenty minutes. Checking the time, the Housekeeper knew it was time for her to take the others and leave.
Only...
She was still somewhat resentful.
Aren't you just someone who got to his side earlier than us?
Perhaps… no one is much worse than you.
Of course, just thinking about it, she really couldn't figure out her boss's personality. Sometimes warm, sometimes cold, sometimes ambiguous, sometimes distant, she found it far too unpredictable.
Moreover, she had originally thought that after working for him, she would soon be taken by him. However, several months had passed, and the closest he had gotten to her was just flicking her chin last night.
Playing hard to get didn't work, feigning coldness didn't work, being shrewd and capable didn't work, being charming and seductive didn't work.
Last night she had deliberately changed her stance, pretending to be shy and timid.
Still didn't work.
Really... where exactly is the problem?
It's so damn frustrating.
Could it be that she had to be like the mistress, being arrogant and wilful?
But if she really took on that attitude, she felt the outcome wouldn't be very good.
The mistress dared to act spoiled before him without any scruples; if she did that, it would more likely backfire.
After all, her status was what it was; she was ultimately just his Housekeeper, just a vase.
When he was interested, he could pick up the vase and play with it at any time. If she was too restless and took the initiative to approach him, he might lose his grip or get distracted and fail to catch her, and she would fall and shatter into pieces.
While Simon could calmly go back to sleep after hearing the news that the Department of Justice had officially approved Daenerys Entertainment's acquisition of MCA, Hollywood could not react so calmly.
The approval of the acquisition meant that a true Hollywood super-giant was about to be born.
Once the merger is complete, the new Daenerys Entertainment will be involved in multiple media businesses including film, television, music, games, theatre chains, publishing, theme parks, consumer products, and video retail. Moreover, most of these businesses are not just insignificant side projects.
Film goes without saying. The 1991 film slate for Daenerys Entertainment and MCA that has already been confirmed for theatrical release exceeds 30 films.
Although several of Daenerys Entertainment's main films this year, such as 'The Dark Knight', 'Terminator 2', and 'The Fugitive', are collaborative projects with other film companies and they are not responsible for distribution, the distribution volume of over 30 films, when calculated together, indeed aligns with what the three major guilds stated in their lawsuit: Daenerys Entertainment is likely to control more than 40% of the Hollywood box office share.
In any industry, a market share exceeding 40% basically makes one a monopoly-level super-giant.
In terms of television, in addition to Daenerys Television, which has a series of hit dramas and reality shows, MCA also holds a 50% stake in MCA Television and the USA Network. MCA Television's assets include a television production department comparable in scale to Daenerys Television, as well as six local television stations distributed across the United States.
Therefore, this merger can further consolidate Daenerys Entertainment's strength in the television field and give Daenerys Entertainment its own television station assets.
Not only that, after the acquisition is completed, the library of thousands of films and television programs that Daenerys Entertainment will acquire from MCA will also largely compensate for its own deficiencies in content accumulation.
Beyond the film and television business, Daenerys Entertainment's biggest gains are undoubtedly the MCA Records company and the theme park business.
MCA Records was actually the predecessor of the later Universal Music Group, originally founded in 1913 as a subsidiary of Universal Pictures.
After more than half a century of development, MCA Records is already one of the world-class recording giants with strength comparable to Warner Records, Columbia Records, PolyGram, EMI, and other companies. MCA Records not only has a rich accumulation of music library content but also has its own record distribution network in North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Through this acquisition, the movie soundtracks produced by Daenerys Entertainment in the future will no longer need to rely on the networks of other record companies for distribution.
However, the shortcomings of MCA Records are also very obvious; this company currently does not have super-giants of the calibre of Michael Jackson or Madonna Ciccone.
As for theme parks, although MCA currently only has two theme parks, Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios Florida, both are very successful, providing MCA with a rich cash flow from tens of millions of tourists every year. Next, Daenerys Entertainment will also launch the construction plan for Universal Studios Osaka together with Matsushita.