Neverending Heartache

When Zora had received the letter asking her to meet, she had almost instantly agreed. It had been a rather strange coincidence that, upon moving their head offices to Manta Carlos, she had, late one night, come across the strange and rather cryptic paperwork in a file titled simply, "Semenov".

It was filled with dates, rather odd delivery points of origin and destinations as well as cryptic codes in the boxes where the type of cargo normally went. The boxes were just labelled "organic matter, type Vulpes, Ursa, Castorea..." among other strange latin sounding designations.

Arriving at the small cafe, Zora glanced around the small semi-crowded coffee shop. looking for someone. There seated alone at a table next to a window was a pretty young woman, it had to be Larisa Versailles Semenov.

Nodding at the waiter, gesturing that she'd take one of the coffees listed by number on the sandwich board, Zora walked over to the table, "Larisa?" she inquired politely, "I'm Zoraida del Bosque, current CEO of DB Holdings" she said as she took a seat across from her. "I believe you wanted to speak to me about something - important," she said with a rather concerned look, guessing this was not a social call.

@Cypress

Zora raised an eyebrow at her words. They didn't usually transport live animals - not internationally anyways - or she had thought. However, Zoraida along with her brother, Tomas, had only taken over DB holdings in the last ten years, and in the beginning, there was a huge amount of things she hadn't been aware of either. Still, this was not something she felt she could shrug off. It also explained the names in the files and what they referred to.

"That would have been my father... " Zoraida said grimly, nodding at the girl's question about the files. "I believe that, yes, there are a few files with that name on them," she said, her voice trailing off as the waitress placed a coffee in front of her and then left after asking if they needed anything else.

"May I ask what the files refer to?" Zoraida inquired politely, adding, "I'm not at liberty to hand the files over directly... but a copy of them, well...." she shrugged, indicating that anything was possible if the reasons were right.


@Cypress

"Good gods..." Zora breathed, somewhat dismayed by what Larisa was telling her. She had wondered what the files alluded, had referred, to. She had originally thought they had to do with smuggling rare animals across international borders, but it appeared that the truth was much, much worse.

Taking in Larisa's appearance as she told her about the experiments and the other lab, Zora began to notice things about her, her body language, the fox ears, the quiet anxiousness...

"I will give you copies of what I have," Zora started, uncomfortable with the knowledge that her family, and now her company, had been engaged in such questionable and morally objectable activities. "Though I would ask for your discretion in exchange," she told the younger woman. "I need to know how involved we were and if it's still continuing..." she explained, wondering if her brother had continued with their father's activities.

Zoraida was aware that DB Holdings had clients of a dubious nature, and that they often supplied them with items that were questionable... but trafficking for experimentation purposes seemed a line Zora was not comfortable crossing.