Realizing that the viral storm surrounding the leaked video wasn't going to blow over anytime soon, and desperate to escape the relentless tracking of industry headhunters and tech reporters, I made a tactical retreat.
I dumped the operational weight of the company entirely onto Tyler's shoulders and caught the first flight out to El Paso, Texas.
Of course, the city wasn't our final destination; our true objective lay deep within the remote Chihuahuan desert, a few hundred miles outside the metro area.
Even though the calendar had already ticked into mid-to-late October, the midday desert heat in West Texas was still brutal. The moment our team stepped off the tarmac, everyone instinctively shed their heavy corporate coats.
"Welcome to Texas, Mr. Nicholas. I'm Marcus Vance from the Texas Agriculture and Infrastructure Bureau. The corporate transport is waiting just outside the terminal, and I'll escort you to your hotel. As it happens, the CEO of Amazon's cloud and logistics division, Sarah Jenkins, is already checked in. When she heard your flight was landing, she decided to wait at the resort so you two could sync up."
A guy in his mid-thirties wearing a crisp white linen shirt walked up, shaking my hand with an enthusiastic, firm grip.
I nodded politely, though internally I was groaning, What is she doing out here in person? Looks like I'm in for an absolute corporate headache.
Marcus immediately guided me toward a blacked-out Lincoln Navigator executive SUV, while the rest of my traveling staff were directed to a luxury charter bus.
I had brought a substantial crew on this trip—not just our internal core engineering squad, but an entire advisory panel of agricultural automation experts, climate scientists, and structural biologists.
Our mission in this stretch of West Texas was to audit the construction site of our flagship project: a fully autonomous, AI-driven smart farm network.
Though El Paso served as the regional hub, the outlying territory was stark and sprawling, a far cry from the densely packed, hyper-developed metroplexes of the East Coast.
After a smooth thirty-minute drive through the desert terrain, our convoy pulled up to the resort hotel secured for us by the state bureau.
"Mr. Nicholas, I'll let you get settled in first," Marcus said as we hopped out of the SUV. "The regional directors have organized a formal welcoming dinner for your team later this afternoon. As for tonight, I highly recommend checking out the local downtown markets; they have an incredible, authentic southwest vibe. Tomorrow morning sharp, we'll have a vehicle ready to transport your team out to Sector Two."
"Sounds like a plan. Appreciate the hustle, Marcus." I gave him a nod, watching him head out. Immediately after, under the personal coordination of the resort's guest relations director, our crew began checking into our pre-booked block of rooms.
They had me set up in a spacious executive suite. It was a massive step up from a standard corporate room, giving me plenty of space to stretch out. Granted, it wasn't the presidential suite—that particular piece of luxury real estate had already been locked down by Sarah Jenkins.
I couldn't care less about the room assignment. To me, a bed was a bed; an executive suite was great, but a standard room would've done the trick.
Sarah, on the other hand, was answers-to-the-board elite. When you're managing billions in shareholder capital, you expect the absolute pinnacle of corporate hospitality. It highlighted the fundamental difference between a founder and a hired executive. Even though the founder holds the equity and calls the ultimate shots, the high-flying corporate managers frequently beat them when it comes to burning cash on executive perks.
I'd only been resting in my room for about half an hour when my assistant, Calloway, buzzed my phone.
"Mr. Nicholas, Ms. Jenkins from Amazon is downstairs in the lounge. She's asking if you're free to grab an early dinner."
"What is her play here?"
Skeptical, I rode the elevator down to the lobby. The moment I stepped out, Sarah—who had clearly been keeping an eye on the elevators—smiled and walked over.
"Nick, look at you. We meet again."
"Sarah, good to see you." I shook her hand, looking at her relaxed, casual outfit, and dropped a grin. "I didn't expect to see the division CEO out here in the dust. I figured you'd send an EVP; a deployment like this seems a little beneath your pay grade."
"An automated infrastructure contract valued north of a billion dollars is a 'small deployment' to you? Wow. You really must have cleaned up on revenue this fiscal year, Nick," Sarah said, a sharp, knowing glint in her eyes.
I shook my head, laughing it off. "Come on, we're just running a boutique operation compared to the scale of Amazon."
"Please, don't play modest, Nick. Pulling in tens of billions in top-line revenue off a single hardware cycle is a feat very few companies on Earth can match, let alone ours. Besides, a significant chunk of our enterprise cloud growth this quarter came directly from your infrastructure spend. We haven't even properly thanked you for the business," Sarah said, sizing me up with a polished corporate smile.
To be completely fair, when our company's audited financials had leaked into the trade press a few weeks back, Sarah had been genuinely stunned. She found it hard to process that the young founder she had largely dismissed at a tech mixer a year ago had scaled an empire this rapidly.
Consequently, her demeanor during this interaction carried a distinct layer of professional respect. For a highly successful, fiercely competitive executive at a trillion-dollar company, shifting her posture like that was no small concession.
But since I was commanding the market, the sheer reality of my execution demanded her respect.
"Hey, it's a mutually beneficial pipeline; no thanks necessary."
I glanced around the resort lobby. "It's not every day a tech titan offers to buy me dinner. So, where are we eating?"
Sarah chuckled, turning and leading the way out toward the main entrance.
"With your current net worth, Nick, there are probably ten thousand executives trying to get on your calendar for dinner tonight. The honor is entirely mine that you'd agree to grab a bite with a simple corporate worker. I did some digging and found a legendary, low-key spot nearby that serves incredible Tex-Mex brisket platters and house-made flour tortillas. Let's walk."
I followed her out, flashing a completely deadpan expression. "I thought you were taking me to a Michelin-star joint, and instead we're walking to a roadside taco stand? Talk about corporate cost-cutting. You could have at least sprung for a high-end steakhouse, Sarah."
"The place is literally two blocks away; the walk will do us good."
Sarah laughed, throwing a quick sideways glance at me. "How can we salaried employees compete with a private founder's budget? You should be grateful you're getting fed. Besides, you can eat your fill at the state dinner this afternoon. Come on, this place is the real deal—totally authentic. I spent an hour vetting it on Yelp."
"Unbelievable. You can't even eat a meal without plugging your own platform's ecosystem," I muttered. Still, we kept up the easy banter as we walked down the sidewalk toward the brisket joint she'd hyped up.
Even though we both had oversized sunglasses on to mask our faces, the fact that we were flanked by a small detail of corporate security and staff naturally drew curious looks from the locals. Fortunately, it didn't escalate beyond that. No one came up to disrupt our walk, allowing us to catch our breath and actually take in the unique, sun-baked atmosphere of the Texas border town.
After cutting across two main blocks, we finally located the spot—a weathered, unassuming little brick kitchen.
Though our entourage looked slightly underwhelmed by the rustic exterior, we were already there, so we walked inside to give it a shot. We took a table in the back, ordered a massive spread of their signature smoked brisket, a stack of fresh flour tortillas, charred jalapeños, and a few local side dishes.
Ultimately, the culinary revelation fell a bit flat for the group. The brisket tasted exactly like any decent barbecue chain they'd had before, the tortillas were standard fare, and outside of the portions being aggressively Texas-sized, it didn't quite live up to the myth. The local sides had some unique flavor, but it couldn't completely rescue the underlying disappointment hanging over the table; perhaps our expectations had simply been calibrated too high.