RISE OF EROS
Chapter 133 - CHAPTER 132

While Andrew, Helena, and Oliver were in the Silver Moon buying the dancers, Carolina in the company of Victor, three guards, and two members of Shadow who secretly followed them, had gone out to hire the rest of the staff they needed.

Since Victor would become the night manager of the Heavenly Palace, he accompanied Carolina in this hiring. Since the number of people they were going to hire was high and from different specialties, Carolina played it safe and approached the merchant guild.

The merchant guild is a state entity that regulates all merchants so that they do not carry out lawful activities and also issue of taxes.

However, they also function as a job bank. Merchants can go there looking for employees and thanks to the information network of the merchant guild they can easily find what the merchants need.

Carolina along with her companions arrived at the merchant guild that was located in the commercial region of the city. It is a massive building with five floors and about two blocks long.

Once inside the building, they approached one of the receptionists who attended and presented their request, however, when the receptionist heard the number of people they needed to employ, she immediately led them to a private room where a middle-aged man continued attending them.

The man diligently took notes of Carolina's requests and informed her that he would notify the candidates to appear at the Heavenly Palace in the afternoon hours for evaluation and after paying a commission, Carolina and the others left.

Since the merchant guild had to contact the job applicants, it would normally not be so fast, especially when the number of employees requested is high like in the case of Carolina, but there are always ways.

A small additional payment could expedite things and since the Heavenly Palace was in an urgent need to contract, Carolina paid that additional commission so that the process would go faster.

Unlike Andrew, Helena, and Oliver, who had to evaluate the dancers at the Silver Moon, Carolina just had to apply and come back, so her errand only took two hours, but Andrew and the others just made it back to lunchtime.

Andrew and his escorts did not return with the 15 dancers but instead arranged with Mondo to send the girls out in the afternoon for an additional payment.

During lunch, Carolina notified Andrew that the candidates for the job would be sent out in the afternoon by the merchant guild, and Andrew informed her that the dancers would also arrive in the afternoon.

The candidates sent by the merchant guild arrived first and were received by Carolina and Víctor since they would be the administrators and therefore their bosses.

Although technically Andrew is everyone's boss, he didn't bother to check on these people, confident that Carolina and Victor were more than capable of handling the matter. Also, they would be the ones interacting with them most of the time, so Andrew wasn't needed for it.

The reception of the Heavenly Palace was packed with people. They were all young people between the ages of 20 and 30 and there were both men and women. Some of them were curious and others were a little upset because they still had doubts about whether working in a pleasure house was appropriate.

Carolina had not introduced herself to them yet, it was Víctor who received them and after a few minutes Carolina appeared at the reception. Seeing her, the candidates began to whisper about Carolina's beauty, especially the male candidates.

Carolina paid no attention to those whispers and with an authoritative posture she began her speech, "Welcome to the Heavenly Palace. As you may have noticed, this is a pleasure house and you obviously know what our business is, so I won't go into discussing that."

Carolina paused and looked around the reception area checking to see if everyone was paying attention to her, so she continued, "I imagine the guild explained to you what skills we need and you are here to evaluate whether or not you will be hired. The gentleman next to me is Víctor and I am Carolina and we are the administrators of the place, that is to say, your bosses".

Victor then stepped forward and spoke as if continuing Carolina's speech, "It depends on your skills if you get the job, but I want to be very clear, this is a house of pleasure, so it means that the services provided are obvious and respect is required".

Unlike Carolina, Víctor's stern look when he paused his speech was more effective, so he continued saying, "Do not think that because of the service that we provide here, you can belittle or mistreat your future colleagues".

Although Victor said "Future colleagues", the warning was focused on the treatment of courtesans. Andrew knew that in many establishments dedicated to the pleasure industry, courtesans were treated like whores or women of little value, but he was not going to allow that in the Heavenly Palace.

Although it was true that he had adapted to the common sense of this world, that did not mean that he would treat people badly as was common in most of these businesses. For him, all his employees should be respected, and that was something which he would not twist his arm.

All the candidates who heard Víctor's words understood what he meant, especially the men since they were the ones who normally crossed the line in these situations.

After Víctor's warning, Carolina spoke again, "Now, this other gentleman is Héctor, our head chef, so everyone who applied for that job, follow him to the kitchen."

Once a third of the people followed Hector, Carolina spoke again, "This lady is Carmen, the head of the maids, those who applied for that job, follow her."

Most of the candidates that were present withdrew under Carmen's guidance, leaving only 5 people at the reception, who would be the candidates to replace Victor at the reception and would be evaluated by himself.

Carolina had nothing else to do in the place, so she returned to the office. Despite the fact that she was the one who was directing this hiring process, she would not evaluate the candidates, that is what the mid-range bosses were for, which in this case would be Carmen, Héctor, and Víctor.

They would be the immediate bosses of these people if they got the job, so they had to be the ones who chose their subordinates. The tests for the candidates were simple.

Hector, would test the cooking ability by having the candidates cook some dishes for him and his team. He had 3 evaluation criteria which were skill, speed, and obviously taste.

Victor performed a similar test. He pretended to be a client and the candidates had to attend to him like a receptionist from the Heavenly Palace would, only unlike Hector, he first explained to them what the protocol was.

Carmen was the one with the largest and most varied group since the team of maids was in charge of cleaning and the waiters, so she was much stricter, especially because she wanted to correspond to the responsibility that Andrew gave her.

You have to understand that when Andrew bought the Heavenly Palace, she and the other older ladies were slaves and although Andrew did not treat them badly, their jobs were simple and limited, but now they had been freed from slavery and since they decided to continue working for Andrew, he gave them the management of the cleaning service and waiters of the place, that made them happy, because it showed that Andrew valued them.

While the three groups were carrying out their respective selection processes, two carriages arrived at the gate of the Heavenly Palace and the dancers that Andrew had bought in the morning got off from them.

The ladies were dressed in simple clothes and all carried a simple suitcase where they kept the few belongings they had. As women who were raised in the Silver Moon, they knew that they would have to sell their bodies and now that the time had come, they were a bit nervous.

Noticing the arrival of the girls, Victor sent a guard to notify Andrew and in a few minutes, he arrived accompanied by Carolina and Helena. Noticing Andrew, the ladies bowed respectfully and greeted at the same time, "Good afternoon, master".

Andrew smiled at the respectful greeting and said, "You don't need to be so serious, get up," and the girls complied. Although they had already seen him when they performed at the Silver Moon, they were still surprised at how young and kind he seemed, and that relaxed them a bit.

They knew that many of the business owners in these industries do not treat courtesans well and so they were nervous, but seeing Andrew, for some reason they lost their nervousness and began to enter the building.

The parade of the 15 beautiful-looking girls caught everyone's attention, especially the reception candidates who saw them enter. Among these five candidates were three men who couldn't help but open their mouths and salivate at the beauties that had just arrived.

What they didn't know was that Victor hadn't missed the expression the boys had made. It wasn't that this event was done on purpose, but he took advantage of the situation to judge the character of the candidates, and seeing the lustful eyes of the three male candidates he immediately rejected them in his mind.

Víctor was clear that these guys were not good, because every night they would be surrounded by these ladies, not to mention that in more suggestive outfits and makeup that would make them much more provocative, and if they reacted like this to see them in casual clothes and makeup like now was this, he was sure that they would soon cause trouble.