Chapter 7 #2
“No matter how many times you land on your ass, baby, get back up. The world doesn’t owe you a hand. Always get back up and keep fighting for what you want, okay?”
“Okay.” I went to her and hugged her from behind because I knew she didn’t want to face me, just like I knew what she was saying was more for herself than me. She was struggling so hard, and it hurt so much to witness the defeated set of her shoulders.
“This won’t last long,” I said. “You’ll have another job before you know it. Until then, I have mine. We’ll be fine.”
She patted my hand and nodded. “Go get ready.”
“Only if you promise to eat at least half this pizza.”
“I promise.”
After giving her one last squeeze, I went to change for my shift at Lunar Pulse while thinking about how well-timed Konni’s intervention had been. If not for that five thousand dollars…I didn’t even want to think about the level of depression Mom would have sunk into.
Mom was eating when I walked into the kitchen again, and she looked calmer.
“What do you think of working as a rideshare driver? As far as I know, they’re not laid off ever and work their own hours.”
“Flexibility sounds good,” I said diplomatically. “Do they have standards your car has to meet? Does it need a different kind of insurance?”
“Good questions. I’ll look into it.”
“If you want to fill in at Lunar, I know Jay is still hiring. And between you and me, his—”
“No, Sophia.”
“Okay. You have my full support in whatever you choose. You always will.”
I kissed her cheek and left the house, hating that I’d brought it up when she’d been down.
My thoughts were on our finances when I got to work and started taking pictures for the drink specials. Uncle Jay noticed my distraction.
“You’re doing that too often. Do I need to call your Mom to ask what’s going on?”
Afraid, I looked at him. “Please don’t call her.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“She lost her job,” I admitted. “You know her. She won’t like anyone knowing.”
He nodded. “Does she need anything? I can always use her help here.”
“She knows. And you know she’d rather stand on her own two feet.”
He sighed. “For her sake, I wish she had never met my brother. For your sake, I’m glad she did. I couldn’t imagine life without you, Sophie-Girl.” He kissed my temple. “Tell me before things get bad, even if she doesn’t want you to, okay?”
“I will.”
He left to prep and let me handle the drink orders behind the bar once we opened, choosing to chat with the people he knew instead. I felt zero guilt picking up every tip until Konni sat down.
I signaled to Uncle Jay that he was up and went to talk to Konni.
“Nice shoes,” he said.
“They’re really nice. Thank you for them, and for the tip. I’ve got to ask, what do you do for a living that you can give that much away? You said you’re in the business district, but didn’t specify with which company. You’re not going to go hungry for the next month, are you?”
His smile made parts of me warm—parts that had no business warming.
“I won’t go hungry. I promise. As far as work goes, I’m in management, so I can afford to spread a little financial kindness to balance some of the unkindness I’ve handed out over the years.”
“Balancing your karma is always a good thing. Then, I’ll stick with it being a tip—at least for now—to help you out.”
“I appreciate that.”
The look in his eyes continued to melt my insides.
Barely an hour into the new day, Whitney leaned back in her chair to look at me.
“Your phone keeps vibrating.”
“Does it? I was so locked in on the report that I didn’t even notice. Sorry about that. I’ll silence it now.”
“Is something happening at home?”
It was the first personal question she’d ever asked about me, and I took it as a good sign.
“My estranged dad of eight years is trying to worm his way back into my life. I want to block him completely, but my occasional replies are the only thing preventing him from harassing my mom.”
My phone vibrated with another incoming call, and I pulled it out of the drawer to silence it.
“Try not to bring your family drama to work.”
“I haven’t. I’ve only brought my phone, which I can ignore. Sorry you weren’t able to. It’s silenced now, though, so that should help you.”
She stared at me for another second, probably trying to weigh how much of a passive-aggressive dick I was being. A big one to match her big dick energy.
“Anything else I can do for you?” I asked.
She turned back to her work, and I did the same—I was under a deadline.
Tuesday’s calm hadn’t lasted. Yesterday, after lunch, Lianna dumped another labor-intensive task on me: a marketing comparison report that would take eight hours to compile, but with specific instructions that I couldn’t stay past five, and it needed to be finished by lunch today.
I’d learned from Monday’s vanishing email trick, though, and backed everything up with two thumb drives before going home yesterday.
Since I was working with sensitive financial data, I knew not to take either with me.
One, I’d hidden under my cup. The other, I’d hidden in my fake plant.
I’d also emailed an unfinished copy to Shana and Whitney for “feedback.”
This morning, the obvious drive had been gone, and my sent emails had vanished. I’d asked Whitney and Shana to send their copies, but theirs had gone missing, too. After I retrieved the hidden drive, I reported the “computer issue” to IT and got to work.
Before the deadline, I sent the report to Lianna and called IT to verify delivery. They confirmed that it reached her inbox and promised to monitor the situation. Since Whitney and Shana had both received yesterday’s email, it suggested a server issue rather than a computer glitch.
Pleased with the outcome, I left to meet Miranda at a cafe down the street.
“You look happy,” Miranda said when I sat across from her. “Who put that smile on your face? Mr. Angel?”
“His name is Konni, and no. Well, kind of. I’ll get to him in a minute. This smile is because I’m smarter than whoever is trying to set me up.”
“Someone’s trying to set you up?”
I explained what had happened on Monday with the report, and running late for my Lunar shift, and finding the file gone in the morning. Then about the newest mysterious missing data.
“The thumb drive was actually gone from your desk?”
“Yep, which proves someone is trying to set me up and it’s not some random server glitch.”
“And by contacting IT, you’ve low-key outed what your saboteur is doing, ensuring it won’t be easy for them to keep going without getting more people involved in the cover-up or exposing themselves. Well played.”
“Thanks. I think so too.”
“So who do you think it is? Lianna? Your coworkers?”
I sighed. “They’re the obvious ones, which makes me doubt it's them. Do you know my position has turned over four times already this year? And not just mine. There’s a lot of turnover among new hires at Steele.
Apparently, most of the people applying are only there for the CEO.
And it’s not just a rumor. I heard it from the other applicants when I went in for the interview.
At the time, I thought it was just a weird group of women. ”
“Who wouldn’t want to bag a rich, single CEO?”
“Me. But if you’re interested, you can try applying for a position. Or if you like them older, I think the elderly CEO of Hestian Group is looking for wife number seven…or was it wife number five? When you outlive so many of them, you tend to lose count.”
“I’m not sure if I should be interested in that bit of gossip or concerned you know it.”
I grinned at her but didn’t admit how I knew. I didn’t want to pull Miranda into my family drama. Boy drama was her department.
“Go with interested. Do you know what else will interest you? Konni has been coming in to see me almost every night, and he’s been perfectly non-creepy since you talked to him. You never said how that conversation went or where it went down. Did you track him to his house?”
“Better. I met up with him while I was out shopping. The conversation was polite—this time—and I’m happy to report he was alone. No woman with him.”
I rolled my eyes. “He can have all the women he wants. I’m not interested.”
She sniffed, smelled my lie, and slowly grinned.
“Shut up,” I grumbled.
“So what are you going to do about the workplace drama?” she asked.
“Stay alert until I can figure out who it is.”
“You’re not going to quit?”
“Hell no. It’s an amazing job and a great opportunity. The reports Lianna is having me do are giving me access to stuff someone in my position probably shouldn’t know.”
I swore.
“What?”
“I wonder if that’s the next setup. Will something I had access to be leaked? Hmm… No. Since I’m sending the information to others, nothing links back to me alone. It would really suck to lose this job.”
“Why? It sounds stressful. Come work with me.”
“I don’t do backdoors.”
She burst out laughing, and I shook my head at her.
Before we finished lunch, she suggested I stop by Steele’s HR department to share my concern about the confidentiality level of the work I’m being given.
“I don’t want it to sound like I don’t want the work, though. I do want it, just not the blame when something goes wrong.”
“Tell them that. Voicing your concern before it happens might be enough to protect you.”
I doubted it, but knew it was better than doing nothing.