28. It’s like Guerrilla warfare—just replace the combat boots with stilettos, and the camo with a floral print （it is spring, after all）
28
IT’S LIKE GUERRILLA WARFARE—JUST REPLACE THE COMBAT BOOTS WITH STILETTOS, AND THE CAMO WITH A FLORAL PRINT (IT IS SPRING, AFTER ALL)
“Y ou’re freaking me out,” I tell Lena while we wait for our orders at a coffee shop nearby.
She looks around nervously, checking our surroundings as if we’re five seconds away from being invaded by aliens. Or the FBI. Or something.
“I have a plan,” she whispers, despite the fact that no one from the office is around. “A plan to take down Jenna. To have her get her just desserts.”
I’ve never really understood that expression before. I mean, dessert always sounds amazing. How is it used synonymously with justice being served?
Regardless, I sit up straight in my seat, interest peaked.
“You’re finally going to tell HR? Or you’re going to let me go to HR? Did you find all the evidence we would need to get her in trouble?” The need to be vindicated is clear in the speed and enthusiasm with which my words pour out of me.
Lena smiles—but something about it is unsettling. It’s the smile of someone in the know, yes. But in the know of something almost… nefarious? It can’t be, though.
Just a couple of months ago she agreed she had been way too hard on people. She agreed she would be making an effort to be less harsh on her coworkers and subordinates. And she has been—for the most part. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen anyone leave her office in tears. She’s also kept the passive-aggressive comments to a minimum in meetings. And I know this all sounds awful, but it is an improvement.
I narrow my eyes at her. “What are you talking about? A plan to take her down?” I don’t like this. I don’t like lying or manipulating people, and something about the look on her face tells me it will somehow involve this and more.
Lena’s smile falls. “It’s not bad, I promise. I just mean that I’ve come up with a way to vindicate ourselves after what happened. Jenna made us look like we screwed the pooch in front of Stevenson’s Chief Merchandising Officer and our CEO so… I came up with something. To show that she took your idea. Our ideas. And claimed them as her own. I have a plan.”
I don’t like where this is going. Jenna may be a shitty person, but I’m not one to fight fire with fire or to play dirty.
“What sort of plan?”
“Well, after everything went down I realized she must still be pulling the same shit she used to back in the day—especially with all the rumors flying around that corporate hadn’t been happy with her in a while. Meaning, she’s probably been making a lot of waves in the office with everyone, taking credit for other people’s work, kissing the CEO’s ass, making everyone think she’s hot shit off of the work from other people’s backs. And the other day she asked for me to follow through on your idea and manage the implementation process. Which, like, whatever. She’s a VP so I get that she’s not gonna get into the details of a project whether it was her idea or not, but you can understand my frustration. So I?—”
A waiter comes by with our coffees and sets them down in front of us, cutting her off. Lena thanks him with a smile so bright, he flushes. She checks him out as he walks away with a small smile on her lips.
How diabolical can you be to be talking about revenge and get sidetracked by a waiter at a coffee shop mid-conversation?
She flicks a Splenda packet a couple of times before pouring it into her coffee and continues once the waiter is out of sight. “As I was saying, I decided to speak to people around the office, to see whether she had ruffled any feathers recently. And it turns out she has. And the people I spoke to were more than willing to work with me on this. They were more than willing to fib on a few things about the so-called implementation process to create chaos. They are much more than willing to help bring her down.”
I suck in a breath, my stomach dropping. “I don’t like this at all.”
Lena sighs. “Bridget, it’s fine. It’s just a little revenge.”
“You don’t think that’s a bit?—”
“It’s not a big deal, alright?” Lena snaps, her eyes blazing.
“But what’s going to happen to Jenna? I don’t like her, but I don’t want to ruin her life. And what about Stevenson? You seem awfully sure whatever it is you planned is not going to make them angry enough to fully cancel our contract. I mean, this has all been super hard work. We’re close to meeting our first delivery of items for the pre-season. And you want to risk it all at the one yard line?”
Lena rolls her eyes at me with a sigh. “Jenna will get fired and she’ll find another job, but she’ll be fine. We’ll come out looking like heroes to the client after the clusterfuck that’s currently going down now—don’t check your email just yet, by the way; not unless you want to read some seriously messed up threats as a response to what’s going down?—”
“Wait, you haven’t even told me what’s?—”
“—and we’re not going to lose the account. I already have the fix and a plan. So many others are already on board with this. Just stick with me today and all will be right in the world.”
“I… don’t know what to say.” I gnaw on my lip because this is insanity. What the hell? A revenge plan? And several people are involved? What the hell is this? This can’t be normal. I know that Will often tells me I settle for less than I deserve when I focus too much on the silver lining of things and don’t fight for what’s mine. But this isn’t right, and I’m sure he’d agree. Revenge does not seem like an acceptable response to something as mild as stealing credit for an idea. We’re not saving lives here, people; we’re just making clothes.
“Can I at least get some more details?” I ask. The Oscars should contact me for how cool I’m acting right now, when in reality there’s a storm brewing beneath my skin.
“Of course,” Lena tells me with a smile. “So, as you know, we had that plan to cut costs for the client by working with the factories and reselling materials leftover, correct?”
“Among other things,” I mumble, annoyed.
“Well, obviously we had to go through the whole ordeal of adjusting our die cutting processes for our factories in Asia and creating a new strategy to resell the materials—which, god , is so fucking genius because it gives us even more clout around being sustainable and makes them even more money. Seriously, Bridget, what an amazing job.”
Glad you’re now going to sully it by enacting revenge.
I had chosen to let this go, to move on, and now we’re back to this?
“So anyway, that’s done. And we did get the pricing down quite a bit from it. But when we passed on the new HTS codes to get the correct duty on the first cost, our pricing team might’ve… fibbed a little.” Her smile is more mischievous than any kind the Cheshire Cat could come up with. “We gave them the wrong codes, which had a much lower tariff attached to each material. And to be fair, it’s not an unlikely mistake. They change the damn duties and codes every couple of years—it’s really annoying—and you now know that the slightest change in composition for an article of clothing can completely change the duty import rate.” She rolls her eyes and takes a sip of her coffee as if she thinks messing with our customer’s orders’ Harmonized Tariff Schedule codes isn’t a big deal. But of course she knows it’s bad. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have enacted a whole revenge plan around it.
“Anyway, so we input the orders, bought everything, started production, and now we just got notice that the duty is much higher despite our promise to Stevenson to deliver on a lower price. And we— Stevenson , actually—might be getting fined by the government if we don’t fix it soon. And since all roads lead to Jenna not being on top of things, it will make Stevenson hate her and want nothing to do with her. Then, we’ll get them to want to work with us because of all the time and effort they know we’ve put into their account. Jenna’s time at Sartoria will be over. And our time has finally come.”
I inhale a low gasp, because trying to pull a fast one on customs is incredibly bad. And finding out they have to pay more after everything we’ve gone through is going to be the last straw for Stevenson. I doubt they’d be down to stay with us after all of this. To be honest, Lena’s “solution” sounds more like a delusion than anything else.
“But we negotiated based off of that new duty number. And this entire deal has been like pulling teeth because the finance department at Stevenson have been unreasonable dicks who wouldn’t approve our prices, and when they finally do, it’s because we lied? This is fucked. You’re going to blow up this deal. To throw all the progress we’ve made out the window, Lena.”
I want to cry. I want to cry because I loved this job in practice, but oh my god, what the hell? What is wrong with people? Betrayal and revenge plots? This isn’t medieval times! It’s just clothes.
She rolls her eyes once more. “You’re exaggerating, Bridget. And you need to relax. Today is going to be perfection, you’ll see. Now finish your coffee, girl. You’re going to need the caffeine for what I’ve got planned. We’ve got someone’s job to destroy.”
* * *
It doesn’t take longer than a few minutes for all hell to break loose once we get to the office. Stevenson has been emailing and calling for the past half hour, freaking out—as they should.
Lena walks away, cool as a cucumber, into her office, and I take a seat at my desk in a numbed-out state while I wait for the inevitable moment in which Jenna’s wrath will rain upon us.
I don’t work. I don’t talk to anyone. All I do is hold my phone in my hands, wondering whether I can even text Will. This is… a serious problem between both of our companies. And while it’s not my fault, I don’t want to put him in a position where he would need to lie to his bosses about what went down and why. Not just because I feel the need to call him to vent and freak out. Even if he is putting in his notice today. It would be extremely selfish of me, wouldn’t it?
And while I fight the superhuman urge to text him, I come to the realization that he hasn’t texted me in a few hours either. Which… makes sense, actually. Maybe he’s doing the same thing I am. Maybe he’s trying to avoid putting me in an uncomfortable situation. I’m still hoping to keep my job here, after all.
I jump with a start when the two front doors of our floor burst open, a seething Jenna walking through them, calling out for Lena at the top of her lungs. She can’t see her yet, so our lovely VP misses the smirk on my boss’s face as she hears her approach. My blood runs cold because I know shit’s about to go down.
I watch Jenna stalk toward Lena’s office, a murderous look in her eyes, right as my phone rings.
“Can you come in, please?” she asks, without so much as a greeting. “Pretty sure we’re about to get bombarded by a few questions. Need you here to field them, to be a witness in case HR is involved, and to hold a united front.”
“I…” How exactly did I get so involved in this revenge plot? Why does Lena need me for this? I mean, aren’t I a junior employee? Why am I being used as a scapegoat? “Sure. Be right there.”
Jenna and I reach Lena’s office at the same time. When she looks at me, I truly wonder how it’s possible I’m still alive—surely one glance from her should’ve been enough to kill me.
Once all three of us are inside, door closed behind us, Jenna doesn’t spare another second to make herself heard.
“What the hell was that? I thought I told you to handle this whole operation. This is a massive fuck up and now Sascha is losing her mind because she’s getting calls from Stevenson’s CEO. Over a tariff problem. How the hell am I supposed to tell our CEO that we gave our client—our biggest fish that we managed to reel in but have been struggling to keep before even delivering our first season—a wildly different price for every single SKU they ordered of every single style? Do you have any idea what that means? I think you do, given how many years you’ve been with this company.”
Lena smiles innocently. “I’m so sorry, Jenna. I thought we gave them the correct duty codes and based them off of the weight of the new, more efficient die cutting process. I guess there was some mistake there.”
“I had a meeting last week with Sascha, and she asked about this account. I told her everything was handled and that I made sure our client was happy and now this happens? I have Stevenson threatening to not just cancel our orders, Lena, but to sue us. Unless we pay for the difference, they’re going to send their lawyers after us for ruining their collection. Not to mention what this will do to Sartoria’s reputation. To my reputation. This is a small industry. Word will get around.”
Jenna’s phone vibrates in her hand and all three of us look down to see it’s our CEO calling. I’m speechless as all three of us watch Jenna, wide-eyed, ignore her boss’s call.
“I… Are you going to get that? Because I think it’ll be worse if you don’t,” I ask.
I. Am. An. Idiot. Why did I think it would be okay to say anything at this point? Both Lena and Jenna’s heads whip in my direction to shoot me equally terrifying glares.
“You.” Jenna points a very sharp fingernail in my direction. “Why are you here? You have nothing to do with any of this.”
“I—I—” But my mind has gone blank, the only thing that penetrates my brain is the awareness that Jenna’s phone has finally stopped vibrating.
“She was the one who came up with the idea you stole as your own. I thought she should see you finally getting what you deserve.”
Jenna gasps. “So you did plan this.”
“Of course I did.” A disturbing smile spreads across my boss’s face. “And it was about time, too.”
Lena’s phone vibrates on her desk, our CEO’s name flashing on its screen. With the same smile, gaze locked on Jenna’s bloodshot eyes, she answers it.
Sascha is so upset, every single word out of her mouth comes out clear as day, even though the call isn’t on speakerphone.
“— have the entire management team of Stevenson calling me about tariff penalties and fines and ? — ”
“ —want to know where the hell Jenna is and what you guys are going to do to make this all right. I swear to god, Lena, if we lose this client, all of you are losing your jobs. I’m giving you until end of day to get it together before we meet with HR and your time at Sartoria & Co. is over. ”
And even though Sascha never backs down, never once retreats, Lena remains constant, her expression stony and calm. And I know right then and there that she is truly, deep down, a hundred times more terrifying than Jenna could ever be.
Cold. Hard. Ruthless. That’s the type of person who wouldn’t hesitate to ruin someone’s career. It’s the type of person who would relish in it.
I was so wrong about her. She wasn’t trying to be better—this is just who she is—and I’m disappointed in myself for believing in another person who ended up letting me down.
Suddenly, it’s not just Jenna who’s tearing up at the situation. At this nightmare.
I just want today to be over. I just want this whole ordeal to be done. I just want to be lying in bed with my cat and Will and cuddle into that space on his chest and shoulder that’s mine alone and just be .
Jenna leaves with a huff, without saying another word, and Lena looks at me with the triumph of a ten-time Olympic gold medalist in her eyes. “We have something to finish. Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“Stevenson HQ.”