Jenna frowned. Why would Mary be sending her an email about HR? She scrolled back to the email thread.
____________________
Sunday, 11:42am
Sender: Owen Allen
Recipients: John Allen, Archer Holt, Glen Kessler, Mary Murphy
Subject: RE: Job Transition
I think a February timeline would be appropriate. That will give us plenty of time before we enter playoff season.
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Sunday, 9:15am
Sender: Glen Kessler
Recipients: John Allen, Archer Holt, Mary Murphy, Owen Allen
Subject: RE: Job Transition
Might be a good idea to loop McAllister in on this. I know I wouldn’t want to be blindsided.
____________________
Blood rushed in her ears. February timeline? She scrambled to make sense of what they could be referring to and came up empty. Jenna scrolled back and continued reading.
____________________
Saturday, 3:42 p.m.
Sender: John Allen
Recipients: Owen Allen, Glen Kessler, Archer Holt, and Mary Murphy
Subject: Job Transition
As of next week, Owen will be officially taking over the following responsibilities as a preliminary transition for his official promotion. Mary will coordinate communication, but Archer will now be working directly with Owen for budgeting and financial planning. Kessler, I wanted you to be aware since Owen will also be moving into a networking role . . .
____________________
Jenna's vision blurred, and for a second she forgot to breathe. She tried not to hyperventilate as she scrolled through the tasks John had in a neat bulleted list. Her middle felt like it was being cinched into a corset. Of course he'd chosen only the tasks that would not require Owen to work through or communicate with her. He’d be able to work with the interns or Archer directly.
She scanned the email again, wondering if she could be misreading something and jumping to conclusions. After scrolling through the entire chain again, she paused on Mary’s comment about looping in McCall from HR. She inspected the list of recipients. There was no McCall from HR on the list, only her name along with the other four.
This email hadn't been meant for her.
Mary had probably started typing McCall's last name and accidentally inserted McAllister. Jenna slammed her laptop screen shut and rested her head in her hands. Breathe.
Before that exact moment, if someone had asked her if she was scared to go through her experiences at Globespan a second time, she would’ve said no. She’d been through it once, which meant she’d be prepared if anyone tried to take advantage of her again. Right?
That answer was dead wrong. Jenna thought she’d protected herself—had walled herself off and made herself indispensable. Hell, she was indispensable at GCBN. For the amount of work she did, they would have to hire two people to replace her.
But that was exactly it, wasn't it? These executives didn't spend one second of their lunch-ordering, cocktail-party-schmoozing, courtesy-car-riding lives thinking about what the consequences of their actions would be because they never had any.
Here Jenna thought she was putting John between a rock and a hard place, but he'd never felt backed up against a wall. He had the power, and he knew it.
