Chapter 5:
Zandra
“Coffee? Donut?” Aaron asks, popping up at my desk. He sets a Styrofoam cup, steam wavering over it, and a glazed donut in front of me. A corner of the napkin under the donut sticks to the thickest portion of glaze.
“Um, thank you,” I say, sliding the donut away from my keyboard. “Aaron, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I just got here. I want to focus on the work and not on anything…more personal.”
“Uh…oh, you think I’m hitting on you!” He presses his hand against his chest. “You’re great, Zandra. Under any other circumstances, I would be desperately in love with you. But right now, I’m desperately in love with Erica, a woman in my Reign & Pulse team, and I can’t balance my checkbook, much less romantic feelings for two women.”
He gestures to the donut and coffee like he’s presenting me with a feast. “I’m giving you caffeine and a delicious mix of sugar and carbohydrates because I figure it will help lessen the blow of what I’m about to tell you,” he says. “And if it doesn’t, the coffee is at a lukewarm temperature, so if you decide to throw it, it won’t burn me.”
I turn around in my chair to face him, leaning on the armrest. “Okay, you have my full attention now. Why would I be throwing coffee at you?”
“Well.” He takes a dramatic breath. “First, I need to tell you a story. This story concerns a younger version of me. We’ll call him beta-version Aaron. Beta-version Aaron wasn’t quite the spectacular human you see now. He was a bit of a coward. Actually, I’m still a coward. Let’s say beta-version Aaron was more of a stooge. So, one of the bosses of 2Resonance—let’s call him Asshole—Asshole was bullying beta-version Aaron. Asshole was a jerk to beta-version Aaron all of the time, but he was also forcing him to work unpaid hours.”
I sip from the coffee. It is lukewarm. “Did you report it to HR?”
“No. HR are bigger suck-ups than beta-version Aaron.” Aaron shakes his head, getting his hair out of his eyes. “And, anyway, I couldn’t prove anything against Asshole. I already stayed later than anybody else and that’s when Asshole would ask me—I mean, beta-version Aaron—to do the extra work or risk getting fired for some bullshit reason. After three months and a week, beta-version Aaron was ready to either breakdown or get revenge. He decided to use his skills to his advantage. And that’s why I—or beta-version Aaron—hacked into Asshole’s email. I didn’t find any proof of what he was doing to me, but I found proof that Asshole was using company money for his affair. That email information may have found its way to Mark—the creator of 2Resonance—and the next day Asshole was leaving the office with a box of his things and his tail between his legs. And thus, beta-version Aaron became better-version Aaron.”
“Very clever,” I smile at him. “But I don’t understand which part of that story I was supposed to throw my coffee at you for.”
“Oh. Right. The point.” He runs his hands over his stubble for a few seconds. “So…right. Okay. You remember ten seconds ago when I told you I hacked into Asshole’s email?”
“Yes, I vaguely recall you telling me that ten seconds ago.”
“After I hacked into his email, a few different lines of code allowed me into all of our superiors’ emails. I continued to monitor what everyone was doing. Okay, I wasn’t monitoring, I was just deathly curious. But I found a lot of juicy information this way—like Keegan, one of the co-owners, clearly has a thing for Mark—and…there was an email exchange involving you.”
I crinkle my nose. “About what? About me being hired?”
“Well, not exactly,” he says. “It’s kind of the exact opposite.”
“Why else would our bosses be talking about me?” I ask, but Mark is already slipping through my mind. What would he tell anyone else? That we’d almost had a thing in Paris six years ago? Why would he divulge that? It’s not relevant to anything anymore.
“Well, this is where the coffee-throwing theorem enters the conversation…How should I put this?”
I tap the top of the coffee cup. He eyes my hand warily. “Just spit it out, Aaron.”
He winces, raising his arms like he’s legitimately worried I’m going to throw the coffee at him. “Mark was trying to get you fired.”
I tighten my grip on the coffee cup. Aaron’s eyes focus on my movement, so I let it go.
“Why would he be emailing about that?” I ask though a dozen other questions are piling up inside my mind. Heat rises into my face. I slide my hand away from the cup, tightening it into a fist on top of my lap.
“The company desperately needed a graphic designer,” he says, lowering his arms. “They’d been struggling with freelance ones for a while. So, I’m guessing he didn’t want to outright fire you without Rick and Keegan’s consent. In the email to Rick and Keegan, he was telling them that he’d looked at your salary—congratulations on that, by the way—and concluded that you weren’t necessary, and they were better off paying freelancers. Rick argued that they’d had trouble with freelancers, either with availability, NDAs, or with them vanishing before the work was completed, and Mark brought up the idea of using ConquerLock, this freelancing agency. He seemed to be adamant about getting you kicked to the curb and, from what I’ve seen, he’s a man who gets what he wants.”
“I can’t fucking believe him.” I stand up. Aaron takes a couple of steps back, still eyeing the coffee cup. “He’s such a spineless coward.”
“I know,” Aaron says, subtlety moving the coffee cup away from me. “I thought he was a halfway decent person.”
“Where is his office?” I demand.
“It’s on the seventh floor, but I don’t think you should—okay, you’re already leaving.”
As I make my way to the elevator, I’m so angry, I can almost taste blood. I smash the 7 button on the elevator. The elevator makes a disappointingly small amount of noise as it rises through the floors.
When the elevator doors open, I burst out, finding a large lobby. I walk past the secretary sitting at a large wooden desk. She’s trying to call me back, but I ignore her as I walk down the hall, where there’s four or five offices, all with large glass doors.
I stop as I see Mark in the last one. I yank the door open as the secretary catches up to me. She puts her hand on my arm, but I shake her off. I storm up to his desk. He’s holding his cell phone up to his ear, but I couldn’t care less if he was holding a grenade. I slam my palms against his desk.
