“You want some company?”
“No!”
I said it a bit too quickly and I cringed. “I mean, I could really use some time to myself before I have to dive into all this. But, lunch?”
She paused for a second. “Sure. Lunch sounds great. I’ll come knock on your door around noon-thirty.”
“Perfect. I’ll be ready then.”
Relief flooded my veins as she started walking away from my office door because I needed a moment. I read through the conversations with random men that I hadn’t initiated myself, including a conversation with Michael. My jaw dropped at a message that read, “I’m so sorry about the other night. Why don’t I make it up to you? I can do anything you’d like, if that’s your thing.”
He was actually the only man that didn’t respond lewdly to that message, which only made me feel guiltier about Friday night.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
I tried to scroll up further in some of the chats to figure out who prompted them in the first place, but then messages started deleting themselves before my very eyes. Messages I had opened completely disappeared, causing me to have to refresh the screen. I started taking screenshots as quickly as I could, but some of them didn’t even capture the nature of the messages. Some of them only captured the “error” message that popped up every time I tried to make sense of what was happening.
Then, a text message rolled through my personal phone from JoJo.
“No, he wouldn’t,” I murmured.
As I stared at the unopened text message, I wondered if it was true. Had he completely lost his mind? Had he gotten one of the guys from I.T. to hack my account? Was he seriously going to make my life this much of a living nightmare simply because I stood up to him? Because I’d quit. In a heartbeat, I’d quit and move to another goddamn country if it meant getting away from all of this bullshit.
But then I opened his message.
JoJo: Do you think you’re being funny?
I furrowed my brow as I shot him a message back.
Me: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
The next message was nothing but a picture of his laptop screen. It was zoomed in on an email I had sent from my personal email directly to him, and it contained the same message that someone had sent on my account to various men I wasn’t the least bit interested in. Right there, in an email I didn’t send to him, were the words “I’m so sorry about the other night. Why don’t I make it up to you? I can do anything you’d like, if that’s your thing.”
Followed by a picture of a pair of tits that weren’t even mine.
JoJo: You’re lucky that I know what your tits look like.
My fingers moved like lightening to shoot him a message back.
Me: I’m so sorry. I don’t know what the hell is going on right now. I promise you, I didn’t send that.
JoJo: I’m not an idiot, Rebecca. I know you didn’t send it. But you better hope I don’t get another email like this again. You sent it to my work email. It’s now filed away in the business’s electronic archives. Now, I have to go down to I.T. and sweet-talk my way into the system so I can delete it.
Me:Go ahead and do it for my email as well.
JoJo: Why?
Me: Trust me, when you see it, you’ll understand why. I don’t know what’s happening or who sent those messages, but you weren’t the only person who got one from someone pretending to be me.
JoJo: Star and forward whatever emails you intend to keep. I’ll just have your email account wiped.
Me: I’ll get right on it.
I closed my eyes and drew in a few deep breaths. I heard the elevator quickly kick into gear and I listened as it carried who I knew for certain was Joseph all the way down to the I.T. floor. And after drawing in a few slow breaths, I opened my eyes and got to work.
I forwarded the emails I wanted to keep to my personal email so I could just forward them back, including the four unopened emails from JoJo. Luckily, I hadn’t gotten many messages that were worth keeping, so I only sent a handful of them to myself. Mostly onboarding stuff. Emails with documents attached that I wanted to keep for reference purposes.
Then, I sat back and watched as my entire email account got wiped and rebooted.
