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But he could tell that Tad was concerned. Whatever was going on had him worried. And it included Hannah. And it was probably why she was losing weight and not sleeping.
Maybe it was him.
The thought burst into his head with a sharp, bright clarity. Maybe he was being a slave driver. It was something he perhaps always knew about himself. He had high standards. But before Hannah, no one had ever been able to live up to them. Maybe her ability to keep up was causing him to drive everyone else a little bit harder. And not everyone was capable of working at a brow-beating pace. It could easily be causing a morale problem. People were feeling overworked and unappreciated. It also made sense why Hannah seemed worse off than anyone else. She worked so closely by him. He expected even more from her. Every time she met his standards, he supposed he saw an opportunity and raised them.
He needed to be more aware of his actions.
Hitting the intercom button, he asked Hannah to come in for a moment.
She appeared a few minutes later, apologizing for having to finish a phone call.
"I want you to leave at five with everyone else today," he told her while she stood there, shifting from foot to foot.
At his words, her eyebrows lowered, furrowing closer together. "May I ask why?" she said after a moment, looking completely confused.
Elliott shrugged. She almost looked offended. He hid a smirk behind a quick cough. "I have dinner plans," he said and watched her pull out a notepad and scan it. It was, presumably, his schedule which she kept in painstaking detail. "James just called and we need to discuss a few things," he lied easily and watched her confusion disappear. "I won't be back in the office after so there is no need for you to be here. I'm sure you have errands you are running behind on with how often you are here."
Hannah nodded, looking almost uneasy.
He groped for words to say. She just stood there, waiting for further instructions from him and all he wanted to do was find something to say to ease the vacant look in her eyes.
"Just make sure the schedule is put together before you leave," he clarified and could swear there was a look of dread in her eyes before she nodded and left the room.
–
He's sending you home because he sees what a worthless piece of trash you are. Rot in hell, whore.
Hannah sat down at her desk and brought up her email. She felt every bit a coward by emailing everyone to ask for their schedules for the next day. It was her job to go to each secretary and get it herself. Lately, Tad had just been showing up with the compiled list for her, saving her the anxiety of having to do it herself. She jotted an email really quickly:
Mr. Michaels will be leaving the office early tonight. He will need you to send all of your schedules to me to be compiled before five o'clock. Thanks.
And then CC'd all the secretaries.
She couldn't understand why he was sending her home. Even when he left for dinner meetings, he let her about her business. There was always more than enough to keep her there past eight every night. Sending her home was completely unnecessary. She would only have to push herself harder the next day to catch up to all the things she couldn't get to for having to leave early.
Of course, she figured, she could just disregard his order. She could stay late as usual and get all of her work done. Somehow she thought he would find out. But more so, she admitted to herself begrudgingly, she was worried about staying at the office late alone anymore. It was one thing when he was right there within yelling distance. But when the next closest person was a cleaning person three floors below... she couldn't bring herself to muster the courage to stay.
Though sitting at home all night was an equally unappetizing thought. What was she going to do? It's not like she had any television to watch. She was never home enough to have needs that needed to be filled by running errands. She had to clean Ricky's cage but that would only take a couple minutes.
Hannah sighed, deciding to spend her night cleaning. She wasn't particularly a neat freak, but she went through phases when she was stressed or lonely that she spent hours or even days scrubbing every inch of her apartment. She hadn't bothered taking out a broom or mop since she started at EM. It was probably woefully in need of a scrubbing. She could blast some music and clean until she felt a little better about her life.
It only took four hours and three-times scrubbed over floors for her to feel like a giant had been lifted from her shoulders. She took her laundry and laptop she had just bought on the way home from work and sat in the laundry room. She took up all five washing machines at once and checking her work email. She figured she had followed EM's instructions for leaving the office. He would never really know that she had spent out of work time working. And she doubted he would mind. He liked efficiency. She was sure he worked at home all the time. She was just living by his example.
She answered a few emails that had been sent from the IT department and finance. There was a ding, alerting her to a new email in her inbox.
She shrugged at the unusual, never-before-seen address and clicked it.
You can kiss his ass all you want. He won't be impressed. He isn't going to fall in love with you. Get over yourself. He will see you for what you really are- a useless piece of trash, a disposable washrag. I am going to break you down sooner or later. You might as well give in and leave now you miserable bitch... it is only going to get worse for you.
With shaking hands, Hannah flagged the message in a saved folder and closed her laptop. It wasn't weird that someone knew her work email- everyone at the office that she had contact with was familiar with it. But it bothered her that someone somehow knew that she was working from home. How could they know? A part of her tried to convince her that it was likely just a lucky guess but somewhere deep inside her belly an unease was planted and took root. She knew the message was right. She knew it was only going to get worse. Though she believed it was only because she was buckling under the pressure.
CHAPTER NINE
But then the emails started coming in waves, dozens, hundreds- filling her whole inbox and forcing her to try to sift through them to find actual work correspondence. Notes started to appear under the windshield of her car several times a day. Then she walked to her car to run to get lunch for EM and found someone had painted the word "slut" across her windshield in bright red lipstick.
It wasn't like her to cry in public but she leaned against her car and bawled her eyes out for twenty minutes, bent forward and her body shaking with sobs like she hadn't experienced since her breakup with Sam when she decided to move away from Stars Landing. It somehow felt good to cry. But she couldn't stop. She cried harder and harder, oblivious to the people passing her in the parking garage. Just as she was worried she could never stop the tears, she got a text from EM asking what the hell was taking so long to get her lunch. She hopped into her car, furiously trying to wipe the wetness from her face and squirting windshield washer fluid until the letters ran like blood.
He wasn't used to Hannah being behind schedule. She was chronically on time every day since he had hired her. So when she had been missing for over a half an hour, he had snapped and sent her a snippy text. A text he immediately regretted when he saw her burst into his office with his, hopefully still warm, lunch.
