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1
Becca’s life fell apart on a day that started out great.
It was one of those days where everything seemed to line up just right; she woke up feeling energized and full of pep, springing out of bed and opening the curtains to let in what turned out to be a tremendous amount of sunshine. She’d actually beaten her alarm clock by two minutes; she clicked it off with a little satisfaction at not having needed it, and went about her morning ritual of getting ready for work.
Even that went like clockwork. She put on her favorite pantsuit, the one that made her look a solid five pounds lighter, and caught a look at herself in her full length mirror before heading out the door.
I am looking really good today, she thought.I don’t know what I did last night to make this happen, but I definitely need to do it again tonight.
Traffic was light. There was hardly anybody in the drive-through lane at her favorite Starbucks, and the barista gave her an extra-large latte instead of a large by accident.
At this rate, she was starting to feel like she should buy a few lottery tickets.
The first sign of trouble came after she walked into the office. Up on the twenty-eighth floor of a high rise building that looked to be made almost entirely of glass, the law office that Becca worked for could only be described as sprawling.
The entire floor was filled with people in business attire scurrying about like worker ants, shuttling papers this way and that, answering phones, and otherwise doing all the million little things that go into the operations of a major law office.
As she wandered through the sea of busy legal bees, she slowly began to notice first one sideways look, then another, then another. At first, she thought it might be a few men harmlessly checking her out as she passed, but soon enough, she realized the looks on their faces didn’t add up with that assessment.
Something was off. She wasn’t sure what, but the sense of wrongness tickled at the back of her mind right up until she spotted Ryan, who was not only her supervisor, but also over the last few months, her late night booty call.
He wasn’t exactly the best lover… rather mediocre, in fact… but Becca had been putting so many hours in at work, that she never had any real chance to meet anybody outside of work. So, she’d been lonely, and Ryan was, well, there, and he could be charming when he wanted to be.
“Oh, look who it is,” Becca said. “Listen, sorry I couldn’t get together last night, but I was…”
“No, no, forget all that,” Ryan said. “Forget it. We need to talk.”
Becca laughed that off. Ryan had a habit of taking himself way too seriously and she loved to make fun of him for it. “Ooo, do we need to talk? Have I been a bad girl?”
“I mean it, Becca.”
“What is with you?” Becca said. “Two days ago you were dancing around my living room buck naked and now you’re acting like I just took Mom and Dad’s car without permission.”
“I’m trying to be serious,” Ryan said. “And if you were smart, you’d be serious right now, too.”
Something about his tone, added with the strange sidelong glances she was getting, erased any trace of silly playfulness out of her. “Why? What is going on?”
“The partners are on their way down.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s the Rayak deal.”
The Rayak deal? That had gone fine, had made the firm a nice chunk of money, in fact.
“What about it?” Becca said.
“What about it? They’re super fucking pissed, that’s what about it.”
“What could they be pissed about? You did brief them on everything, didn’t you?”
“I trust you to do your fucking job and give me a deal that I can put forward to them without an issue.”
That’s a no, Becca thought.He must’ve never bothered to brief them.
