The OF Girl Ch. 191-200

"Hah!" Eric barked out a quick laugh when he saw the message.

The HR lady turned and glared at him, and he shrunk in his seat a bit as he stared at his laptop screen and mumbled an apology.

The voices outside the door cut off abruptly, and a moment later the door opened. Garrison was holding it open and Joy walked in. The smirk on her lips, and the pleased crinkle of her eyes as she looked around the room, was more than enough to let you know she was feeling totally in control and had a secret she was keeping.

Garrison shut the door again once she was inside, which broke that facade for a moment, but she turned back to the room and gave the HR lady a smarmy, simpering smile. "Good morning, Cheryl," she said.

"Good morning, Joy," apparently-Cheryl said, giving her a tight little smile in return.

"So, I guess something is going on..." Joy began saying to the room, clearly leading into gloating, as she made her way around the conference table. But then she saw the napkins. And the crumbs. And the coffee cups. Her face hardened and her smile turned into a sneer. "Um, excuse me? I thought it was made clear that you weren't allowed to make any purchases for yourself along with the regular coffee orders. This might as well be insubordination. And theft. Cheryl, are you going to do something about this?"

"Actually," Gemma said. "I bought everything with my own money. Just a Monday morning treat to help us get started."

Joy narrowed her eyes. "Well, where's mine then? Are you excluding me? Because that sounds like bullying and workplace harassment. Iam part of the head of the intern team."

"Oh, sorry," Gemma said, putting on an innocent look and tone. "I just got snacks for the crew of us who are here before the start of the day. I figured since you're always in sometime after 10 that you probably have time for a proper breakfast."

"Hm," Cheryl hummed a soft grunt. It was like an auditory 'Cheryl will remember this' from a video game. And it was music to your ears.

"Well, I- I have permission from a partner of the firm to work the hours I do," Joy stuttered, noting the slightly raised eyebrow of Cheryl. Then she steeled herself a little. "But that's neither here nor there. I still find it disrespectful that you would exclude me on purpose."

"Sorry, but you can't force me to buy you things," Gemma said. "Not with my own money. Can she, Cheryl?"

Cheryl pursed her lips for a moment as she regarded the two women at either end of the room. "No, she can't," Cheryl said. "But if this is any sort of ongoing issue we'll need to put in a new policy of not bringing in food other than for your own consumption. And I don't want to have to go through that process."

"I'll keep that in mind, Cheryl," Gemma smiled sweetly. "I wouldn't want to cause youany extra work."

Joy, foiled for the moment, sat down and started to make herself look busy. It was the most you'd ever seen her physically do with her laptop since you'd met her.

The door opened and both Garrison and Bellagamba stepped back inside. Garrison looked annoyed, and a little frustrated. Bellagamba was like ice.

"Mother, I-" Joy started.

"It will need to wait," Garrison said, holding up a finger.

Joy worked her mouth like a fish out of water. Her eyes looked like she was screaming at her mother psychically or something, but Bellagamba just glanced at her daughter and then scanned the rest of us again with that icy glare.

"Alright. Here's the deal, folks," Garrison said. "First, there is no 'senior intern' or 'head intern' or whatever position. You're all interns, all of equal position. Joy, just because you've spent the last four summers doing the same job here, it doesn't give you the right to act as anyone's supervisor. You arenot to be giving other interns direction, let alone performance reviews. If someone needs something from you all, literally anyone else from the office will come down here and tell you, or ask for it by email. Next, Joy, from what I understand you've been arriving and leaving with your mother throughout the day. If you are going to keep your internship at this firm, you're not a Partner's daughter. You are to arrive hereon time to work, you will take the half-hour lunch break with the others, and you will leave at end of business. And you will participate in the Coffee rotation, just like everyone else."

You thought Joy might actually just die, the way she was slowly turning pink and red. "Mother-" she squeaked.

Bellagamba just turned and walked out.

"Cheryl, please make a note of this verbal warning in Joy's file," Garrison said.

Cheryl nodded.

"John, Gemma and Sabrina, come with me please," Garrison said. He waved Cheryl out and then stepped out of the office.

There was a part of you that wanted to see what Joy would do or say once there weren't any 'adults' in the room. The larger part of you wanted to be outside the blast radius. You stood, and Gemma and Sabrina were quickly doing the same.

Chapter 195

The three of you followed Garrison out of the conference room and down the hall, though not in the direction of his office. Instead, he led you toward the elevators. He thumbed the Up button and then waited.

You wanted to say something. 'Thank you' was at the top of your mind, followed by several dozen other things. But you also didn't want to sound... you weren't even sure how to describe it. 'Weak' wasn't right, but it felt close. So you kept your mouth shut and decided to let Garrison take the lead, and Gemma and Sabrina seemed to be doing the same.

After an agonizing half-minute the elevator finally opened and all four of you piled in, and Garrison hit the button for the next floor up. It probably would have ended up being faster to take the stairs.

"If I might, sir," Gemma said, breaking the silence. "Where are we headed?"

Garrison, for the first time since you'd entered his office that morning, broke a soft half-smile. "Couldn't hold it in anymore, Gemma?"

"I was about to crack if she didn't," Sabrina said with a smile.

"John?" Garrison asked.

"I am zen. I am centred," you said. "I am curious as hell."

He snorted a little and shook his head. "We're heading to IT," he said as the elevator opened again one floor up. You'd only been to IT once since starting, to collect your company laptop and get your credentials sorted. Gemma and Sabrina had been up here more. There were some Partners who had offices up on this floor, making use of the corner rooms, and some First Year associates in a bullpen who didn't rate high enough to be on the Coffee Run lists. Most of the floor was dominated by a big conference room that doubled as a legal library for the firm, along with the IT office and a small gym tucked away from senior associates and Partners to use.

You followed Garrison through the winding hallways, past the First Year bullpen which seemed to be a flurry of activity while one of the other partners seemed to be dictating something to them. Then you reached the glassed-in IT area with its bank of servers. Garrison walked right in, knocking offhandedly on the glass door as he entered. "Jacobs," he said.

"Sir," Jacobs turned from where he seemed to have been working on a computer that looked like it had been torn apart at the seams. He had been standing with his back to the door at a standing desk, and when he saw Garrison and the rest of you he looked... you weren't sure. It was a weird mash of emotions.

"We need to do a quick search of the internal databases," Garrison said.

"Sure," Jacobs nodded, moving over to the other standing desk where his main rig seemed to be set up. "Legal records, or-?"

"Emails. Internal emails," Garrison said.

Jacobs hesitated, then slowly turned with a raised eyebrow. "Sir? Isn't that..."

"I'm a Senior Partner of the firm, Jacobs," Garrison said. "I own those servers. I own everything on those servers. I own the four very expensive standing desks I see in here, as well. So if I want you to look in the database for emails, you'll look in the damn database."

"Sir," he nodded, eyes going wide as he turned back to his computer and brought up some sort of program.

Garrison turned to you, Sabrina and Gemma. "Let's try a key phrase first," he said. "Something relatively unique."

"Um, how about 'We find her activity extremely suspect and out of the norm,'?" you hedged.

"Or, 'We do not accept the so-called results of her fabricated performance reviews,'" Gemma offered.

Jacobs quickly typed into the program and hit enter, and a loading bar quickly scanned across the screen as, you assumed, the database was scanned. It came up with 0 results.

"Nothing," Jacobs said.

"I can see that," Garrison grunted. "Is this searching all emails?"

"Everything in the every account archive," Jacobs said.

"What about deleted emails? We keep those, correct?" Garrison asked.

Jacobs hesitated, but it extended.

And then Jacobs looked like he physically cracked. He didn't just deflate emotionally, the guy straight up had a physical reaction as he curled forward and let loose a sob as he grabbed at his hair and just started bawling.

You had no fucking clue what to do with that. And judging by the look on his face, neither did Garrison. Gemma looked a lot like the two of you.

Sabrina looked like she wanted to offer some sort of support to the guy, but stopped after a step like she was afraid if she finished putting a hand on his shoulder it might burn her.

"I'm so sorry," Jacobs heaved. "I'm- Oh, God, you're going to fire me. I'm going to get fired. I can't lose this job, I just can't."

"Jesus," Garrison muttered. "Jacobs, get a hold of yourself. What do you need, a shake or a slap or a damn hankie?"

"I'm- I'm sorry," Jacobs said, trying to wipe his eyes and catch his breath at the same time. "Please don't fire me. I just- I can't lose this job! But I had to do it."

"Had to do what?" you asked, though you definitely were starting to piece things together.

"I deleted the emails. All of them," he admitted. "I used the backdoor into the system and erased every trace of them. You can't find them in any inbox or folder. Just like I did with the others."

"Others?" Garrison asked darkly.

Jacobs nodded silently.

"How many others?" Garrison asked.

"A few every year," Jacobs said.

"For how many years?"

"The last three."

"Why?" Gemma asked.

Jacobs blinked and took a long, sad breath. "Because she blackmailed me."

Chapter 196

"It started four years ago," Jacobs explained. He'd gotten control of himself now and he looked more exhausted than anything else. Garrison had pulled him out of the IT office and down the hall to an open meeting room and you, Sabrina and Gemma had just sort of followed along since you hadn't been sent away. "At first I thought it was just innocent stuff. I had a girlfriend. Joy was just kind of flirty whenever she had to come by the IT office. I thought it wasn't anything, and just sort of took it as a compliment. Then the next year, when she was back, she went right back to it and this time she went harder. And I- God, I was such an idiot, but it felt good to be wanted. I've been with my wife for seven years now, four by that second summer."

"You slept with an intern?" Garrison asked bluntly.

"No!" Jacobs said. "God, no. But I flirted back, and Joy got my number from my email signature and started texting me. At first, I thought it was just friendly stuff, but then I realized I was hiding it from Jenny and knew it was wrong so I tried to stop it. Then Joy sent me a nude picture, and... I was weak and didn't tell her to stop. When I finally did she got pissed at me and threatened to tell my girlfriend and get me fired, and I panicked. I could erase everything from my phone, but I couldn't do anything about hers since she was using a personal phone and not a company one.

"Then she came to me about halfway through that summer and said I had to pay up. She made me search for an email and delete it. She'd been the one to send it so I assumed it was something embarrassing and this would be the end of it, but then she came back twice more for me to do it again. Then another few times last year."

Garrison sighed loudly through his nose, a long sound that spoke of irritation and annoyance. "And there's no way to get those emails back?"

Jacobs shook his head. "I scraped every trace of them from the servers, accounts and devices. Unless someone saw them right when they got sent, it was like they were never there."

"Alright," Garrison sighed and stood. "Go back to work. Obviously this is a major problem, but I'm not going to just lash out and fire you. If you want any shot at keeping your job you're going to stay silent about this until I say otherwise, got it?"

"Yes, sir," Jacobs nodded.

"Then don't screw it up," he said. Then he turned to you and the girls as if he'd forgotten you were even there. "You three go back down to the conference room. Don't say anything to anyone about this. I'm going to need to call in a Partners meeting and it might take some time to get that together. Breathe a word of it and everything else goes away."

"Understood, sir," you nodded.

"Yes, sir," Gemma and Sabrina both answered.

He dismissed you, and the three of you wound your way back through the halls towards the elevators, but you tugged the girls over to the heavy door to the stairs. Despite the nice furnishings of the legal offices, the stairs to the building were hard concrete and steel girders and little else, so as the door shut behind you with a massive clang and echo you were going to have to keep your voices down.

"Holy shit," Gemma hissed quietly. "Holy fucking shit!"

"She is so fucked," Sabrina nodded.

"Probably," you agreed. "But maybe not. We need to be careful."

Gemma took a breath and nodded. "She's a snake. She might have planned for this or something. And we don't know if her Mom is in on it."

"Fuick, you're right," Sabrina whispered. "Shit. OK. What do we do next?"

"Nothing," you said. "We do what Garrison said. That's the only way we don't risk screwing everything up. He knows, he believes us. That should be enough for now."

"OK," Sabrina said. "OK. So we wait."

"Well," Gemma said quietly as the three of you started walking down the stairs. "There is one other thing we could do."

"What's that?" you asked as you reached the mid-floor flight.

"Celebrate just a little," Gemma grinned, and then she pushed you up against the wall of the stairwell and kissed you with full tongue. When she finally pulled away she was grinning ear to ear. "Good morning, baby."

"Morning, Gem," you said. She laughed and wiped her thumb over your lip to scrub away a tiny mark of her lipstick.

"Freedom," Sabrina faux-yelled, doing a Braveheart impression quietly, then gave you a sweet kiss of her own.

The three of you went down the next flight of stairs together holding hands, then split apart as you entered the office floor. You split up, Gemma heading to the washroom and Sabrina going with you to the conference room. When you entered she quickly slipped to Gemma's seat and grabbed her purse, then headed out again to meet her. Kissing like that had left Gemma's lipstick smudged a little and fixing it was safer than raising questions.

Joy wasn't in the conference room when the two of you returned, and once Sabrina had left again and you were sitting down Eric turned to you. "So? What the fuck is going on?"

"Not entirely sure," you fudged the truth. "Garrison is on the warpath though. Where did Joy go?"

"She was all pissy for a few minutes after you guys left with Garrison and then she stormed out," Eric said.

"Probably went to tell off her Mom," Andy said. "Some people just don't respect their elders."

You and Eric just sort of looked at the dopey stoner for a long moment.

Gemma and Sabrina came back to the conference room a few minutes later, and Eric asked them the same thing but they gave him even less.

Then Joy came back about 30 minutes later.

You weren't sure what made you more warry, the fact that she looked like she'd been crying her eyes out, or that she had a big shit-eating grin on her face.

Chapter 197

Joy didn't say anything, which made the whole thing with her even more unnerving. She went to her seat with that frustrating, slightly-crazed grin and sat down, pulling out a tissue from her back to wipe under her eyes. She didn't even bother heading out to the washroom or anything, she just sat there grinning.

Gemma broke the silence, looking down the table at her. "Are you OK?"

"Oh, fine," Joy said. Then she laughed. Or cackled. Much more of a cackle.

You made eye contact with Sabrina across the table and did a little mind-reading where both of you were definitely in agreement that Joy might be going crazy.

It was right around 11:30, when Joy usually - or used - to leave for lunch when Mr Vega showed up at the conference room door with a knock. He was another of the Partners, though you'd only seen him a couple of times when he dropped off work for all of you.

"John," he said gravely. "Come with me."

"Yes, sir," you said, standing and shutting your laptop again.

Gemma gave you a concerned look as you passed her, and glanced down at Joy, guessing this had something to do with her. You just tried to give Gemma a reassuring nod since Vega was waiting right at the door.

He didn't say anything as he started escorting you down the hall, but you could tell he was tense from the way he was flexing his hands down by his side. Vega led you down to the same conference room you had played 'dumb intern' in against Sabrina's uncle for Garrison. You followed Vega inside and stopped in your tracks as you came face to face with the entire group of the Senior Partners. There were seven of them in all, each of them looking at you with tense expressions. Cheryl from earlier, and Carol, were both in attendance as well with their laptops open.

Despite the very intense vibe in the room, your brain made the weird connection that the two HR ladies for the firm were named Cheryl and Carol, and that seemed a little silly for some reason.

"John, you should sit," Garrison said, directing you to the open chair at the head of the conference table. You weren't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but you did it. Just like in the elevator you felt like you had a thousand things you could say or ask to try and fill the silence, or cut it. But silence felt like the right choice at this point.

The reason for that was that, even though most of the partners were giving you something of a stonewall of poker faces, three people weren't. Carol and Cheryl looked downright disgusted whenever they looked down the table at you, and Bellagamba looked like she was barely managing to keep in some sort of remark.

"John, allegations of sexual harassment within the intern pool have come forward," Vega said once he was sitting and situated. "We take these allegations extremely seriously, which is why we are all here at the moment along with Human Resources. I need you to know that nothing but the absolute truth will be beneficial to you here as we investigate the allegations. Do you understand?"

You blew out a long breath and nodded. Very quickly the puzzle pieces were falling into place. The crazed look that Joy had been holding. Her missing from the conference room. Her likely having backup plans after getting shut down earlier.

There were a few ways you could play this, but going as close to straight as possible seemed like the best bet.

"Really?" you asked. "Damn, that's actually a huge relief. I haven't been able to get any actual evidence so I wasn't sure how to handle it."

Several of the partners looked at each other in mild confusion, though they all had good enough poker faces to give away much more than morbid curiosity.