Page 3 of Brazen
My eyes widened. “Me?”
I’d accomplished my work goal. Clients had signed the contracts. I took a deep breath and wondered if maybe I would get a raise.
Loretta’s lips thinned. “I smell trouble.”
No reason that should have worried me came to mind. Loretta must be mistaken. My heart thumped, but I headed back to my desk and turned on the computer. My phone rang, and I answered the boss’s demands. “I’m just walking in the door.”
He yelled for me to go to conference room C.
My stomach twisted. I put down my cup. “Okay, I’ll be right in.”
Loretta’s face was white as I passed her. “Good luck, honey.”
My heart raced a mile a minute. My boss, Layla, with her short, no-nonsense bobbed hair and thin lips, stared with me with red in her eyes. Then two of her coworkers made pinched faces as I sat. I was so confused. I’d done everything right. I folded my hands on the table to make a deal as I asked, “Why am I being called in? I landed the account.”
Then Layla slid a folder to my side and asked me, “Do you deny this is you in these photos?”
I opened the folder. Someone had snapped photos from my hotel balcony. Charlie and I were entirely naked as he kissed me. I flipped to the next one, and it was us on that yacht on the Seine with his hands on my breasts. Heat coursed through me as I flipped to a more innocent one of us kissing on the Eiffel Tower. I closed the folder and met her gaze. “Charlie… This wasn’t on company time. I was at the beck and call of the designer until I got her signature.”
Layla shook her head and showed a picture at an art gallery, where I'd been with both Charlie and the fashion icon. “This is still him.”
It was the first night after my flight where he’d bumped me to first class. I let out a sigh. “He knew Claudette. She’d invited him, not me.”
She put down her phone and stared at me without blinking. “Look, we have a fraternizing policy in your employee contract.”
My heart crashed onto the floor like it was glass. I had no argument to offer, except I had no idea, but it felt like a losing argument. I sighed. “He’s a pilot, and we don’t own or represent an airline.”
Layla glanced at her two other partners then said, “No, but we represent the Norouzi banking interest in this case, and the blog that published you clearly with Charles Norouzi was already starting fires for his family that we’d had to quell.”
My eyes were as wide as saucers, and I couldn’t quite close them to pretend I had a poker face. “Norouzi? Charlie?”
Layla closed her folder and sat back. “You’re fired, Hope Williams.”
I flinched and moved to go. Then I froze, pressing my hand to my heart. “What?”
The guard from downstairs stood outside the door, holding a box with my sneakers on top.
“Effective immediately," Layla said. "Security will see you out.”
My mind was blank, and I was unable to feel or think. I followed, feeling completely hollow.
Loretta stopped me at the door. “I’m sorry, Hope.”
“Me too. Bye,” I said, but I saw she was feet away and keeping her distance. I waved and walked out.
On the way down, there were fewer people, and at the door, the security guard handed me my box. It was mostly empty, since I had no mementos. Memories only stopped forward motion, so I refused to hold on to pictures or anything that might trigger me.
On the street, I trashed my notebooks, which I had no need for, and kept the sneakers. I went home to my condo in a daze.
In New York, nothing was free. My rides cost. My food cost. My credit cards were still high from my stupid twenty-one-year-old version of myself. Then the student loans. I still had to pay insurance and fees on the condo. If I sold out, I would have nothing either way.
And there was nowhere to go. As I walked in, I tossed my shoes and glanced around. I’d stripped the walls bare and had some blue metal art on walls to give them dimension. My furniture was all new. I’d donated everything that was Grandpa’s. He’d raised me here to stop living in the past.
Half of me wanted to grab ice cream and cry, but I wasn’t even able to process that. Instead, I walked right back out and headed down the street to the office of one of my best friends on Wall Street.
I usually only popped in here on a Friday to sneak her out, but security buzzed for her, and Britney came down to see me. “What are you doing here, Hope?”
I wrung my hands. “I’m… fired.”
