Chapter 165

You probably owed it to the others to head right back to the conference room and let them know what happened, but you decided with the last ‘review meeting’ done you needed to strike while the iron was hot. Instead of turning right towards the conference room your turned left down the hallway.

Garrison’s office was at the far end of the building - which wasn’t actually that far, but with every step you wondered if Joy was watching you. Maybe she was a step ahead if she was recording as well. Or two, or three. According to Becks, she’d been running rampant for years with the interns. Maybe she’d dealt with this sort of resistance before.

You had to tell Garrisson now before she, and possibly her mother, manufactured something that you couldn’t get out of.

But your luck, it would seem, was absolute garbage because Garrison’s office door was shut and the light was off. He’d already gone home for the weekend.

“Fuuuuck,” you groaned softly.

Should you try one of the other Partners? Obviously Bellagamba wasn’t an option, but there were four more of them. As you turned back to look at the other offices around you, you saw down at the far end of the hallway Joy was leaning against the doorway of the office she’d used, her arms crossed and smirking.

You took in a deep breath and then took another short hall to the other side of the offices and then walked the long way back to the conference room past the kitchen and the elevators. You were tempted to stop at the HR office but the lack of help you and Gemma had gotten earlier told you it was likely a dead end. Any report there was just as likely to go to Bellagamba as it was to reach Garrison, and if Joy’s mother had actually told her to do employee reviews then you’d be fucked.

So you went back to the conference room and the others looked up at you expectantly. Joy hadn’t returned, so you just shook your head. “We didn’t even start,” you said.

“You got failed too?” Andy asked.

“I didn’t even get that far,” you clarified, and looked to Gemma and Sabrina. “She asked me to turn off my phone for the meeting and I told her I could go get a witness, and we deadlocked.”

Sabrina’s eyes went wide at the implication of that, and Gemma sniffed hard and you could see her mind spinning to try and come up with a new solution to things.

You opened your laptop back up, but you didn’t go back to work. Instead, you started an email and worked to try and get it perfect. You still didn’t have any real evidence, so you couldn’t make any accusations about Joy’s sexual demands and advances. You outlined the events of the afternoon, though, and made it clear that you and the others hadn’t agreed to be reviewed by a fellow intern (because fuck the idea of calling her ‘lead intern’) and that none of you had signed off on her reviews as you all found them to be absurd.

Joy never returned to the conference room, so for the last ten minutes of the day you gathered the others - even Andy - around your laptop and showed them the email. Gemma and Sabrina offered a few wordsmithing ideas, and Eric made a good point about noting that Joy had openly insulted Andy in front of the rest of us. Andy literally hugged him for that.