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 bag 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 not to give away much more than morbid curiosity.