Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 95311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 381(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Of course, she figured, she could just disregard his order. She could stay late as usual and get all of her work done. Somehow she thought he would find out. But more so, she admitted to herself begrudgingly, she was worried about staying at the office late alone anymore. It was one thing when he was right there within yelling distance. But when the next closest person was a cleaning person three floors below... she couldn't bring herself to muster the courage to stay.
Though sitting at home all night was an equally unappetizing thought. What was she going to do? It's not like she had any television to watch. She was never home enough to have needs that needed to be filled by running errands. She had to clean Ricky's cage but that would only take a couple minutes.
Hannah sighed, deciding to spend her night cleaning. She wasn't particularly a neat freak, but she went through phases when she was stressed or lonely that she spent hours or even days scrubbing every inch of her apartment. She hadn't bothered taking out a broom or mop since she started at EM. It was probably woefully in need of a scrubbing. She could blast some music and clean until she felt a little better about her life.
It only took four hours and three-times scrubbed over floors for her to feel like a giant had been lifted from her shoulders. She took her laundry and laptop she had just bought on the way home from work and sat in the laundry room. She took up all five washing machines at once and checking her work email. She figured she had followed EM's instructions for leaving the office. He would never really know that she had spent out of work time working. And she doubted he would mind. He liked efficiency. She was sure he worked at home all the time. She was just living by his example.
She answered a few emails that had been sent from the IT department and finance. There was a ding, alerting her to a new email in her inbox.
She shrugged at the unusual, never-before-seen address and clicked it.
You can kiss his ass all you want. He won't be impressed. He isn't going to fall in love with you. Get over yourself. He will see you for what you really are- a useless piece of trash, a disposable washrag. I am going to break you down sooner or later. You might as well give in and leave now you miserable bitch... it is only going to get worse for you.
With shaking hands, Hannah flagged the message in a saved folder and closed her laptop. It wasn't weird that someone knew her work email- everyone at the office that she had contact with was familiar with it. But it bothered her that someone somehow knew that she was working from home. How could they know? A part of her tried to convince her that it was likely just a lucky guess but somewhere deep inside her belly an unease was planted and took root. She knew the message was right. She knew it was only going to get worse. Though she believed it was only because she was buckling under the pressure.
CHAPTER NINE
But then the emails started coming in waves, dozens, hundreds- filling her whole inbox and forcing her to try to sift through them to find actual work correspondence. Notes started to appear under the windshield of her car several times a day. Then she walked to her car to run to get lunch for EM and found someone had painted the word "slut" across her windshield in bright red lipstick.
It wasn't like her to cry in public but she leaned against her car and bawled her eyes out for twenty minutes, bent forward and her body shaking with sobs like she hadn't experienced since her breakup with Sam when she decided to move away from Stars Landing. It somehow felt good to cry. But she couldn't stop. She cried harder and harder, oblivious to the people passing her in the parking garage. Just as she was worried she could never stop the tears, she got a text from EM asking what the hell was taking so long to get her lunch. She hopped into her car, furiously trying to wipe the wetness from her face and squirting windshield washer fluid until the letters ran like blood.
He wasn't used to Hannah being behind schedule. She was chronically on time every day since he had hired her. So when she had been missing for over a half an hour, he had snapped and sent her a snippy text. A text he immediately regretted when he saw her burst into his office with his, hopefully still warm, lunch.
She had been crying. From the puffiness of her eyes to the long red streaks on her cheeks from tears- he assumed it had been for a while. She hadn't gone to get his lunch because she was crying.