Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 225

Chapter 225

You, Gemma and Sabrina were all sitting in the main conference room, surrounded by boxes full of files. Garrison was standing amongst them, arms crossed over his chest. "Not the Monday afternoon you were expecting?"

"Uh, not really, sir," you said. "But that's the job."

"We're more than happy to do it," Gemma nodded.

"Good," Garrison nodded. "But here's a little bonus; this case is slotted to run the third week of July. All of these files won't take that long for you to get through - or it better not, or I've wildly misjudged you three - but we need them done ASAP so that the Associates can do their due diligence and write up the briefs and reports. Usually we're the firm organizing the mergers, not trying to fight one, or else we'd likely just have the Associates do this sort-and-search themselves. But we've got you three here. If you do a good job on this, you can come sit in the gallery when we take this thing to court."

"Sounds great, sir," Sabrina nodded.

"Good," Garrison nodded. "Well, I'll let you get to it. This job is priority one - Andy and Eric can pick up any other emergency work that anyone wants to toss at the intern pool."

"Got it," you nodded.

Garrison nodded and left.

"How many boxes did he say this was?" Gemma asked, looking around at the stacks of boxes.

"Seventy-three," Sabrina said. "And it's the first half."

"Fuuuuuck," Gemma groaned. She stood up and opened the closest box to her. "Oh, for shit's sake, it's all loose papers!"

"God damn it," you sighed, checking another box and finding it was full of loose files as well. "OK. I'll go get some more empty boxes and a shitload of files. We'll need to start sorting by date first, I guess?"

"Mmm, type and then date," Sabrina said. "I'm seeing memos, emails and what I think is an expense report in here."

"I think I might start bleeding out of my eyes," Gemma said.

"It's gotta be a tactic," you said. "There's no reason a law firm would do this unless they were trying to hide something in paper. We might not know what we're looking for, but we can make it easier for the people who do."

"Yep," Gemma said. "We'll be lauded as the heroes of alphabetization. Saving the world one document at a time."

You left Sabrina and Gemma as they started clearing off the conference room table to create a workspace. The stock room was mirrored to the copy room on the floor, and going inside made you briefly think of that first encounter with Sabrina on a Monday afternoon not so many weeks ago that had led to... well, everything. You took a moment alone in the stock room to just smile to yourself.

It really was amazing what you had gotten out of one little decision.

You had a stack of three empty boxes gripped in one hand, and another one full of bundles of empty files under the other, when you backed out of the storage room and bumped into someone who let out a squawk. You turned and felt like you almost shit yourself.

Mrs Bellagamba was glaring at you with wide, angry eyes.

"I am so sorry, Miss," you said quickly. "I should have been looking where I was going. We've just got a big job that needs doing and I was trying to make a couple less trips for supplies."

Bellagamba didn't say anything. She just narrowed her eyes, glaring at you hard, and then checked her watch. She looked back at me, turned on one immaculate heel of her shoes, and stormed off.

"Huh," you said to yourself quietly. "That was weird."

Back in the conference room you told the girls what had happened. "You don't think she'd try and use that or something, do you?" you asked.

"What's she going to do, report you to HR?" Gemma asked. "It was clearly an accident and you apologized."

"Technically that could be considered an admission of guilt," Sabrina pointed out. We'd all gotten the 'Bare Bones of things Never To Say' lesson from Garrison last week, both for civil and criminal cases. 'Never apologize unless you have to' was high on the list of No-No's for companies because it could very well lead to lawsuits. Same with personal accidents - apologising to someone who you got in a fender bender accident with could give them all the power to blame you for the accident.

You shook your head. "I have to choose to assume she can't be that petty."

"Remember, she raised Joy," Sabrina countered.

The rest of the afternoon ended up being a lot of document sorting and arguing about whether you should be worried about Bellagamba all over again. By the time Garrison stuck his head into the room on his way out at the end of the day you'd argued yourself back into believing nothing was going to happen.

"Looks like you're making a good dent," Garrison nodded. "Get started on it again tomorrow morning when you're in, alright?"

"Yes sir," Gemma answered for the three of you.

Garrison nodded and left, and Gemma went to the door and checked both ways, listening intently before returning to her seat.

"What was that about?" you asked.

"She wanted to see if everyone was gone yet or not," Sabrina said without looking up from the document she was trying to put a date to.

"Why though?" you asked.

"Because if everyone left early, you could bend her over the conference room table," Sabrina said with a smile, still not looking up.

"Don't tell me you weren't thinking of it," Gemma shot back at her.

"Are you kidding?" Sabrina said. "I'm soaked through these panties. If I stand up I met have a wet spot on the ass of my skirt."

"This is all against the rules," you said sternly. "No stuff in the office, remember?"

"Easy for you to say," Sabrina mumbled. "I've been stopping myself from going to the washroom and jilling off since you called me a Good Girl this morning."

That made you crack a smile and roll your eyes. "Not in the office," you repeated yourself, though with less conviction.

To Be Continued...