Hello, people!
Happy Wednesday!

Usual housekeeping:
- I still don't own any of it.
- Team Momo wouldn't exist without Midnight Cougar and Alice's White Rabbit with their red pens, or without AGoodWitch, Maplestyle, Mel, and Eternally Addicted who pre-read and tell me if I'm off my rocker or not.
- thank you for all the reviews and alerts! I'm humbled and grateful and treasure each of them.

Reminder that the nominations for the Golden Onion Awards are STILL underway and will be open until July 31. All the pertinent info and the link to the nomination and awards website is in their FB group, The Golden Onion Awards (type in the search bar to find it). Don't forget to go and show your favorites some love with the nominations :)

This is it, folks. The one you've been waiting for-the beginning of the end for Rebitch, as narrated by our Bella. On with the show!
Longest chapter in the whole story, so get comfy!

Chapter 41 – BPOV

Carlisle opened the door. Not finding Esme there, welcoming me into her home as she did every Sunday for brunch, threw me for a loop. Then I remembered why we were there on a Tuesday afternoon—a cloak and dagger meeting.

It was probably par for the course to sort out offsite the potentially worst public relationship snafu I'd seen at the firm in my six years there—which was saying something after the whole Grabby debacle last Christmas.

"Come on in, Bella. Edward." Carlisle addressed his son with a curt nod and a strained expression.

For a second, I regretted the absence of Esme's calming influence, although there were dozens of good reasons for her not to be there. First, the woman did have a day job. Playing babysitter to her lawyer husband and sons wasn't high on her list of priorities, especially when it came to business.

By unspoken instruction, we both followed Carlisle into his study. This room had always fascinated me, with its high ceilings, paneled walls, endless bookshelves, and buttery-soft leather wingback chairs in front of Carlisle's massive oak desk. It had the look of a stately room with all its finely appointed furniture, but the space was intensely lived in, too. The dark blue blotter on the desk was worn and scuffed, the desk itself littered with all kinds of paperwork and piles of file folders. Blunt lines in the crystal and brass of the legal awards Carlisle had amassed over the years contrasted with the curlicues in the wood carvings that adorned the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Splotches of color came from the family photos hanging on the walls or sitting on the desk.

When we entered, we found a small crowd already there: Emmett, James, Alistair, and Rose.

"We kept you waiting, people. Our apologies; we didn't think we were late," Edward said, leading us to the only empty seating spot—a settee by the French windows.

"You're not," Rose replied. "More like we all fled the coop as soon as this one here called Bella." She pointed to Alistair, who smirked from behind a stack of papers in his hands.

Carlisle resumed his seat behind the desk and donned his glasses. "Shall we get started? The sooner we do, the sooner we can get a drink afterward," he groused. Then he turned to me. "Bella, I trust Edward's got you up to speed with the latest?"

I nodded. "Yes, Carlisle. I have a few questions, but I'm sure we'll get there in time."

"Good, good. Al? You want to take the floor?"

Alistair cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, then gave a firm nod. "First of all, let me state the obvious—no words spoken here today will go any farther than this room. There's a bloody good reason we opted to meet offsite. I don't want any of this shit on Radio Water Cooler. This is strictly on a need-to-know basis."

"We know a thing or two about confidentiality," Emmett grumbled.

"Yeah, but you all have friends in non-executive roles. Don't you go blabbing to your buddy Whitlock or his girlfriend just yet."

Emmett's jaw dropped almost to the floor, then he snickered. "How the hell do you …"

Of course, Alistair knew. The man kept his ear to the ground.

"But we digress. Back to business. We're here to discuss a disturbing pattern of behavior and allegations against Rebecca Black-Whiteley, a senior associate who has been with the firm since February fourteenth of this year."

At first, Alistair's formal phrasing surprised me, but when I noticed Rose holding her phone in his direction, I figured she was recording. There was going to be an official record of the meeting at some point, which spoke to how dire things had become.

Edward kept his laptop balanced on his knees and tapped notes in a clean document while Alistair spoke. Because I was a bit old school, I preferred jotting my notes down on paper. So far, there were only three words on my notepad. "Rebecca. Allegations. Plural."

"Bella, can you describe your early interactions with Rebecca for the rest of us, please?"

Alistair's question startled me, but I gathered my wits quickly. "The first incident happened on the day she joined. First with James—she demanded my firing over her displeasure with the marketing materials for the litigation practice."

Carlisle coughed. "I remember that vividly. Jamie and I discussed it afterward. She was disrespectful and entitled. How did that end?"

I was still on deck, so I answered. "She insisted on having clients' names on the brochures. I explained why we didn't do that and instructed her to organize signed waivers for her clients if she wanted their names listed on our marketing materials."

Jamie made his presence known at this point. "Thank you, Bella. That was the correct, appropriate response. I want to apologize again for how she treated you on that occasion. I escalated it to Rosalie, by the way," he added, looking at Carlisle. "Considering the tone of that phone conversation, it seemed appropriate to keep HR in the loop."

"What did you do about that, Rosalie?" Carlisle asked.

"I scheduled a sit-down meeting with Rebecca and reminded her of the firm's policies she'd signed the day she was hired. Then, I had another meeting, this time with her assistant, to clarify that Rebecca wasn't authorized to deviate from firm policies in any circumstances, and that Kate shouldn't go along with any harebrained ideas Rebecca might come up with. A pre-emptive strike, if you will."

Alistair picked up from there. "However, getting the waivers became a problem because she didn't only send them to her new clients, but also to some historic clients of the firm, and that raised some eyebrows. Again, Carlisle, Jamie—you were fully informed of the facts."

"And had to put out a fire or two in that regard," Jamie noted, frowning. "Then we had the whole league submissions debacle. Bella, this is your province again."

I'd not known about the waivers. At the time, Jamie had only called to say that we wouldn't be changing anything about the brochures and to forget about Rebecca's demands.

"The entire submission file disappeared a few hours before the submission deadline. Now, bear in mind, it was the main file on the server. Suddenly, it was no longer accessible. Any searches Jasper and I ran turned up empty. We had no choice but to rebuild the file from scratch."

Silently, Edward's hand landed on my shoulder with a squeeze. That whole clusterfuck had ruined our first Valentine's Day together.

"About that," Alistair interjected. "I had our friends in IT dig into that whole fiasco afterward. Files don't just disappear into thin air, not in a system with all the bells and whistles like ours. What they found was … how shall I put it? Disturbing."

I scowled. Reconstructing that damn file from scratch in less than three hours had been disturbing enough for me; I couldn't think what else we'd find that would make the situation worse. I raised an eyebrow at my boss, willing him to continue his explanation.

"The file still exists in the system. Its permissions had been messed with; that's why you and Jasper could no longer access it or find it."

I scoffed. "Oh, for heaven's sake. Let me guess—"

"Hole in one, Bells," Rosalie preempted me. "Miss Rebecca somehow managed to fudge with the file properties enough that she removed you as owner and creator of the file and made it accessible only to herself. Then, for good measure, she still tried to sabotage your work by giving you the runaround for hours. Don't think I didn't notice yours and Whitlock's overtime on that day. I know why you stayed late. She caused that. It was deliberate."

My notebook, pen, and phone slid to the floor in a dull thud—thankfully, the floors were carpeted, which might have saved my phone from an untimely demise.

Edward reached for my hand, pulling me back into my seat. "Deep breaths, love."

I turned toward him and, with a nod, I stood down. Going on a rampage now wouldn't help anyone. We were all there for the same reason: to build a solid case so we could get rid of Rebecca without repercussions for the firm.

I could save my ranting for the sake of the greater good, but one question lingered. "Why? Do we know why she does this shit at least?"

My best friend and HR lady extraordinaire intervened. "I've thought long and hard about it, too. Something didn't sit right with me …"

"Aside from the fact that we hired her in the first place?" Edward blurted out harshly. "Even though some people weren't consulted beforehand."

Carlisle snapped. "Enough of that, Edward. You've made your opinion on the matter quite clear. Shall we proceed?"

Edward heaved a deep, tense sigh. He wasn't letting go if I knew him. "That question deserves answering, Father. But let's proceed, by all means."

"As I said, I've been trying to figure out why she's behaving like this. And I haven't forgotten about FlowerGate either."

Jamie's expression turned comically puzzled. "FlowerGate?"

Rose rolled her eyes but answered. "On top of everything else, Rebecca thought it would be a good idea to steal the flowers Edward had sent to Bella on Valentine's Day. I received a complaint about it from reception, and had to investigate the matter. It turned into the try-outs for the 'Pass the Buck' Olympics between Rebecca and dayshift reception staff. Both parties were reprimanded. Rebecca was reminded to keep her hands to herself. She didn't appreciate that."

"Ha," Edward sneered. "Understatement of the century. I literally had to claw back the flowers from her room."

"Jeez, what an entitled bitch." Emmett had a way with words and never, ever edited himself. Not even when he was on tape.

"Sure, Em. Tell us how you really feel," Rose countered. "But back to my original point. I think we're dealing with a huge case of weaponized incompetence here. Or at least, that's how Rebecca would like to come across. Have you noticed how she always plays dumb? How she always claims not to know, not to hear. If all else fails, entitlement kicks in."

"Just like when she tried to crash Bells' graduation party," Em noted.

Alistair interrupted him. "Well, we can't use that to build our case because it was a private event, and it happened offsite. But—"

"Pattern of behavior, folks. It always goes back to that," Jamie said with a dour expression. "Let's get to the big ticket item. Emmett?"

Em sat up, cracking his knuckles as if he had to get ready for an actual battle. "Okay, people. For this week's episode of Let's Get Disbarred, I give you the Eagle Ventures acquisition catastrophe. If we're all informed of the basic facts …" He trailed off, looking in my direction.

"Yeah, I'm up to speed. Edward gave me the skinny on the way here. I hate to ask, but are we sure of the facts?"

Emmett's face, usually jovial and relaxed, turned into a mask of distress. Worse, his expression was positively murderous. "We're quite sure, Bells. IT did their magic and discovered a few things." He cleared his throat, then started enumerating on his fingers. "One, they checked the metadata on the redlined document the bidder sent. The changes were made on our system, by someone logged into one of our computers. IT knows when the changes were made, too, but that's side info you'll find in their report on it. What matters is that the file came from Rebecca's workstation, and the changes were made by someone who logged in with her credentials. There's no reason to believe it'd be anyone other than her either. Right, Rose?"

Rose nodded, leafing through her own notes. "The timestamps in the logs match with times Rebecca was in the office. I checked that against her access badge. But that's not all, is it?"

Emmett's mouth smashed into a thin line. "Yeah. I got suspicious and asked IT to do a deep dive on Rebecca's email account. Call me crazy, but if she was bold or idiot enough to risk disbarment for one file—"

"Go big or go home," Edward said, finishing Em's thought. "What did IT find?"

"This is the really bad part," Em started. "And yeah, I'm aware the rest is horrific already. But … it seems she passed the other bidders' documents to this one bidder. The one for whom she made changes to the draft acquisition contract."

"I've heard enough," Carlisle said. How he managed to keep his stoic expression, I'd never know. "Rebecca's behavior clearly meets the requirements for firing. Rosalie, remind me how we structured performance reviews and partnership track in her employment contract, please."

Rose passed Carlisle a document with all kinds of colorful highlighting and Post-it Notes sticking out from every other page. My bestie wasn't merely the HR lady. Rose was a qualified employment lawyer, which put her in a perfect position to do her job effectively, and saved her from the hustle and career-driven backstabbing of practicing law—her words, not mine.

"Partnership track eligible after a year, contingent on successful performance reviews throughout. She joined in February; her end-of-probation review would be in June. Perfect timing. I'd have to circulate the usual evaluation forms, but I'll go out on a limb here and say she's not likely to hit those partnership track markers anytime soon."

"It's hard to practice law if you're disbarred," Emmett quipped.

Alistair raised his hand. "If I may, people?"

Carlisle motioned for him to continue.

"We need to fire her sooner rather than later. We also need to figure out how to handle the Eagle Ventures deal. It's your client, Edward. Any preferences?"

Edward snorted. "Sorry, folks. But would it be bad form to say, let's deal with it in any way that spares us from a malpractice lawsuit?"

Even Carlisle and Jamie cracked a smile at Edward's joke. "No, son. In fact, any suggestions on this are welcome. Em? Rose? Bella?"

I cleared my throat. "From a crisis management perspective? Build that performance review meeting as if you're trying to flatter her. Don't give her any hint she's going to be fired because she'll try to talk herself out of it. She responds to flattery, and she seems to be fixated with Edward."

The man in question turned toward me, frowning in disbelief. "Me? I thought she was targeting you, frankly."

I didn't know why I'd not seen that before, but now, it was clear as day. It jumped at me. "So did I initially. And, yes, there's a component of Bella hate in there. But I think she's actually trying to attract your attention. When she stole my flowers? It forced you to go and talk to her. You were at my graduation party, so she tried to elbow her way in."

I addressed Alistair and Carlisle next. "My advice to you would be whatever you do, present a united front. Have the entire Executive Committee meet her. And don't let her talk to Edward alone because she'd see that as a prize."

Jamie scoffed. "Do we really have to do all of this armchair shrinking to get rid of one lawyer? Can't we just tell her she's fired?"

Edward didn't appreciate that. "Uncle, may I remind you that you hired that lawyer and vouched for her credentials? Here we are, three months later, scrambling to avoid lawsuits and disciplinary proceedings from the Georgia Bar Association or worse just because it looked good for our roster to have a lawyer with a federal judge for a daddy."

"Jamie, your attitude isn't helping," Carlisle chided him. "Your track record in terms of hires hasn't been stellar this past year, so if I were you, I'd shut the hell up and let Bella fix our shit. Again."

"Legally, we're solid," Rosalie started, changing the subject. "Rebecca's billables are shit. She's brought in one paltry new client. She's violated multiple policies. She isn't abiding by the terms of her contract. Period. At this point, the whole Eagle clusterfuck is just icing on the cake. I say, let's lay down the law with her failures, then threaten her with exposure and disbarment on top of it."

Rose had nailed the strategy, and I spoke to support her. "Yes, I agree with that. The threat of exposure and public humiliation to her and Judge Black-Whiteley will push her to go quietly."

The reaction to my words came in the form of a few nods throughout the room but no words yet. Before long, Carlisle replied.

"If nobody has objections, I suggest going along with Rosalie and Bella's plan. Based on my interactions with Rebecca, I believe that would work. Emmett, Edward, thoughts?"

Edward leaned against the back of the settee, running his hands through his hair. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose, still huffing and thinking. "The cleanest solution here is to remove Rebecca's access to that transaction. Tonight. No explanation—after all, she was booted from the team a while ago. She shouldn't still have been able to access files for it. Then, be upfront with Eagle. A bidder violated the auction procedures, and their offer will be rejected. Who's the bidder again?"

"Volturi Tech," Emmett replied, grumbling. "They're assholes. A bunch of tech bros who want to cut corners and get rich quick."

"Well, that won't work this time. When you notify them that they're out, drop a cease and desist in the same letter. Let them know we know what they're up to. If they go quietly, we won't make noise about this publicly either. But we'll report them to the FTC. Let the Feds deal with them."

Emmett looked pensive for a minute, then nodded. He addressed his older brother with a smirk. "You're writing that letter, right?"

Edward snickered, and Em joined in. The tension had finally lifted.

"Anything else to discuss?" Carlisle asked once they sobered up.

Jamie sputtered for a second, then spoke. "I think I need to retire from the firm."

Carlisle rounded on him. "Why, James?"

"It's my fault we're in this mess. Again. First Bamford, now Rebecca."

There was some truth to Jamie's words. The man was a solid lawyer, but his recruitment skills were objectively crap. The way of modern lawyering required attorneys to be managers, scholars, negotiators, mentors, marketing experts, client schmoozers—they couldn't all be good at everything. Something had to give.

"I have a suggestion, if I may," I said.

Jamie regarded me with a stricken expression on his face. "I'll go along with anything, Bella. Let me have it. I still feel guilty for what I put you through last year."

"First of all, you didn't put me through anything. That was all Liam. But back to our current affairs. Maybe you could ask another partner to sit with you through interviews. Avoid making recruiting decisions solo. Especially for senior positions. Try it on for size; see how it goes."

"I don't know," he admitted with a shrug. "Who's up for babysitting me?"

"I'll do it," Carlisle offered. "Doesn't hurt to show off two senior partners when we're trying to attract big talent anyway."

Jamie nodded, then threw a grateful wink my way.

"It seems you gained another ally," Edward whispered in my ear.

Disjointed cross-talk popped up throughout the room, a sure sign that the substantive part of our meeting was over.

"Let's go out for dinner," Carlisle piped up. "After this meeting, you all deserve to be fed. Tomorrow, we'll take out the trash."

"For good," Alistair added.

And Emmett, God love him, fist-pumped.

We had a plan, now we just had to execute it.

And there we go. The extent of Rebitch's meddling and malfeasance finally exposed.
Again, this exact thing happened at a law firm where I worked in Italy in the early 2000s. A senior lawyer played both sides on bidding documents in a transaction where the firm assisted one client but another one was among the bidders. This made the whole deal really tricky to manage, because a) the firm could not legally assist both clients, and did NOT assist them, and b) there was an information firewall between the team who assisted on the acquisition deal and the team who usually assisted the other client to avoid giving them any competitive advantage. The senior lawyer claimed she did it at the behest of a partner-which was true, but didn't make the situation any less horrid. Both were sent packing; the senior lawyer ended up landing on her feet eventually, the partner not so much.
All this to tell you ... shit like this HAPPENS. More often than not.

When I researched this part of the story, I asked a friend, a lawyer here in the US, what would get a lawyer summarily fired. She was gracious and detailed with her info, and two overarching narratives came out of it.
1) Most lawyers end up being fired QUIETLY, because any LOUD firings would reflect badly on the firm. They're encouraged to take soft off-ramps, like working as in-house lawyers for clients of the firm (this is a landing post I've witnessed for scores of people over a decade plus in law firms).
2) One case of "summarily fired" that came up was of a lawyer who was dealing drugs using the law firm's email address. Imagine that.

How did our people acquit themselves during the big meeting?

But anyway ... phase two of waste management will land in your inboxes some time on Saturday.
See you then!