Jennie
I closed my eyes and enjoyed being completely alone for the first time all day. I kicked off my shoes and squished my abused toes in the thick carpet under my desk. Lisa, who had been cryptically "busy" last night, was taking care of something in her own office. Byul, my constant shadow, was checking in with her office. And Alison was off either eating a burrito or flirting with a man.
My cell phone and desk phones rang simultaneously. Lisa was calling my cell.
"Hey, how are you?" I asked.
"Jennie." The tension in her voice on that one word, my name.
"What is it?"
Alison burst through my office door, Yuna and Haruto were hot on her heels. She looked pissed. My assistants looked nauseated.
"I'm emailing you an article," Lisa said tersely.
Subject: Emergency.
With dread oozing into my intestines, I opened the message.
Flawless 'miracle' scar treatment a flawed disaster.
"What the hell is this?" I asked, skimming the article. Nina.
"There are others," she said.
"Where is this coming from? Why is my subject from the trial telling the press she was scarred by the treatment?" I demanded. I was a volcano nearing eruption. Nina, the bubbly girl who'd taken two dozen selfies after the biobandages came off, was now saying my scar treatment had permanently disfigured her.
"I'm going to find that out," Lisa said.
"Who do you want me to stun gun?" Alison asked.
"Call me as soon as you know something," I told Lisa.
"I will. She's not going to win, Jennie," she promised.
I didn't have time to ask what she meant by that because my desk phone was ringing.
I disconnected with Lisa. "Get me Nina, now," I told the hovering assistants.
"Already dialing," Yuna assured me as she hustled out of the room.
"Hey, Chaeyoung. I'm in the middle of a crisis—" I began.
"La Sophia has your formula," she said breathlessly into the phone.
"What? What formula?" I clutched my phone tighter.
"I've got a distributor who works with my line and a La Sophia line. He let it slip that La Sophia was rushing a scar treatment through to market," Chaeyoung said, the words spilling out of her mouth in a torrent. "So of course I got curious. No one keeps a secret that well in this business. I knew about their CC cream when it was just days into development back in 2016. They just launched it last fall."
I held onto my sanity by my fingernails. Chaeyoung's storytelling was often ethereal and disjointed.
"Anyway, I have a friendly source in their marketing department that I've been trying to woo onto my team. I'm totally digressing, but I'm so pissed off that I can't think straight."
"What are you saying, Chae?" I asked, feeling something prickle at the back of my neck.
"Bottom line is someone came to them with your formula and offered to sell it to them. I don't know if the deal is done or not."
Damn it. The patent. Where were we with it? Could I fight this?
It didn't matter. I would fight this. This was corporate espionage.
Anger woke in me like a sleeping dragon.
Someone had stolen from me, from my team, my staff. From the families of my employees, and I would make them pay.
"Who was it?" I asked, my voice low and controlled while my anger set off fireworks in my head.
"My girl didn't know, but she was so ethically horrified she put in her two weeks and is coming on board with Wild Heart next month. So yay for me. She heard through the rumor mill that they're making room for some big executive. It's not a done deal, but there've been a bunch of hush-hush meetings."
Something rang mystically on her end of the call.
"Is that a gong?" I asked, surprised my brain had room for anything other than white hot anger.
"Yes, I'm shopping for a new one for my living room."
Of course she was. Because Chaeyoung was the type who had a gong in her living room and the type who wore out the gongs in her living room.
"I need to go, Chaeyoung," I said. The anger was clawing its way up my throat looking for a way out. "Thank you for letting me know."
"I'll chant for you tonight," she promised.
She would, and in some weird way, I'd probably feel the good vibes.
"Thanks, Chae."
The phone was still in my hand when my door burst open. Irene whirled in like a hurricane. "Jennie, I feel sick about this. I can explain everything."
"Hang on," I said wearily. "Yuna? Any luck?"
"The number we had for her on file is disconnected. I'll see if I can find her home address," she called back from her desk.
"Alison, help her," I said.
Alison eyed Irene before leaving the room.
"Jennie, this is… I just don't know how to say this." Irene wrung her hands. "So I'm just going to say it. You and I have something that no one could ever come between."
"Irene, what are you talking about? Haruto, get Joy from legal on the line now. I need to know where we are with that patent," I yelled.
"Lisa," Irene said expectantly.
"What about Lisa?"
Her hands fluttered to her mouth. "Oh, God. You don't know. You haven't seen it." Her bottom lip, painted a flawless red, quivered.
"Seen what? I'm a little busy trying to squash some corporate espionage." It was harsh. I was harsh. But I didn't have time for her dramatics.
"Lisa came on to me. At lunch yesterday. I thought it was just harmless flirting, but… God." She crossed to the couch and sank down gracefully, covering her face with her hands. "She suggested that we go back to her place to strategize."
My stomach turned to ice. My intestines tied themselves into Christmas light knots.
"To strategize?" I asked hoarsely.
Irene nodded and blinked back tears. "Jennie, she wanted to talk about my position in the company once you're gone. I swear nothing happened. I told her to go to hell and left her at the restaurant. But someone saw us. There are pictures."
"Pictures," I repeated.
"They make it look… intimate," Irene said. "I'm so sorry. I should have told you. I just didn't want to see you get hurt. Oh, God." She brought her fingers to her mouth once again. "You don't think Lisa is behind that girl claiming we scarred her, do you? What could she possibly gain from that? What would she gain from any of this?"
She was rambling. The words were spewing forth like runoff into a storm drain, and I just needed her to shut up.
"You don't hold me responsible, do you? Oh, I couldn't stand it if you thought I had some part of all this. I would die inside. We're a team, Jennie."
"Ms. Kim, I have your father on the line for you," Haruto said from the doorway.
"I need to take this," I said. My throat ached from the scream that wanted to be released.
"Of course." Irene rose and crossed to me. She laid a hand over mine that was fisted on the desk. "If you need anything from me, you know I'm there for you. I'm always here for you. I always have been."
"Thanks, Irene," I said flatly.
On impulse, she leaned in and pressed a kiss to my cheek. "You'll be okay. You always are."
Numbly, I picked up the phone. Lisa. The name echoed over and over in my head.
"Dad?"
"What in the hell is going on?" he demanded. "I've got board members calling me. Reporters calling me. Between you and your brother, your mother sent me fifty-four text messages this morning."
"Dad, someone stole my formula. They're shopping it to La Sophia. I need to find the girl who's making the claim and figure out what's going on."
I trusted the wrong person.
My father's sigh was heavy. "No, you don't."
"I have legal pulling the patent paperwork. I'm going to throw everything I have at them. I'm not going to tolerate espionage. I'll track Nina down. I'm checking in with the other subjects. I'll prove this is a lie, and then I'll sue every fucking media outlet that dares say otherwise."
Alison jogged back into the office looking angrier than I'd ever seen her. She handed me a printout. It was a gossip blog post.
Chief Marketing Officer Irene Smith and public relations guru Lisa Manoban got cozy over a quiet lunch. Jennie Kim, friend to Bae and alleged girlfriend of Manoban, was nowhere to be found.
The pictures.
Lisa was leaning in chin resting on her hand and staring into Irene's eyes as if she were the most fascinating woman on the planet. Her head was inclined in a question. Her hand rested suggestively on hers. It wasn't a kiss. It wasn't a sex tape. But the intimacy I saw in that photo cut me to the quick. The next was worse. Lisa holding Irene's hand at her tie, looking smoldery.
I was going to be sick. I just wasn't sure from which end.
Tight-lipped, Alison shuffled that printout to the bottom and tapped the next. It was a collection of headlines.
College classmates recall Kim's hard-partying ways that cost a friend her life.
Cristal Crisis: Beleaguered heiress's drunken college nights end in wrongful death.
Is the CEO under the influence behind the wheel? Kim connected to fatal accident.
There was another picture. This one from my twenty-first birthday. I was passed out on my bed in my apartment. My dress, a gold, flashy one Irene had picked for me, was hiked up around my hips showing off ripped stockings and red underwear. I was clutching an empty bottle of Cristal.
I remembered the circumstances vividly. You need to get out of the lab once in a while before you turn into one of the rats. It's your birthday. This should be the greatest night of your life.
It hadn't been. In fact, it very nearly turned out to be the worst.
"Jennie, the board is in agreement," my father said gruffly.
My heart rate ticked higher. Abdominal cramps turned my insides into a twisted mess. "In agreement about what?" I asked through gritted teeth. I couldn't focus on what he was saying. I shuffled the papers to look at Lisa and Irene again. Intimate. Intimate. Intimate. That wasn't a casual lunch between business associates.
"They want your resignation by nine a.m. tomorrow."
"You have got to be kidding me," I exploded.
"Look, kid, you had a good run. You made a lot of money. But you can't keep fucking up like this. If you want that IPO to go through, if you want job security for all those employees of yours, the board needs your head on a platter."
I was seething.
"Fuck. That."
"So you won't be CEO, big deal. They can't take your shares from you. You'll still make money as a shareholder."
"It's not about the money!"
"No need to scream. I can hear you just fine, slugger. Ah, Jesus H. Christ. Your mother's calling me again. Nine a.m. tomorrow. Don't make this harder than it has to be."
He disconnected, leaving me shaking with rage.
"How bad?" Alison asked. "Road-side tacos with a side of salmonella bad?"
I shook my head as my stomach lurched. "No food could ever fix this." I whispered it so I wouldn't shout.
My cell phone rang again. Lisa.
I stabbed Ignore.
It immediately began ringing again. I picked the phone up and hurled it across the room. It bounced off the wall and splintered on the floor.
Everyone froze.
Implacable Alison pulled a piece of gum from her pants pocket and unwrapped it. My assistants stood, mouths agape, in the doorway.
Byul, because of course a journalist was here to witness my humiliating demise, stood silently behind them.
"I got Joy," Haruto said. "She's on her way over."
"I've got an address for Nina," Yuna said, her gaze sliding to the corpse of my phone and the dent in the drywall. I could practically hear her add "call maintenance" to her to-do list.
"I'll go," Alison decided, shooting me a look that said clearly I couldn't be trusted.
"Call Irene and ask her to come back, will you, Yuna?" I asked calmly.
"Absolutely." Her head bobbed on her neck.
"Can we do anything else?" Haruto asked, his voice barely a squeak.
"Get me a copy of my contract," I said and headed to the bathroom.
--
Executives at the French cosmetic company weighed in on the shocking results of competitor Flawless' new scar treatment. "It's unfortunate that Ms. Kim and Flawless rushed their product into testing. We at La Sophia believe that there is nothing more precious than your skin and treat our product testing accordingly. We've been working on a special formula that shows great promise and will bring it to market this fall…"