For one second, something like recognition flickered across her face.
Then she made the worst decision of her life.
“She did this on purpose,” Melissa said, pointing at me with avocado still on her fingers. “She’s been leaving disgusting food in the fridge to trap people.”
The room went silent.
A vice president named Gordon Price slowly removed his glasses. Beside him sat two visitors from a hospital network the company had been trying to land for months. One of them looked less annoyed by the food than by the accusation, which had landed in the room with the ugly force of a personal conflict surfacing during a business negotiation.
I stepped inside. “You stole my lunch.”
Melissa straightened. “I thought it was communal.”
“Communal,” I repeated. “With my name on it?”
The client glanced at the container lid still in Melissa’s hand. My label was clearly visible.
NATALIE B.
DO NOT TAKE
Gordon’s expression changed first. Then the clients’ did.
Melissa saw it and pivoted instantly. “I was in a rush. I grabbed the wrong one. But she knows I have a presentation today. This was deliberate sabotage.”
“No,” I said. “It was a sandwich.”
That almost made one of the clients laugh, but he swallowed it.
HR arrived two minutes later, summoned by someone with better instincts than Colin. This time, Colin was not alone. He came with Denise Carmichael, the head of HR, a woman in her fifties whose calm had the intimidating quality of something forged by years of other people’s nonsense. She took in the room in a single sweep: Melissa stained green, my labeled container, the documents, the clients, the vice president, the smell of lemon and avocado hanging in the air like evidence.
“What happened?” Denise asked.
