Bedroom Bully by Harper West

11

Rebecca

I picked awayat the work all weekend, even going so far as to come into the office around midnight Saturday evening when I couldn’t sleep. The work seemed endless, but by the time I chiseled away at all of it I had it ready to go by Sunday afternoon. I slid the folders into JoJo’s folder holder on his office door, then I decided to go home and take a nice, long nap.

Which turned into me not waking up until my alarm went off Monday morning.

“Fuck,” I groaned.

I rolled over and slammed my hand down onto my phone and the alarm turned off. Whether I snoozed it or not, that remained to be seen. But as I flopped over onto my back, I stared at my ceiling fan.

And ten minutes later, my alarm startled me back awake.

“Fine, fine, I’m going,” I murmured.

I forced myself to get up and actually turn my alarm off. Then, I pulled myself into a hot shower to try and wake myself up. I doused myself in a shot of ice-cold water before I got out, and that shocked me awake long enough to call in my coffee order ahead of time, so I wasn’t late for work.

After all, the last thing I needed was yet another weekend of nothing but numbers and papercuts.

With my fingertips covered in tie-dye band-aids, I quickly got dressed. I pulled one of my sundresses over my head and slipped into the matching flats I’d purchased with all of them before I made my way to my coffeehouse. I liked the fact that I had a coffeehouse. They knew me by name and always had my order ready, even if they clocked me in line.

But, this morning, I wanted to get in and get out as quickly as possible.

“That’ll be $9.34, Miss Loren!”

I handed her a solid ten. “Keep the change, gotta get going. Have a good day, Isabella!”

She waved me off. “See you tomorrow morning!”

“Taxi!”

I waved down a yellow van and paid the driver double to take me to work first. It pissed off some of the people I was riding with, but it didn’t matter. Now that I had some money to throw around, I could afford a few rushed mornings if necessary. I touched down onto my floor at work five minutes shy of when I needed to clock in, and it gave me enough time to poke my head in and say good morning to Brit.

Before I sat down at my own desk and got to work.

“What the fuck?” I murmured.

The second I booted up my desktop, my email notifications started going insane. My jaw dropped open at the thirty-four emails I had waiting for me, and I wondered if JoJo was about to destroy the rest of my month. It made me sick, thinking about all the work he had just dropped into my lap. And when I saw that his email claimed the first four messages, my stomach knotted itself into a ball.

But the rest of the emails were from domains I didn’t recognize.

I disregarded his emails and decided to open the first one I didn’t recognize. I mean, it didn’t have anything attached to it, and the subject line didn’t have any weird fonts or emojis or misspellings. So, I was pretty confident in the fact that I hadn’t just inherited an insane amount of spam.

However, the dick picture that popped up in front of my very eyes caused me to yelp.

“Holy hell!” I exclaimed.

I quickly deleted the email and pushed away from my desk as if someone had tried to light me on fire. My nose wrinkled and my stomach dropped to my toes as my eyes beheld the second email I didn’t recognize. What the ever-blessed fuck? Why had someone sent me a picture like that to my work email!?

How did they even have it in the first place!?

I navigated away from the swath of emails and pulled up the company’s website. It only took a few clicks and a couple of searches to come up with both my work email and my office phone, which made me sick in a way. It was pretty easy to track me down at work, which was something I hadn’t even thought about until that very moment.

Then, my eyes fell to my personal cell phone in my purse.

“They wouldn’t dare,” I murmured.

The fear of Joseph’s wrath quickly faded away as I dug out my cell phone. I made sure I wasn’t connected to the internet in the building before I opened up that dating app and gasped. My eyes widened as I navigated to my messages, and I found even more lewd photos waiting there for me.

Messages about stuffing my face full of cocks, and filling holes until I cried out for mercy. Things were said about my curves that made me gag. But, as I scrolled up through all the messages, I realized something.

Someone had hacked my account.

“No, no, no, no!” I exclaimed.

A soft knock came at my door. “Becca?”

Brit’s voice caught my attention. “A bit busy right now!”

“Are you okay in there? I heard you all the way down the hall.”

I sighed. “Just a lot of work after a busy weekend. That’s all.”

“You want some company?”

“No!”

I said it a bit too quickly and I cringed. “I mean, I could really use some time to myself before I have to dive into all this. But, lunch?”

She paused for a second. “Sure. Lunch sounds great. I’ll come knock on your door around noon-thirty.”

“Perfect. I’ll be ready then.”

Relief flooded my veins as she started walking away from my office door because I needed a moment. I read through the conversations with random men that I hadn’t initiated myself, including a conversation with Michael. My jaw dropped at a message that read, “I’m so sorry about the other night. Why don’t I make it up to you? I can do anything you’d like, if that’s your thing.”

He was actually the only man that didn’t respond lewdly to that message, which only made me feel guiltier about Friday night.

“Fuck,” I hissed.

I tried to scroll up further in some of the chats to figure out who prompted them in the first place, but then messages started deleting themselves before my very eyes. Messages I had opened completely disappeared, causing me to have to refresh the screen. I started taking screenshots as quickly as I could, but some of them didn’t even capture the nature of the messages. Some of them only captured the “error” message that popped up every time I tried to make sense of what was happening.

Then, a text message rolled through my personal phone from JoJo.

“No, he wouldn’t,” I murmured.

As I stared at the unopened text message, I wondered if it was true. Had he completely lost his mind? Had he gotten one of the guys from I.T. to hack my account? Was he seriously going to make my life this much of a living nightmare simply because I stood up to him? Because I’d quit. In a heartbeat, I’d quit and move to another goddamn country if it meant getting away from all of this bullshit.

But then I opened his message.

JoJo: Do you think you’re being funny?

I furrowed my brow as I shot him a message back.

Me: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

The next message was nothing but a picture of his laptop screen. It was zoomed in on an email I had sent from my personal email directly to him, and it contained the same message that someone had sent on my account to various men I wasn’t the least bit interested in. Right there, in an email I didn’t send to him, were the words “I’m so sorry about the other night. Why don’t I make it up to you? I can do anything you’d like, if that’s your thing.”

Followed by a picture of a pair of tits that weren’t even mine.

JoJo: You’re lucky that I know what your tits look like.

My fingers moved like lightening to shoot him a message back.

Me: I’m so sorry. I don’t know what the hell is going on right now. I promise you, I didn’t send that.

JoJo: I’m not an idiot, Rebecca. I know you didn’t send it. But you better hope I don’t get another email like this again. You sent it to my work email. It’s now filed away in the business’s electronic archives. Now, I have to go down to I.T. and sweet-talk my way into the system so I can delete it.

Me: Go ahead and do it for my email as well.

JoJo: Why?

Me: Trust me, when you see it, you’ll understand why. I don’t know what’s happening or who sent those messages, but you weren’t the only person who got one from someone pretending to be me.

JoJo: Star and forward whatever emails you intend to keep. I’ll just have your email account wiped.

Me: I’ll get right on it.

I closed my eyes and drew in a few deep breaths. I heard the elevator quickly kick into gear and I listened as it carried who I knew for certain was Joseph all the way down to the I.T. floor. And after drawing in a few slow breaths, I opened my eyes and got to work.

I forwarded the emails I wanted to keep to my personal email so I could just forward them back, including the four unopened emails from JoJo. Luckily, I hadn’t gotten many messages that were worth keeping, so I only sent a handful of them to myself. Mostly onboarding stuff. Emails with documents attached that I wanted to keep for reference purposes.

Then, I sat back and watched as my entire email account got wiped and rebooted.

While that took place, I completely deleted my dating profile. If I wanted to make another one, I’d wait until some of the drama died down before I attempted to do that again. But at that moment, I was much too fixated on who the hell hacked my accounts.

Because if it hadn’t been Joseph, then who the hell did it?

The question loomed in my mind for the rest of the day. I tried to enjoy my lunch with Brit, but it was mostly her talking about her latest in-office crush while I turned over suspects in my mind. I would have immediately thought Tommy since the actions had his name written all over it, but he was being held without bond until his trial date, so that took him out of the running. My second thought would have been JoJo because of his attitude this past weekend, but the fact that he had been just as shocked to get a message like that from me dissuaded me from thinking he had done it. Brit was as stupid with technology as any grown woman I’d ever seen, and I hadn’t known Kelly long enough to accuse her of something like that.

And since that was the extent of my social life, I found myself out of options.

I tried to focus on work as much as possible, considering the fact that JoJo’s four morning emails came with four different lists of things I had to accomplish. And after adding all the extra things to my schedule, I found myself working in some way, shape, or form every single night for the coming week. While that should have pissed me off, in some ways it made me feel more protected. I’d be alone in a building with JoJo who had proven that when my back was to the fire, he was there to make sure I didn’t fall into it.

But even with that small tidbit of solace, I wasn’t looking forward to the upcoming long-ass week I had.

Especially since the work dropped into my lap because JoJo was most certainly trying to teach me a lesson.