Page 10 of Power

Hide sardines in his office vents.

Set his email signature to Best Wishes, Your Friendly Neighborhood Pervert.

Replace his desktop background with a looping GIF of him picking his nose.

Superglue his desk drawers shut.

Change his phone’s language settings to Medieval Latin.

Replace his hand sanitizer with superglue.

Reschedule all his calendar meetings to 3 a.m.

Change ringtone to Britney Spears song.

I smiled, running a hand through my hair as I scanned the bar, and promptly choked on my drink. There, perched at the far end like karma’s favorite vulture, sat Jessica from HR. The new hire who didn’t know me from Eve, hadn’t been involved in any of today’s disaster, and yet still managed to make my stomach drop through the floor.

Because what if he’d already gotten to her? Spun some story about the operations director who threatened him for no reason? And now here I was, coauthoring what basically amounted to a criminal manifesto on cocktail napkins. Nothing saidstable professionalquite like the wordsice pickandballsscrawled in loopyhandwriting. This wasn’t just a bad look; this was career death, wrapped in bar napkins. One glimpse of this list would validate every lie he could possibly tell about me. Worse, she might tell other people. Namely, other HR people with influence over my career, both inside and out, via word of mouth.

And it wasn’t like I could explain this away:Oh, this violent revenge fantasy? Just a little therapeutic exercise after your executive tried to cop a feel.Yeah, that would go over great. My credibility would be shot, and I certainly couldn’t afford to give him a leg up on the whole he said/she said situation.

Just my luck. Jessica’s attention did a sweep of the place, landing on me. It was only by the grace of the universe that someone was saying hi to her; otherwise, she might already be on her way over here.

I need to get rid of this. Now.

Dakota had taken her bottomless-pit purse to the restroom, and my own purse, with its temperamental clasp that had been giving me grief all week, felt untrustworthy. With my luck, the napkin would fall out at Jessica’s feet the moment she came over to say hello.