Desire & Blood - The Thorne Siblings

17. Letter

At half past nine, the courier hadn't shown up.

At a quarter to ten, though, Bob arrived. He entered our office from the hallway, his gaze immediately alighting on me. His face was ashen. "Anne, please come with me." Without waiting for an answer, he made for his own office.

Not good.

"What's the matter with that man?" Camille whispered when he was out of earshot.

I shrugged and watched myself shrugging. It was like in a movie where your favorite actor walks into that trap. You want to make her stop, to tell her of the dark abyss that's waiting for her. Yet it's of no use—her end has been scripted and recorded long ago, and disaster is inevitable.

I got up and followed Bob.

When I entered his office, he was sitting at his desk, eyes on an envelope in his hands. I took the visitor's chair.

"Anne..." he began. He fingered the letter, turning it in his hands. Then he placed it before me. "Anne, I'm sorry. We have to let you go... You're fired."

Fired? A strange expression. Fired as in what? Burned like a witch on the pyre to rid the world of evil? Lit like a piece of wood to gain warmth?

No, fired as in 'let go'.

I reached for the envelope and moved a thumb along its smooth edges. It was blank. No name. I opened it.

Bob just sat there, watching me.

The letter had the TCorp logo and was in TCorp's standard Garamond font. It addressed me as Dear Miss Anderson.

Three words in the first paragraph were in boldface: 'terminated effective immediately'.

Terminated, another strange word. As in killing someone.

Effective immediately. Which meant that, while I was reading this, I wasn't a TCorpse anymore. I was a real corpse.

I pushed myself to read on, to wallow in what they had to tell me. A severance payment was mentioned, worth one month's salary, to be transferred to my bank account. I was instructed to leave my swipe card with my supervisor and to sign the enclosed Release of Claims document.

The letter stated no reason for letting me go. For firing me. For terminating me.

But there was a yellow document included, pre-printed, full of small-print legalese and in carbon copy duplicate.

"You need to sign that." Bob pointed a pen at the form. "Sorry."

"Thanks." I took the pen from him.

What was I thanking him for?

I signed.

Why did I sign it? I should have read it. God knows what I had just had agreed to.

I just wanted to be elsewhere.

Bob nodded as I handed him the form. He tore off the duplicate and gave it back to me. His cheeks were slack, his lips parted.

"Why?" Talking hurt, the word was barely able to squeeze its way through my constricted throat.

"You..." He swallowed. "They say you've passed confidential company information to an outsider."

"Who?"

"Theresa Thorne. She's not an employee of TCorp."

"Theresa?" I shook my head. "But she works here... I've seen her expenses."

Bob shook his head. "That must have been over a year ago. She left us February last year."

"I didn't know that. Bob, believe me, I—"