chapter 2: the deal part 2

The heavy door closes behind her causing her to jump, she whips her head around to see.. it's Cindy..? Figuring it was Cindy who gave her the note
“What do you want? Wait, have you been behind the door the entire time?.. And hey! What's the deal with that fake note of yours anyway.” Lucy asked in annoyance.

With a cheshire cat smile fixed on her face, Cindy points to the table which has a lone stack of papers stapled together. A white blotch on the room-spanning dark wood table. On the pages were the original records of every time Lucy showed up late, which Cindy had to dig to find. By taking into account what Lucy was being paid by the hour, she found out the percentages of cents she made a second and with all this information, she found out just how much money Lucy was being paid for time she didnt work. tallied up, over the course of her 6 months working there, it came to $5,500. Using this number, and a bit of deception, she ballooned it to a rather imposing one at the bottom that was circled in red marker.

Lucy squinted at Cindy in annoyance, looking at her as she made her way to the papers to see what this was about. Reading aloud off the paper, she went right to the big number. “One hundred and Thirty thousand dollars?” Lucy read off stunned. “What is this? This has my name on it, but I haven't gotten 130K from this place?..”
Cindy smirked. “That.. is how much this business's legal team will charge you, factoring in that you went into the server, deleted information, and made some time card changes to benefit yourself. Looking into this company’s track record for punishing cybercrime, and how long you’ve done it, that's what you'll be charged at least by the legal team of the company.” She says forebodingly, then spins on her hell turning to the door “That is.. if anyone finds out..” she says with her back to Lucy

Lucy's eyes have been wide this whole time. If they could, they'd have fallen out of her head and onto the floor. She's a complete loss for words. Her mind runs askew with memories of looking up how to trick the time cards, and how seamless it would be. Did she get over confident? Made it too obvious? The whats, whens, and where's bounce around her head like a swarm of bees as she gets overwhelmed by the greater implications of this. Losing her job, losing her life.. Maybe even prison. Was it cyber crime really? How did they find out??

Her eyes staring off processing all of this, her skin beat red, a heavy pounding in her ears and her heart was racing in her throat- she thought carefully what, if anything, she should say. Wait.. ‘if anyone found out’ ? Has this not been found out by the company yet?’ Luc thought to herself.


“W-wait. What do you mean, ‘ if anyone finds out..’' Lucy asks tentively
“I think it’s self explanatory” Cindy responds coldly.
“So nobody knows about this yet??” Lucy blurts out
“Not yet” Cindy says, flopping the stack of papers ``But I suggest you tow the line, or else this will become public information? And we wouldn't want that now would we”
Lucy impulsively snatched the papers from Cindy, who looked at her surprised. Lucy thought to get rid of the papers, but realized immediately Cindy had to have a digital copy. Dejectedly she lowers her shoulders and slumps her posture in defeat.
“What.. what is this.. Blackmail? what do you want..”