Page 49 of How to Get Even

Everything okay?

Astrid

Not really. But it will be.

Bella

Want to talk about it?

Bella waited, but no reply came.

She checked the group messages, but there was nothing new on there either. She thought of how much Astrid meant to her. How much they all meant to her. Astrid deserved her vengeance, just as much as Chase deserved hisjust desserts.So, Bella the good girl ignored the feeling in her gut that she was missing something, that she didn’t have all the pieces, that Chase wasn’t behaving like the callous, egotistical, autocratic, cheating scumbag that she’d envisioned him to be, and fired off a message to Astrid.

Bella

Don’t worry. I’m on it.

Bella retrieved her laptop from her bag and pulled up the user ID and password she’d found in the personnel files.

CMiller

V. E. R. M. E. E. R. 1675

Surely if he was logged on, she’d just get a user error or something? She should have tried this with her own account, she realised, her finger hovering over the enter key. But she had to act now. She knew it. Or she’d chicken out, Good Bella overriding her need to get Astrid the just desserts she so desperately deserved.

She prayed to whatever goddess was listening and hit enter.

And just like that she was in. She exhaled a sigh of relief and about three years of her life expectancy.

Putting the laptop to one side, she grabbed her phone and logged on to her work email account, giving the draft email she’d composed earlier that day one last read.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

CC: [email protected]

Subject: Nayak Exclusive

Mr Chester,

I hope this email finds you well. As we gear up to the opening for Nayak New York, I am writing to arrange an exclusive interview betweenLiving Cultureand Chase Miller, Nayak’s Gallery Director.

Your magazine is absolutely perfect for the audience we are aiming to reach and would relish the opportunity to explore an exclusive, behind the scenes, sneak peek ahead of the pre-opening.

We are very much looking forward to hearing from you,

Bella Carmichael

Comms Dir. Nayak New York

It was commsy enough to pass, a little loose enough to suggest that she was every bit as terrible as most people seemed to think she was. In short, it was calculated and completed to perfection. But what was most important wasn’t actually the body of the email at all. It was the CC line.

She hit send and, turning back to her laptop where she was logged on as Chase, waited for her email to appear in Chase’s inbox. Her foot tapped on the metal support of the bar stool, her pulse pounding in her throat. When the email appeared in his inbox, she deleted it. She flicked into his deleted items and deleted it from there too.

She then pulled up his contacts, settings, and added Chester C. Carlton to his blocked email addresses before coming back out of settings, closing down Outlook and logging off Chase’s account.

And in less than two minutes, she’d planted the seeds of what would look like Chase’s self-destruction. If Chester C. Carlton disliked Chase now, he was going to absolutely hate him when the man couldn’t even be bothered to show up to the interview he’d begged for. Let alone when they sent the new incompetent comms director who may or may not happen to let slip that they lost their featured artist because no one wanted to work with them.

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