Dirty Games At Work // Jenlisa

2: Thirty Thousand Dollars

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

Lisa's eyes snapped up from the screen on the desk. Jennie was there, eyes alight, mouth flexing into a furious shape as she slammed the door behind herself.  Lisa tries to speak but it's useless, there's barely time to dodge the file skimmed at her from across the length of office.

"Jennie, listen—"

"No!" Jennie seethed and strode forward. "You listen. Who the hell do you think you are going over my head making cuts to my department's salary budget?!"

Lisa should have expected this. She meant to say something before the finalized budgets were released but the September issue took precedence first and somehow it all got away from beneath her.

"I'm not letting Arlene go. She's my right-hand."

"Arlene is seventy-nine! It's time to let her go and be God's right hand!" Lisa groans and sets her glasses down. "I love Arlene too, I do. She's been here since my father started this place but we agreed in July to cutback on salary spending. That was your idea.", Lisa reminds Jennie and cling to her thin veneer of control.

"Who is the Head of Accounts and Finance?"

"Jennie." Lisa warns with a raised brow.

"I said," she bit and stepped closer, "Who is the Head of Accounts and Finance?"

"You are."

"That's right, I am. Of course it was my damn idea to freeze salary spending whilst we're under audit! But I never told you to start cutting my fucking limbs off!"

"Arlene isn't your left leg." Lisa rolls her eyes and stands from her seat.

Jennie hesitates for a moment, eyeing Lisa's figure. Lisa is wearing one of her wife's dresses. She did that occasionally when her trousers and blouses were being tailored. Dresses and skirts and heels were strictly reserved for non-business-related business, but every now and then she made an exception to the rule.

"What?" Lisa plays dumb, blinking at her.

"Nothing!" Jennie snaps defensively and looks away. "It's just... is that my Stella McCartney?", she mumbled quietly after a pause, briefly eyeballing the black dress clinging to Lisa's figure again.

"It's my wife's."

"She has good taste."

"Impeccable according to our joint bank statement."

Jennie rolled her eyes at that and set her hands on her hips, not willing to let Lisa pull her into these games. Lisa loves her like this. Some friends of theirs who worked at her old firm told Lisa that Jennie was a stone-cold bitch in the office but Lisa couldn't imagine it. No, definitely not her wife, the same woman who cut the crusts off Lisa's sandwiches and spent her weekends knitting instructionals she found on Pinterest? The thought of it made Lisa laugh.

But to see Jennie like this, striding around striking fear into any and all who cross her, putting employees and shareholders in their place like no one's business, bucking horns with Lisa over anything that rubs her the wrong way... Lisa knows she couldn't do her job without Jennie now. It wouldn't be half as exciting.

"Arlene is staying." Jennie tells her blankly, stepping over to the glass wall that overlooked Manhattan.

"It was your idea. You said we needed to freeze and cut back on salary spending over the next quarter, I was just following your advice. You still have a salary budget to play with, fire somebody else if you want to keep Arlene."

"I have forty girls in my department, all hand-picked, all vetted by me, all barely scraping by depending on their bonuses, and the only way I can give it to them is if I fire Arlene and I'm not doing that. So change it." Jennie demanded, twisting on her heels to face Lisa with her brows rising into arches.