A New Hire Booked My Luxury Napa Estate For $150 — So I Had Her Arrested Chapter 02
Listening to Tiffany’s righteous indignation, I nearly laughed.
“I’ve made myself perfectly clear. The estate has a prior booking. There’s no availability.”
“And the company that booked it is Whit—”
Tiffany cut me off.
“Just negotiate with them, will you? Let us go first, have them reschedule.”
“The team building date and location are already locked in. Elena, Do you have any team spirit at all?”
I was so angry I laughed.
Last year’s company gala, I planned it for two solid months.
Tiffany volunteered to help the moment she joined. I didn’t think twice—I handed her the execution breakdown.
The gala was a huge success. The boss wanted to reward whoever planned it.
Tiffany took my proposal, swapped the author’s name for her own, and two months of my work became her achievement.
At the time, she’d said:
“Elena, if this gala goes well I can convert to full-time. You get it, right?”
Watching her—young, alone in a new city—I let it slide.
Now, the company that had booked the estate was our top client.
And she was asking me to “understand” again, to make the client reschedule so she could shove her way in.
The corner of my mouth twitched.
“Fine. They can reschedule. As long as you cover the cancellation penalty.”
“Not much. Just $25,000. Once it hits my account, I’ll clear the dates.”
Tiffany let out an exaggerated shriek on the other end.
“Elena! This is extortion!”
“I’m doing this for the company—why should I pay you $25,000?!”
A second later, she hung up and went straight to the Slack #general channel, tagging @everyone.
“Elena refuses to let us use the estate for the retreat.”
“This event was originally her responsibility. There’s nothing I can do—let’s just go with what she wants, everyone.”
Beautifully phrased.
She knew I didn’t want to reveal that the estate was my private property, so in a few clean sentences she washed her hands of it and dumped the blame on me.
Slack erupted.
Linda from Finance was the first to jump in:
“Elena, this is on you. Tiffany’s putting so much effort into this—why are you undermining her?”
Kyle from Marketing followed close behind:
“Yeah, it’s not like it’s costing you anything. Why won’t you let us go to the estate?”
Another coworker chimed in:
“I’ll say what nobody else will—some people just sit on their seats and don’t produce.”
“She’s jealous. She’s afraid Tiffany will take her senior position.”
I stared at the screen, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. I typed a few words, then deleted them.
Seconds later, the boss called Tiffany and Linda into his office over Slack.
A few minutes after that, he called me in too.
Mr. Preston cleared his throat and spoke first.
“Elena, you’re a senior at this company. Why are you making things difficult for a new hire?”
Linda jumped in immediately:
“Tiffany locked down the best estate in Napa for $150.”
“Compared to that, Elena, your past event budgets have been sky-high. You wouldn’t happen to be—”
I laughed, sharp and humorless.
“So now you’re accusing me of taking kickbacks?”
Nobody answered.
But the suspicion in their eyes was blatant.
I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I wanted to expose every ridiculous piece of Tiffany’s plan.
“You can’t go to that estate. It’s my—”
—
