Enjoy Your Shiny New Prison Cell Chapter 1

On June first—International Children’s Day—my twenty-nine-year-old sister-in-law, a grown woman suffering from a severe case of self-diagnosed "baby-brain," blocked the doorway of my office. She was wearing a puffy pink tutu, sucking noisily on a giant lollipop.

"Charlotte, today is Baby’s day! Baby wants to be the President and Registered Corporate Owner as her Children’s Day present!"

I stared at her, completely dumbfounded. "Are you out of your mind? The registered corporate owner bears all the personal liability and debt!"

My husband, Daniel, gave me a cold, dismissive look from behind her. "Charlotte, don't be ungrateful. Since Daisy wants it, you—an outsider—can step down and let her have it."

I pinched my thigh as hard as I could, barely keeping myself from laughing out loud.

A quarter-billion dollars in toxic debt. I had been losing sleep trying to figure out how to escape this sinking ship without drowning, and here they were, handing me a golden parachute.

"If you’re forcing my hand, don't regret it later," I said, my voice trembling with faux-distress as I quickly signed the transfer agreement.

The moment the corporate seal pressed down on the paper, Daisy clapped her hands, squealing with delight. "Yay! Baby has her own big company today!"

Oh, Baby Daisy. I hope you laugh just as sweetly when you're making license plates in a federal penitentiary.

...

* * *

Daisy was ecstatic.

Clutching a pacifier between her teeth, she waddled into the executive suite, threw herself into the leather office chair, and spun around exactly eight times.

"Starting today!" she announced, pulling the pacifier from her mouth with a dramatic pop. "This company belongs to Baby! Everyone has to listen to Baby!"

"And if you don't listen, Baby will fire you all!"

The executives in the room, people who had bled and sweated alongside me for three years, kept their heads bowed, refusing to make eye contact.

My husband—and the company's CEO—Daniel, swept a freezing gaze across the room.

"You all heard her," Daniel said. "Daisy is the new registered owner. If anyone has a problem with that, pack your bags and get out."

Silence fell over the room like wet cement.

I didn't look at them. I kept my head down, packing my personal belongings into a cardboard box.

The box bumped against the edge of the desk, making a sharp, hollow thud.

It wasn’t a loud noise, but in that suffocating silence, it sounded like a gunshot.

Daisy’s head snapped toward me.

"Charlotte..." she whined, dragging out the syllables of my name. "What are you doing? Baby is speaking. Why aren't you listening?"

I ignored her and kept packing.

Her face twisted.

And then, right there in front of a dozen senior executives, a twenty-nine-year-old grown woman slid off the executive chair and threw herself onto the carpet.

Thud.

She began to roll. Kick. Scream. Her legs thrashed against the floor in a full-blown toddler tantrum.

"Ugh! Charlotte is ignoring Baby! Charlotte is being mean to Baby!"

Wailing, she scrambled up from the floor, tears and snot smearing her face. She pointed a trembling finger at me. "You only look down on Baby because you were the boss, right?!"

"Everyone knows you only ran this place to hook up with male clients! The whole company knows!"

A few of the executives winced, their eyes darting nervously.

I kept my expression entirely blank, continuing to file away my papers.

My silence drove her over the edge.

She lunged forward, snatching the silver picture frame from the corner of my desk.

It was the only photo I had left of my parents before they passed away.

Smash.

She raised it high above her head and hurled it onto the hardwood floor.

The glass shattered into a thousand glittering shards.

Clapping her hands, she giggled, looking at me with pure malice masked as innocence. "Hehe! Baby doesn't like this toy!"

I knelt down, carefully picking the photo out of the broken glass, and slipped it into my coat's inner pocket.

Then I stood back up and continued sorting the remaining files on the desk.

From start to finish, I never once looked at her.

Daisy’s giggles died out. She had clearly never encountered anyone who refused to react to her infantile theatrics.

Suddenly, she stepped directly into my space.

She grabbed the stack of project files right out of my hands, spun around, and stuffed them directly into the shredder in the corner.

Whirrrr.

The white pages were instantly sliced into thin, meaningless ribbons.

She sucked her thumb, tilting her head to smile at me. "The shredder was hungry! Baby was just feeding it some yummy paper!"

I stopped what I was doing.

"Daisy," I said, my voice flat, empty of emotion.

"The picture frame you just smashed was my personal property. The files you just destroyed were reference materials I purchased with my own money, along with my personal work logs."

"Deliberate destruction of property is a civil offense, and depending on the value, it can escalate to a criminal misdemeanor."

As I spoke, I pulled out my phone and switched on the video camera.

"I am recording everything you do as evidence."

Daisy froze.

Behind us, someone let out a muffled snort.

She whipped around, glaring at the executives. They immediately fell silent, though their lips were visibly twitching.

Flushed with embarrassment, Daisy stormed back to the desk, climbed onto the leather chair, and spun herself around in a fury.

"Fine! Whatever! Baby is here to audit the accounts today anyway!"

She yanked open a drawer, pulled out a stack of expense reports, and slammed them onto the desk.

"You old employees are nothing but leeches! Always reimbursement, reimbursement, reimbursement!"

"From now on, Baby is only going to approve payouts for people who make Baby's baby bottles and fold Baby's blankets!"

With a dramatic tear, she ripped several receipts to shreds.

A few of the yes-men—Daniel’s useless relatives who had been hired through blatant nepotism—immediately began to clap and cheer.

"Brilliant, Daisy!"

"About time someone cleaned house!"

Daisy kept flipping through the pile.

Suddenly, her hand stopped.

On the very last page, the amount column read: $100,000.

She held up the invoice. "Whose is this? Who has the nerve to claim a hundred-thousand-dollar reimbursement?"

The room fell dead silent for three seconds.

I calmly raised my hand.

"It's mine."