Five Cases Of Scotch Ruined Him Chapter 1

The package room in the lobby of our corporate headquarters was dead empty. It was only then that my supervisor—who had just returned from a business trip—finally remembered the existence of the employee whose phone number he had blocked.

When I picked up the office line, his voice was frantic, a man whose world was actively catching fire. He demanded to know where the five cases of premium liquor were for tonight's executive dinner—the one meant to seal a ten-million-dollar contract. He practically screamed into the receiver, accusing me of hiding the shipment.

The irony was thick enough to choke on.

This whole disaster had started exactly three days ago. Claiming his corporate cards were maxed out, he had ordered me to front nearly ten thousand dollars of my own money to purchase five cases of reserve vintage Scotch and a custom corporate embosser. He told me it was a life-or-death emergency for a signing event the following week.

I had bitten my lip, drained my savings, and paid for it. The next morning, when I bumped into him in the breakroom, he brushed me off, promising to authorize the reimbursement by the end of the day.

The day after that, he claimed he was dizzy from back-to-back meetings. Just wait one more day, Paige, he had said.

On the third day, he crossed the line. He left on a business trip without a word, ignored all my messages, and sent my calls straight to voicemail.

So, sitting in the stairwell with the cold, automated tone of a blocked call ringing in my ear, I had made a singular, split-second decision. I opened the shipping app, intercepted the packages, and canceled the entire order.

* * *

"Paige, are you allergic to your notifications?"

The sharp rap of knuckles against my desk startled me. I pulled my eyes away from the architectural blueprints scattered across my workspace and looked up. Bradley, my direct supervisor, was staring down at me. His tone was perfectly mild, his face arranged into a mask of corporate friendliness, but the smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

For the past half hour, the messaging icon on my monitor had been flashing relentlessly. I had ignored it, knowing from a year of bitter experience that Bradley reaching out directly never meant anything good.

I had simply kept my head down, burying myself deeper into the CAD files. I just hadn't expected him to actually walk out of his glass-walled sanctuary to confront me.

Without waiting for an invitation, he leaned over my shoulder, the overpowering scent of his designer cologne invading my space. He took my mouse, jiggling it to wake the screen, and clicked open the chat window I had been so desperately trying to ignore.

"I need you to cover this invoice for me, Paige," he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "It's all stuff for the big signing next week. My limits are totally frozen right now."

He said it with such breathtaking entitlement. If he had known my passcode, I’m half-convinced he would have processed the payment himself right then and there.

I couldn't even count how many times we had played this exact game.

During my very first week as a junior designer, he had forwarded me a cart containing three boxes of premium binder clips. It was thirty bucks. I was eager to please, terrified of making a bad impression, so I paid it without a second thought.

I didn't realize that in doing so, I had bled in shark-infested waters.

A few days later, it was a hundred-dollar order. Mostly random, disparate office supplies. Back then, I had tried to maintain my professional boundaries, offering a polite, tentative refusal.

"Brad, does the company actually reimburse us for these kinds of individual orders?" I had asked. "I'm still waiting on the money for those binder clips from last week."

He had frozen, a flash of genuine annoyance crossing his features.

"Paige, these are essentials for our department," he had snapped, his voice carrying just enough for the surrounding desks to hear. "It’s practically pennies. Why are you being so difficult about this? Just fill out an expense report, bring it to accounting, and I’ll sign off on it. Easy."

With that, he had turned on his heel, effectively ending the conversation. As he walked away, I distinctly heard him mutter, "So damn emotional."

I had swallowed my pride, quietly canceled the sweetgreen salad I had scheduled for lunch, and bought a stale sandwich from the lobby vending machine instead. My checking account barely had enough to cover his "pennies."

Yes, the company technically reimbursed us. But the bureaucratic red tape was a nightmare. The money always took weeks, sometimes over a month, to hit my account. Bradley's demands had only grown more frequent, the amounts steadily climbing, and I was drowning under the weight of it.

So today, when I saw his name flashing on my screen, a knot of dread had formed in my stomach.

But nothing could have prepared me for the number staring back at me now.

Nine thousand, five hundred dollars.

I stared at the screen, my vision tunneling. A custom corporate embosser. And... Scotch?

Five entire cases of limited-edition, twenty-year reserve Macallan?

When I didn't immediately speak, Bradley sighed, a harsh, impatient sound. "Paige, I told you, this is for the signing next week. You know exactly what’s at stake here. This is a ten-million-dollar contract. If we land this, the bonuses for our department are going to be astronomical. This is a drop in the bucket, and you’ll get it all back through Concur anyway."

A drop in the bucket? I almost laughed out loud. I was a junior employee barely making rent. Nine and a half thousand dollars was everything I had to my name. It was my safety net. It was my mother's medical fund.

Bradley stamped his foot, an ugly flash of panic in his eyes. "Look, I just need you to float it! If you can't wait for the corporate reimbursement cycle, I will personally wire you the cash tomorrow morning. Do you want me to pause the entire workflow and have the whole floor pitch in like a bake sale?"

It was rare to hear actual desperation in his voice. We were in the eleventh hour of a massive push, and the tension on the floor was palpable. A few of my colleagues, exhausted and running on fumes, looked up from their monitors.

"Just do it, Paige. Don't be the bottleneck," Kevin, a senior architect, muttered loudly, shooting me a glare. A murmur of agreement rippled through the pod.

Surrounded by the heavy, judgmental stares of my team, and looking at Bradley’s dead-serious expression, the fight drained out of me.

My hands shook as I picked up my phone. I double-clicked the side button. FaceID authenticated.

Payment Successful.

The moment the green checkmark appeared, Bradley practically sprinted back to his office. But as I watched his retreating back, a cold, sickening weight settled deep in my bones.