Chapter 4

The following Monday, Sarah was in the middle of a critical client presentation.

Her team was gathered, the clients attentive.

Suddenly, the conference room door burst open.

Mike stood there, red-faced, Brittany hovering behind him in the hallway, a smug look on her face.

"Sarah! I need to talk to you, now!" Mike yelled.

Colleagues stared, the client, Mr. Harrison, raised an eyebrow.

Sarah felt a surge of fury, mixed with acute embarrassment.

"Mike, I am in a meeting," she said, her voice low and dangerously calm.

"I don't care! You cost me a huge gig because you took that camera! Brittany lost a massive brand deal!"

He was practically shouting, incited by Brittany, who was now peeking in with feigned concern.

"You owe me compensation, Sarah, and you need to give that camera back so Brittany can salvage things!"

Sarah maintained her composure, though her hands were clenched.

She looked at her supervisor, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Mike," Sarah said, her voice like ice, "you are disrupting my workplace, you need to leave."

"Not until you agree to pay for what you did!"

Sarah stood up, walked towards him.

Instead of arguing, she grabbed his ear, firmly.

"Ow! Sarah! What are you doing?" he yelped, surprised.

She twisted, not hard enough to cause real pain, but enough to shock and control.

She marched him, stumbling and complaining, out of the conference room, past her stunned colleagues, and towards the office exit.

Brittany, seeing her plan for a public shaming backfire, tried to intervene. "Let him go, you psycho!"

Sarah ignored her, pushing Mike through the main doors.

"Do not ever come to my office and behave like this again," Sarah said, her voice tight with controlled anger. "You are embarrassing yourself."

She released his ear, he rubbed it, looking more like a chastised child than a man in his mid-twenties.

She turned and walked back to the conference room, leaving Mike and a fuming Brittany outside.

Her colleagues were silent, Mr. Harrison looked intrigued.

Sarah smoothed her skirt, took a deep breath. "Now, Mr. Harrison, as I was saying about our Q3 projections..."

She finished the presentation flawlessly.

After the clients left, her supervisor, David, approached her.

"You okay, Sarah? That was... unexpected."

"I'm fine, David, just a family matter getting out of hand."

"Well," David said, a small smile playing on his lips, "you handled that with surprising... efficiency. Harrison was actually impressed, said you were a 'tough negotiator'."

Sarah blinked, then a small, wry smile touched her own lips.

An unforeseen positive outcome. Her directness, her refusal to be cowed in her own professional space, had somehow resonated.

The public display of her brother's immaturity, however mortifying, had also shown her strength.