Chapter Sixteen

About a year ago, Elsa was heading a team to supervise a buyout for this startup company that would apparently "revolutionize the automobile industry" with some universal addition for car engines. Their product had barely been tested aside from a few heavily controlled, but ArenCorp had decided to take a chance and absorb the company into their own blooming automobile division.

The papers were all set and the meetings had already been conducted, all Elsa and her team needed to do was ensure that everything was signed on the dotted line. A day before the buyout happened, however, Elsa had second thoughts about it and voiced her concerns to the higher-ups; she had done enough for the corporation by then to stay in their good graces and gain their trust, so they put it on her to make the final decision.

Elsa went with her gut and backed out of the deal with the startup, much to their dismay, and she and her team went back to ArenCorp emptyhanded. A month later, the startup was bought out by some motor company in Detroit which bolstered the auto industry there. Even today Arendelle, and in conjunction ArenCorp, struggled to break into the same industry. All because of one decision from Elsa, and it was the hardest one she'd ever had to make.

Until today.

When Sheila finally understood why Elsa had called her up to her office, the always present smile on her face quickly faded into a mortified look of shock. There was an unhealthy amount of crying, shouting, and pleading- mostly from Sheila, but it wasn't as if Elsa could remain stone-faced through this whole ordeal- and in the end, the loyal receptionist walked out of the office unemployed and heartbroken, and the disgusted CEO sat in her office chair repeatedly telling herself she did what she had to do.

As soon as the deed was done, Elsa stopped the recording and eyed the timestamp: 5 minutes, 43 seconds. It only took 5 minutes and 43 seconds for her to ruin someone's life, but then again how long would it take for this person to ruin hers? She sent off the recording along with a message that read "It's done, you son of a bitch.", seconds before Hannah came into her office.

She stood in the same spot that Sheila had just been fired in, hands on her hips looking utterly perplexed. "I heard yelling through the door, and Sheila just left here crying. Elsa, what just happened?"

For a second, Elsa wanted to pull out the age-old lie she had gotten so used to saying: "It's nothing, everything's fine." But even she knew that that wouldn't work in this scenario, so instead she forced herself to verbally admit the treacherous act she had just committed. "I…I had to fire her."

"You…what?!"

"I fired her! I…fired Sheila.", Elsa repeated, the words feeling like bitter poison escaping and latching onto her lips at the same time.

"Why would you…" There was no need for Hannah to finish that thought, she already knew why. "They told you to do it."

Elsa nodded solemnly.

"And you went through with it."

"I had to."

"You…went through with it.", Hannah repeated, ignoring the helplessness in Elsa's tone and instead focusing on the one solitary act.

"What else was I supposed to do?", Elsa protested. "I hated firing Sheila, she was one of my favorite people we had on staff, but in the end, I did what I had to do to protect this company."

Hannah shook her head, "No, no you didn't. I mean I did say that you should try and comply no matter what it took, but don't lie to me and say you did it for this company."

This day was already jarring and disconcerting enough for Elsa, and now she had to deal with insubordinate scolding from her assistant. But before she could come up with some sort of rebuttal that didn't delve into their awkwardness two weeks ago, the faint sound of the elevator bell dinging interrupted them.

Hannah sighed, "Look we can settle this later, but right now the guy that's supposed to help us, help you, is here. So, let's just see what he has to say." She left to go get Elsa's apparent savior, leaving her with a second to check her phone. Anxious, not eager, to see if this nightmare would continue. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was still no reply.

Soon, Hannah reappeared with a man in tow who looked all-too familiar. He was wearing typical black business wear, and he had short dark brown hair, matching the scruff on his chin. To Elsa's credit, it only took her a couple seconds to realize this was the same man she saw walking out of the elevator earlier today. "I know you.", she stated instead of giving a more appropriate greeting.

The man grinned, exhibiting a sliver of arrogance that he seemed to have perfected, "Well I sure hope so, I kinda work for you." He extended a hand, "Flynn Rider, thirty-fifth floor."

"Thirty-five? That's one of our sales floors.", Elsa replied as she shook his outstretched hand. Her familiarity of Flynn only reached as far as her encounter with him earlier, if he worked here then he must have been hired before Elsa took control. She remembered almost everyone ArenCorp hired once she became CEO, but not him.

"That's right, been moving my way up for the past three years.", Flynn replied as if he had read Elsa's mind. "Hopefully one day I'll find myself on a floor with a view as good as what you've got. In any case, my friend down at the station filled me in on what's going on. Sounds like you've got some trouble with some nutcase trying to blackmail you?"

Elsa sighed, "Unfortunately yes." She filled in the blanks that he didn't know: someone messaged her this morning, they had some dirt on her, and they had already forced her to commit one act against her better judgment. Through it all, he stood silently taking this information all in, arms crossed and eyes deep in thought. Flynn began to speak as soon as Elsa finished.

"Guy sounds like a hack, but a pretty convincing hack. Chances are all he has on you is this, but I don't think you want to take that chance. They could have more on you, or maybe just this one thing, the only way I'll know for sure- if you want me to help - is if you keep 'working' with them so I can find out how much they know and what they can do to you."

Elsa was hoping that he would have told her some better news, something akin to him knowing who this guy was and how he would be knocking down their door as soon as he left; instead all she got was the same old news that Hannah told her before. Which was expected, but still disappointing. "I have to keep working with them?", she said with her last bit of expectancy.

"Unfortunately yeah, but only until we know for sure who this is. Then you're free."

"And how exactly are you going to find out who they are?"

Flynn smiled, "Thought you'd never ask. Before I worked for ArenCorp I used to do a lot of work for the police tracking down hackers and stuff like that, as a thank you they let me keep the equipment I used to track them down and they still call me from time to time to do some freelance work. So, this guy, his number doesn't come up on your phone does it?"

Elsa raised an eyebrow, "No, it doesn't. How did you-"

"Of course it doesn't, which means this guy's got at least one brain cell; good for them, not as good for you. But if you keep in contact with them, I can guarantee you I'll be able to track down the number in due time and find everything on them. Also…I'm going to need your phone."

There was, of course, some hesitation on Elsa's part; her privacy had already been invaded once today, why would she willingly let it be invaded again? "What do you need it for?"

"In order for this to work, I need to put a tracker on your phone." Flynn pulled out a black, unassuming phone case from his suit pocket and showed it to Elsa. "Looks exactly like a phone case so no one will suspect a thing, and it'll allow me to trace the signal from your phone to theirs every time they message you, or vice versa."

Elsa was filled with a sense of dread and unease. It was bad enough that someone out there was pulling her proverbial strings from some unknown place, but now she had to most likely deal with someone working directly for her- someone she could literally see but knew little about- being her eyes and seeing everything she was. "This is a direct invasion of privacy.", Elsa protested. "There has to be some other way, one that doesn't have me granting you access to my personal information."

"It won't give me access to your personal information, or your entire phone.", Flynn reasoned. "All it'll do, literally, is just let me see the text messages you both send to each other. I can't look at anything else on your phone, I can't take it over, all I'll be able to do is watch the messages and trace the signal."

This new bit of information eased some nerves in Elsa, but not all of them. "And how do I know I can trust you?"

"Because I've done this before, and I know what I'm doing.", Flynn replied with a slightly offended tone. "You can call anyone down at the police station and mention the name 'Flynn Rider', and their faces will light up cause they can vouch for me and what I do. Besides, I've been working here for three years, if I wanted to do anything to sabotage this company, why would I wait till now?"

It wasn't a very convincing argument, but there was still some truth to it. The police department had recommended Flynn, and he had no motive to sabotage Elsa any further than she had already been. And besides, once again, what other choice did she have? She looked towards Hannah, seeing what she thought of this whole situation, but she wouldn't give Elsa anything. Her assistant just stood there behind the two with the most neutral expression and her arms crossed.

With no other options- aside from trying to do this by herself, which was already going horribly- Elsa sighed and motioned for the phone case. "Alright…I'm still not sure about this, but if this is the only way to get this guy out of my life for good, then I'll do it."

If there was one thing that Anna hated about her job, it was taking out the trash. It was a necessary evil, something that needed to be done unless she wanted the bakery to smell like bad eggs and moldy bread, but still something she dreaded doing. Once she finished making the trek a couple times to throw away the immense amount of trash they went through in a day, nose pinched between her fingers throughout the whole ordeal, she scrubbed and washed her hands like a surgeon getting out of a particularly messy surgery and joined Rapunzel at the storefront. The day was winding down for them, and she had next to nothing left to do in the back other than impatiently wait for her chocolate.

When she reached the front, her best friend was busy counting out the money in the register, Anna sat up on the counter and gently kicked her legs out in front of her. "One day we'll be able to keep this place open past 5.", Anna said hopefully.

"Yeah, one day.", Rapunzel repeated, trying to match Anna's enthusiasm while still counting out the surprising amount of money in their register. "Everything going alright in the back?"

Anna nodded, which didn't give much of an answer since Rapunzel hadn't peeled her eyes up to meet hers yet. "Yeah everything's fine, I've just got nothing to do back there so I thought I'd join you."

She heard Rapunzel let out a short chuckle, it didn't sound mocking or condescending, more like amusing. "What? What's so funny?"

Finally, Rapunzel looked up at her, and on her face was a proud smile, like a mother looking at a drawing their kid made for them. "Nothing, it's just that like a month ago I had to practically drag you out of your little hideaway just to do simple stuff like hang out with me up here, and now you're actually doing it on your own." She reached over and patted Anna's arm, "Look at you, showing some character development."

Anna scoffed, "Character development? Yeesh, you make it sound like we're in a TV show or a book or something. And if we were on a TV show, I'd like to talk to the producer and straighten out a couple things about the plot. Maybe rewrite a few key moments, you know?"

"Pssh, there's no fun in that.", Rapunzel rebutted.

Amidst the nonsensical talk about bad plots and character progression, Anna found herself agreeing with Rapunzel's main point. This was the first time she had willingly stepped out of her workspace for more than just a few minutes, maybe the festival gave her some much needed experience being more of a frontlines kind of person, or maybe her life was finally a little less hectic and she didn't have to worry anymore about who came through that door. Maybe it was both.

Nonetheless, she cherished this peaceful moment the two were sharing, one she hadn't had in a while. "I guess you're right, I've never been that present up here before.", Anna said, finally bringing the conversation back to its earlier roots. "But now that I'm here…it's nice. I see why you love spending so much time at the front."

"Well I'm glad you see things my way.", Rapunzel said as she closed the register and leaned on the counter, giving her full attention to Anna. "Besides, it gets pretty boring without my best friend with me to talk about producers and plot and stuff like that."

Anna looked at her sheepishly, "Yeah I've been kind of a jerk about that, haven't I? Not being present, I mean. But hey, no better time than the present, pun intended, to fix that right?"

"Right!"

"Right." Anna smiled and eagerly upped the pace of her kicking. "So then what're you up to tonight? Let's go get dinner or something and just do regular best friend stuff for a change instead of talking about my sorry excuse of a love life."

Rapunzel hissed and averted her gaze away from Anna and towards a random donut in the display case behind her, a telltale sign that Anna was about to get blown off. "What? What's up?", she asked anyway.

"Ah, it's just…I…kinda already have plans with Flynn tonight?"

Of course.

"Again?! That's the third time in like a week! I've barely seen you around in the apartment as it is.", Anna was happy that Rapunzel had finally found a boyfriend – she assumed they had assigned the labels to each other after a handful of successful dates, even though she hadn't asked Rapunzel about this yet- but that didn't make her any less upset about the lack of time she got to spend with her best friend.

"I knoooow, I'm a bad person, but he made reservations to this really fancy restaurant downtown two weeks in advance so I'd hate to ask him to cancel it. Tomorrow though it'll just be you and me, I promise."

Rapunzel had that well-practiced apologetic pout going on that she knew Anna fell for every time, and this time was no different. With a heavy, almost over-exaggerated sigh, Anna conceded, "Ugh fine, you can go on your date and leave me alone. Again. I guess I'll just go back to the apartment after this and do some more research on making chocolate, find something new or relearn something about chocolate molds…or something." The more Anna talked, the more she realized how depressing that sounded; and yet that had been pretty much her life these past two weeks.

"Oh come on Anna, you don't have to do that, you can't just keep spending all your free time cooped up in the apartment."

"Well what do you suggest I do then? Spend my free time cooped up in a library?" In hindsight that didn't seem like such a bad idea, libraries were quiet and a guaranteed few hours of uninterrupted free time. Plus there were books, lots of books.

"No, nothing like that. Pretty sure Arendelle U filled out our quota for book reading for the next twenty years or so. Why don't you go do something fun?! Like go see a movie, or go to a bar, maybe meet someone." Rapunzel wanted to hide the eagerness in her voice when she suggested meeting someone, but didn't do a good job at it.

"Are you saying that I need to meet someone?", Anna asked, probably more offended than she should have been.

"You don't need to, but don't you want to? Or do you solely prefer hardheaded CEO's with icy blond hair and pantsuits?"

Anna wanted to shoot her a glare as if to say "Don't go there.", but for some reason all she could muster was a pitiful frown-pout hybrid that made her look like a kid forced to apologize for "accidentally" hitting someone they didn't like.

"That doesn't sound like a 'no'.", Rapunzel stated when she didn't hear any protesting from Anna. "To either of the questions."

Somehow, Rapunzel had also become a believer, like her mother, that Anna was still hung up on Elsa, that she still had some unresolved feelings towards the woman she was so desperately trying not to have such a stranglehold on her life anymore. Anna, obviously, wasn't a believer of this and didn't hesitate to remind the two that she vehemently disagreed with this notion every chance she got. "I told you before, I am not into Elsa anymore."

"I never said Elsa, I may have described someone that sounds a lot like Elsa, but I never said outright that she was Elsa. You came up with that conclusion yourself, missy.", Rapunzel smirked like she had accomplished something with her word trickery.

And she kind of did. Anna groaned and hopped off the counter, frowning at Rapunzel with hands pressed to her hips. "You're impossible.", she said exasperated.

"Love you too.", Rapunzel replied before reaching into her pocket and pulling out her wallet. "But I'm serious Anna, you gotta get out of the apartment sometimes. Go to a bar or something, or a club. You don't even have to meet anyone, just have a good time. I'll even give you my card, so you don't even have to worry about paying."

She pulled out her credit card and thrust it towards Anna, who looked at the purple piece of plastic quizzically. "You…do realize that whatever I spend comes out of your paycheck, which still comes out of the funds from our bakery, right?"

"Noted. Now are you gonna have some fun tonight? Or are you gonna mope around and bake cookies again? And please don't say bake cookies, because we're already running out of space in the fridge to put them."

Anna continued to alternate between looking at the credit card and Rapunzel's eager face, carefully weighing her options. It wasn't as if she was against the idea of going to a bar and letting loose for at least a night, but going to one alone on a Monday night? Not only that but what was the point of even going if she decided not to even talk to anyone? Rapunzel may have told her that she didn't have to meet someone new, but when you take that out of the equation all you're left with is your lonely self sucking down the fifth margarita for the night while the bartender looks at you with his fingers all but ready to dial a cab, or 911.

But then, what would the alternative be? Staying at the apartment alone? She was an expert at that, but even that was getting to be a bit too depressing for her taste. It's times like this where Anna wished she had more than one friend…and with that thought she finally realized that she actually did have to do this.

With great reluctance, Anna grabbed the card and put it in her pocket, much to the delight of Rapunzel. "Ugh fine, I'll go. But I'm not gonna go out and get hammered on a Monday night, one of us has to be here tomorrow morning to open up shop."

Rapunzel didn't say anything, she simply squealed with joy and enveloped Anna in a hug.

This was going to be an interesting night.

Flynn didn't stick around for too long once Elsa had placed the tracker on her phone, and ironically Elsa wished that he had stayed for longer. Because once he left, the awkwardness that enveloped the room beforehand, and then stayed out of the way while the trio had their conversation, returned once more between Elsa and Hannah. Once that door closed, and Elsa sank into her chair rubbing her temples, Hannah went on the offensive.

"I still can't believe you fired Sheila.", she said coldly, hands still wrapped around the door handle leading out of Elsa's office.

Elsa was definitely not ready to have this conversation right now, "I already told you I did what I had to do."

"No yeah, you said that, and I believe that. But it's still really messed up Elsa, and what's more messed up is that you had to lie about why you had to do it."

"I'm not doing this Hannah, not right now. We can talk about whatever ulterior motives you think I have later." Elsa pinched the bridge of her nose and stared at the dark, blank screen of her phone. There was still no response, but she caught a reflection of herself and was just now starting to realize how prominent the bags under her eyes were.

"And when is this mythical 'later' going to be? Another two weeks from now?"

Maybe it was the sheer insanity of her predicament, but Elsa actually smiled when she heard Hannah say that. It was a tired smile, but one that felt appropriate, a smile that said of course she wasn't going to get away with her past mistakes, of course they would be dragged through the mud, of course her nightmare wasn't over. She couldn't help herself either when a faint laugh escaped her lips, "Should have known we couldn't just let what happened between us pass by."

Hannah turned around and faced Elsa, or her desk at least, looking genuinely hurt. A kind of hurt that seemed to have been pent up for weeks, or maybe even longer. "Did you expect me to not bring it up? Did you expect me to just let that elephant stay in the room for as long as we worked together?"

Elsa stood up and the words left her lips before she could steel herself, before she could bite her tongue to keep from saying anything stupid or regretful. "We don't work together, you work for me. How come all of a sudden you want to know so much about me if it's none of your business?"

Hannah advanced towards Elsa with an accusatory finger pointed straight at her, "Because you made it my business! If you didn't do it before, then you sure as hell made it my business now by dragging me into the mess that you made for yourself. Elsa, I'm not trying to lecture you, and I'm not trying to tell you that you did this all wrong, because I don't know enough about you to make that judgment. All I'm trying to dois know more about you, damn it! You can at least start by telling me who this Anna person is and why we need to keep this such a secret…"

There was still time to salvage the dysfunctional, distorted relationship Elsa had with Hannah, all she had to do was apologize, stop going on the offensive, maybe even tell her how messed up her life was before and why it's coming back to haunt her now. There was still time, but Elsa didn't do any of this; in fact she did the complete opposite. "I don't think I owe you an explanation for a damn thing, I don't pay you to be my therapist, hell I already have a therapist- that I never wanted, by the way- and I don't need another one."

Like a pot of scalding, hot water, everything that Elsa repressed from four years ago, from two weeks ago, and from this morning had begun to boil over. And there was no stopping it, even if she wanted it to, and with the amount of control she'd already relinquished today, Elsa definitely didn't want to. She was in full control when she said this:

"I'm sorry that you're so needy, that you find it appropriate to try and bully information out of your boss, but if you expect me to be an open book then you are sorely mistaken. I have never been that way, and I will never be that way; so you're barking up the wrong tree here. If you want affection, and telling stories, and hand holding then you're gonna have to find it somewhere else. Because it's sure as shit not gonna come from me."

For the longest time, the pair stood their ground without saying anything else; and despite her best efforts to repress the thoughts, the scene reminded Elsa of her staredown with Anna. Only Hannah didn't match the intensity on Anna's face, in fact a few seconds into the deafening silence she looked away and down at the ground. Low enough that Elsa couldn't see her expression.

With each passing second that ticked by, Elsa grew more and more impatient. She took one more shot to see if Hannah would finally reply, "Anything else you want to know about me?"

Finally, Hannah answered after walking back to the door with her head still low; and even though her voice was faint and hoarse, Elsa could hear the two words with sickening clarity: "I quit."

The door closed, leaving Elsa to finally realize the gravity and impact of her choices and her words. Before she could do something, anything, to try and remedy this situation like go after Hannah or catch her breath, her phone vibrated, making her feel more like garbage than she already did.

UNKNOWN: You followed your instructions perfectly, Elsa, I especially liked the tears to help sell the whole thing. I'll let you know when I have a new task for you. The fun's just getting started. ;)

A/N: For the record, I am pro-libraries. They have good books in there, like that one book where there's a problem that needs to be resolved.