The Business Trip, Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
The evening began just like the morning did, with June holding Elizabeth’s hand as they stepped into the lobby. Then, Elizabeth knew exactly what their itinerary looked like, and had been reluctantly on board to go along with the unorthodox plan that her assistant had suggested. Now, she had no idea what to expect beyond ‘dinner.’ They were well past the point of no return, with Elizabeth dolled up and recently warned about her attitude; there was no way she’d be able to convince June to let her go back upstairs and hang out in the hotel suite like she did last night.
June led her towards the dining room across the way. It was a rather short walk, though Elizabeth felt self conscious with every step. As usual, her disguise worked way too well; no one looked twice at her, since she actually looked like a child rather than a young adult in a ridiculous ensemble.
As Elizabeth feared, they were having dinner with their boss. Who else, when he was the only person June knew at the hotel outside the clients she had met with today? He was already seated at a table near the corner; when Elizabeth spotted him, she froze and gripped June’s hand more tightly. She was tempted to run away, yet equally tempted to race up to him and somehow explain everything despite how it was difficult to keep track of everything as the girl who experienced the mortifying progression personally. Caught between two bad options, her feet ended up rooted to the floor in indecision. That, and the last interaction with the director of their department led to June dragging her to the bathroom and washing her mouth out with soap.
Interpreting the hand squeeze as immature nervousness, June chuckled and said, “You’re fine, Lizzie. Dinner with grown-ups isn’t scary.” She only paused long enough to give her the patronizing reassurance, then gave Elizabeth’s arm a tug as she kept walking towards the table.
Mr. Evans stood up and greeted June, shaking her hand before gesturing for her to take a seat and offering her some wine from the bottle he had already ordered. “And it’s nice to see you again, Lizzie,” he said, “We can get you something more than water if you’d like; I wasn’t sure what you might want.”
Answering for her, June said, “She usually has a glass of milk with dinner. No rush, of course; water is good, too.”
He really didn’t recognize her. Not that Elizabeth could blame him. She had seen her reflection a few times at this point, and only had so many interactions with the director of their department on any given week. Between her dyed hair, childish dress, and new braces, her current appearance was a far cry from how she normally presented herself. As if all of that wasn’t enough, the ‘drink order’ June suggested for her was something that most adults wouldn’t have at a nicer establishment like this.
Before Elizabeth could decide whether or not to speak up about her situation, June placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “Remember what we talked about, Lizzie. A well behaved girl speaks when she is spoken to. Can you sit there quietly while Mr. Evans and I discuss some adult things ? If you want, I can see if they can bring you a coloring book with your milk.”
She wasn’t that young. Twelve years old was too mature to busy herself with crayons at a restaurant table. It had the intended effect of convincing her to stay quiet, to avoid being demeaned even further. “I’ll behave,” she mumbled, “I don’t need to color . . . ”
“Good.” June turned to their boss with an apologetic smile. “Her parents really should have picked her up by now. I didn’t expect to be responsible for her for this long.”
“It’s fine,” he said, “She clearly hasn’t been a distraction. You’ve been doing a wonderful job in Elizabeth’s absence; a few of the prospective clients have already gotten started on the paperwork, and most of the others have expressed interest in following up with us on Monday morning. I hope you don’t mind me getting right to business, but I was thinking about shifting you to a more managerial role, rather than an admin position.”
Elizabeth tensed up. That was the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen to her assistant. The plan was to fire June within the month, not promote her to a position where a decision like that would be out of Elizabeth’s hands.
“In what department, Mr. Evans?” June asked, playing it cool, “I wasn’t aware we had any openings.” She would know, due to her current responsibilities.
“Originally, there had been discussion of creating an assistant manager position for you to shadow someone until you were ready for the next step. Nothing is officially decided yet, but there’s been talk of dividing one or two departments into smaller teams in order to streamline things. If we were to take that approach, it would make sense to train you to take over half of one of those teams, rather than replacing your immediate superior.”
June nodded. “I can manage that. After juggling my admin responsibilities and being Ms. Harris’s assistant, I’m used to staying on top of everything required of me.”
“May I ask you a question, June?” he said, “And please be candid with me; I’m not looking for a diplomatic response.”
“Of course,” she replied, “Ask me anything, if it helps determine what my future here is going to look like.”
“In your opinion, how much work does Elizabeth actually do on a daily basis?” he asked.
“Hmm.” June paused long enough to take a sip of wine. Not wanting to seem too eager to throw her boss under the bus, even if everything she was about to say was the actual truth, she hesitated once more before getting into it. “If I’m being honest . . . very little. She makes me do most of it. Like I mentioned earlier, I was the one who put together the packets and the slideshows for this weekend. Most weeks, she has me do the prep work for her client meetings, as well as for the collaborations with our other departments. Not that I’m trying to take credit for everything. But, speaking candidly, she seems to use my assistant title as an excuse to push anything remotely clerical on me. Everyone else on our team picks up the slack when it comes to servicing our existing accounts, and whatever else she asks of them; I’m only around half the time, as I also need to tend to my administrative duties.”
Elizabeth sat there in stunned silence as June talked about her in such a way. From her perspective, that is absolutely not how she ran things. The whole point of being a manager was to delegate things that weren’t big picture responsibilities. That’s why she had an assistant who could do all the grunt work. Elizabeth deserved a less hectic schedule; that was her reward for earning a higher position in the company.
“We’ve had problems with people in such roles before,” Mr. Evans said, “Out of curiosity, do you think you could manage her team? It sounds like you already have a good grasp on most of Elizabeth’s day to day work.”
“In theory,” June said, “I would need to look at the full scope of her job description before confidently saying that I could for sure, but I have a really good relationship with everyone in our department. I’d just need to get used to the responsibilities I’m not currently handling. Are you thinking about moving Elizabeth somewhere else?” Considering the negative way in which Elizabeth was being discussed, there was no point in pretending that this was going in the direction of little Lizzie’s desk needing to be filled because she was also being promoted.
“Between you and me, I’m having doubts as to whether she’s a good fit with our company moving forward,” he said, “At best, I might let her stay on as a saleswoman, though I find most employees don’t take well to being demoted. It’s often cleaner to fire them outright, as paying out severance is less complicated than dealing with the resentment and lower quality of work that tends to follow from a pay cut.”
“No!” Elizabeth exclaimed. He couldn’t do that!! She was the manager, and June was a fucking liar. This all started when Mr. Evans had been told that Elizabeth had taken an unapproved, last minute vacation. But she was sitting right next to him, and had only gone along with being June’s ‘niece’ due to the combination of not having anything else to wear and going the extra mile to land a client. “You can’t!”
“LIZZIE.” June shot her a stern look, whisper-yelling to remind her that they were in public and to not make a scene. “You promised that you would behave. So, behave.”
Absolutely not. ‘Behaving’ meant biting her tongue while her boss was talking about firing her. And this whole aunt/niece dynamic had already lasted way longer, and had been way more extreme, than she had anticipated. Elizabeth wasn’t going to just sit there and keep pretending when her job and her reputation were on the line. “Mr. Evans! It’s not true! I’m-”
That’s as far as she got before June intervened. “Lizzie! We are in public.” Glaring daggers at the petite girl, June added, “Final warning. One more word out of you, and I’ll have to punish you properly.”
“But-” Elizabeth started. She didn’t actually have anything to say off the top of her head, due to how flustered she was from all of this. June was her assistant, for fuck’s sake! Elizabeth was the one who was supposed to be yelling at her, rather than the other way around.
Though Elizabeth cut herself off, June still counted the single word as going against what she had just warned her about. “I’m really sorry about her behavior, Mr. Evans,” she sighed, “Can we pick this up again in a few minutes? I thought she could handle a nice dinner, but clearly I was wrong. It’s probably best if I take her back upstairs before we continue.”
“Not a problem at all,” he said, “It sounds like she’s had a long day. Better she has a tantrum in front of me than in front of our clients.”
Elizabeth gasped. She was not having a tantrum! Hearing her boss talk about her like that was so much worse than suffering through a variety of strangers assuming she was so much younger and less mature than she actually was. “It’s not like that!” she insisted, “I’m not-” This time, she wasn’t cut off by June’s voice. Instead, the young woman grabbed one of her twintails and dragged her to her feet and away from the table. “OW. OhmyGodstopstopstop!!” Elizabeth squealed, “June! Fuck, don’t- Nooooo!”
Ignoring her shrill protests, June simply apologized to those sitting nearby, assuring them that they were leaving and that the disruptive little girl wouldn’t be coming back.
Similar to the last time June disciplined Elizabeth like this on the main floor of the hotel, she dragged the youthful looking girl through the lobby and towards the bathroom where she had washed her mouth out with soap. However, she changed course at the last second and made her way to the elevators with Elizabeth in tow.
Still sounding quite shrill and whiny as her hair was being used in such an awful way, Elizabeth kept begging for her to let go. June didn’t listen, nor did anyone else in the vicinity. Everyone assumed she was some bratty girl causing a scene, being taken back to her room so she would no longer be a disruption.
The second the elevator doors closed behind them, June gave her twintail a sharp yank and hissed, “Be quiet, Lizzie! I am so tired of dealing with your nonsense. You keep saying you’ll behave, and you keep causing problems.”
“Mr. Evans can’t fire me!” Elizabeth exclaimed. She was way too worried about the conversation she had just sat through downstairs to play along with the aunt/niece thing that should have ended hours ago, “I’m not on vacation. I’m here! You need to tell him-”
“I don’t need to do anything,” June said, “And you’ve been nothing but a bratty little girl this weekend. You overslept and almost made us miss our flight. You forgot your suitcase. You lost your purse. And what happened at my friend’s place? Oh, right. You couldn’t stay out of trouble with the other kids for five minutes. The truth is, Lizzie, you’re way less mature than Maggie is. There’s only one thing you deserve right now, and that’s a good spanking.”
“No!!” Elizabeth blurted out. While June had threatened it a couple times now, Elizabeth was too old for a spanking. Plus she was June’s boss! Not that it had felt like that for quite some time. And based on everything Mr. Evans just said, Elizabeth wouldn’t be anyone’s boss for much longer unless she could undo all the damage that had been done over the last twelve hours or so.
“Is that your favorite word?” June asked, in a mocking tone, “Lizzie. How old are you?”
“I’m- I’m, umm,” she stammered. The real answer was ‘23,’ but she had written so many lines about being nearly half that age. Elizabeth was so flustered, and also knew that saying anything but what June was fishing for would land her in even more trouble. Stuck between wanting to assert that she was an adult and none of this was fair, or cave and say the false age that she was as June’s niece, Elizabeth ended up too indecisive to say anything at all.
Answering for her, June said, “You’re twelve years old. Isn’t that right?” Twisting slightly on the twintail in warning, she met Elizabeth’s eyes and awaited her response.
Elizabeth winced, then gave a meek nod. Her cheeks were bright red at this point, and not even the recent interaction with their boss was enough to give her the necessary backbone to argue against the woman who had been acting like her aunt all day.
“That’s what I thought,” June said. In near perfect timing, the elevator stopped on their floor a few seconds later. “And who’s in charge?” Not waiting for a reply, she resumed dragging Elizabeth by her hair. This time, towards their hotel suite.
Of course, the answer was, ‘Aunt June.’
Once they were back in the private common room of their small suite, June led Elizabeth by the hair until they were both in the bathroom. The only silver lining to this whole experience was that she was about to be disciplined here, rather than a more public place. First, June shoved the ‘bite size’ bar of soap into the girl’s mouth. “That’s for swearing downstairs.” Then, getting right to it, she bent Elizabeth over the sink and pulled the skirt of her childish dress up. “And this is what happens to bad little girls who misbehave at dinner.”
“Nnmgh” That’s as far as she got. An attempt to say her immature ‘favorite word,’ which only came out so well when the bar of soap was on her tongue and gradually creating the bitter taste that was reminiscent of the first time June had put her through a similar punishment. She gasped as June’s hand cracked down onto her ass; the plain panties did very little to soften the blow, and her whole body jolted from the force of the slap.
“Lizzie, shush,” June calmly yet firmly asked, before bringing her hand down on the opposite cheek.
“Mm mmm!” Elizabeth shook her head, failing to follow her assistant’s simple instruction. Not when she was being spanked for the first time in her life.
June just sighed. “Have it your way.”
Then she got to work. It really was the perfect exercise to take out months of frustration. Every slap was another way to pay Elizabeth back for how she acted like a bitch at work. Treating her like an immature tween was one thing; this, however, felt a lot more personal. June didn’t let up until her hand was stinging to the point where she couldn’t deliver another slap. By the end of the spanking, tears were streaming down Elizabeth’s face and her muffled cries had faded to pathetic whines.
“Look at yourself, Lizzie,” June demanded, just managing to keep a straight face despite the image she could see in the mirror. “Does that look like an adult to you?”
Elizabeth’s ass was on fire. It took a second for June’s harsh question to register, and another few seconds for her to blink away the most recent tears in order to see her reflection. It was not a flattering sight. Dyed hair styled in twintails, pink braces, flushed cheeks stained with tears, drooling slightly from how the suds had built up in her mouth throughout the spanking, and in the childish blue dress that made her boobs look practically nonexistent. The thoroughly punished girl looking back at her was a far cry from the Elizabeth who strutted around the office in her power suits and bossed June and her other underlings around. She really did look twelve, too.
“LIZZIE.” June ripped the soap out of the girl’s mouth, pinching her ass with her other hand. “I asked you a question. Are you an adult? Or a little girl?”
“I- I’m a l-l-little girl . . . ” she stammered out right away. Anything to avoid being spanked again.
“Look at yourself,” June echoed, “Really look.” She gave it a beat for it to really sink in for the defeated young woman. “You’re twelve years old, Lizzie. You are my niece. Act like it. One more step out of line, and I’ll drop you off at the nearest daycare and fly home without you.”