Chapter 4

After leaving Janet's place, I drove straight to the popular escape room from the photo.

As it happened, one of my closest college friends, Daniel Sterling, was a partner in the business. With his help, pulling up the surveillance footage from that day six months ago was a breeze.

On the monitor, Cedric had one arm around the waist of a flashily dressed young woman. The two of them were clearly intimate. After they finished the game, they kissed without a care in the world in front of the machine that printed custom souvenir cards.

The woman handed him a card printed with cartoon portraits of the two of them.

Watching their sickening faces on the screen, I smiled, thinking, "Cedric Zimmer, since you have no shame, I'll play this game with you until the very end."

I had Daniel save an HD copy of the video onto my flash drive.

The next day, I went to work as usual. The moment I stepped into the lobby, I heard a commotion. A crowd had gathered near the entrance.

Standing right at the center of it all were my father-in-law, John Zimmer, and Cedric.

John slammed his fist on the reception desk and shouted at the top of his lungs, "This is outrageous! Everyone, come take a look! This wicked woman got rich and now she wants to dump her husband who stood by her when she had nothing!"

He wiped away fake tears and gestured wildly at Cedric. "My son married her even though her family was poor. He treated her like a queen and catered to her every need!"

"And what happened?" he roared. "The moment her father showed up, he pretended to be sick and forced his daughter to turn against her own husband! Now she wants a divorce and plans to leave my son with nothing. She's trying to destroy him! Everyone, be the judge of this!"

Cedric stood nearby, holding up his phone and livestreaming everything.

He didn't say a word. He simply stood there with a stony expression, acting as though he held the moral high ground.

My colleagues were pointing and whispering, while several passersby stopped to film with their phones. The security guards tried to step in, but John's relatives shoved them back.

The lobby descended into total chaos.

The viewer count on the livestream exploded, and the comments section was flooded with vile, hateful comments attacking me.

"Get this terrible woman out of the company! Boycott the company's products!"

"A scumbag like her can become a senior executive? There's no way her hands are clean. Someone needs to audit her right now!"

"She looks decent enough, but she's so scheming. Poor guy."

Just then, Ethan stepped out of the elevator with several senior executives, all of them wearing grim expressions.

When he saw the chaos unfolding, he was so furious that his hands trembled. He pointed at me and roared, "Susan! Is this what you call fixing the problem? You're officially fired! Get the hell out of my company!"

The moment Cedric and John heard those words, they fell silent. They exchanged a quick glance, a flicker of panic crossing their eyes.

The whole scene they had caused today was nothing more than an attempt to use public pressure to force me to give in once again.

After all, the old me had always been obedient and easy to squeeze money out of. If I really lost my job as a senior executive and my income dried up, how were they supposed to milk me for cash ever again?

Cedric stammered, trying to say something to salvage the situation, but I broke the silence first.

"Mr. Caldwell, please give me another five minutes. If I can't resolve this by then, I'll leave immediately. I won't drag the company down with me."

"What else could you possibly have to say? The evidence is all over the internet!" Ethan barked impatiently.

I turned to Leon, who had always gotten along well with me. "Leon, plug in my flash drive and project it onto the LED screen in the lobby."

Leon quickly worked at the computer and did as I said. The screen, which had been playing the company's promotional video, flickered. Everyone's attention was drawn to it.

Cedric seemed to sense what was coming, and his expression changed. He lunged forward to stop Leon, but it was too late.

I grabbed the megaphone from the security guard standing next to me. My voice echoed throughout the lobby.

"Everyone, take a look at this video. Once you've watched it, you can decide if you still want to defend this lying father-son duo."