WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

SALEM’S POV

“Girl, this is huge news!” Rejoice whisper-yelled.

“Tell the whole world, would you?” I said dryly, and she smiled and shrugged. “Sorry,” she said, and we both giggled.

“But yeah, it all happened so fast that even I don’t know what to do right now… I am just still processing.”

“Well, that is good then. Ben can finally shut up when he finds out that you are the new missus of the office—”

“No one is going to find out about this, Rejoice,” I said.

She raised her brows at me. “Umm… why the fuck not?”

I ran my hand through my hair. “Well, for one reason, Marilyn is going to have my head if she finds out.”

“Omo, shit is crazy.”

Rejoice is Nigerian, so at this point I was used to her just bringing up random slang from her inventory… And even though I did not understand it all, I could understand it in context sometimes.

I heaved a sigh. “Anyway…”

Marilyn walked into the office with Ben hot on her heels. She had an extremely angry look on her face.

I gulped.

This was about me, for sure.

“Miss Grant, could you stand up?” Marilyn said with a scarily calm expression on her face. There was a stiff smile locked on her lips, but when compared to her beady eyes that were locked right on me, I just knew that there was nothing happy about her.

I stood up nervously and shook my head when I saw Rejoice open her mouth.

I loved her, I really did… But right now was not the time for her to talk, and it was only going to make things worse.

“Yes, Miss Smith?”

She folded her arms. “You are still going to act clueless about what happened?” she asked.

A confused frown came over my face. “I am sorry, I don’t understand what you are talking about. I finished up all of my work and I left a message with HR…”

“You did not show up to work today, and you think that you can just slack off work after making a mistake in the quotation? We lost a major deal with an important investor. How are you going to fix that?”

“I am sorry, Miss Smith, but I did not make a mistake in the quotation. I am usually thorough with this; there must have been a mistake somewhere.”

Ben stepped forward. “First you make a mistake, and now you dare to talk back to our head of department?” he asked with a mocking smile on his face.

I took in a deep breath and prayed to the heavens that this man did not manage to get on my nerves.

“I have told you, there was a mistake somewhere… I did not make a mistake,” I said.

Marilyn folded her arms and smirked at me. “Then what does this mean?”

She flung a stack of papers at me, and when I picked it up, my face paled.

That was the quotation, but where I remembered putting 3,000,000 had suddenly turned into 30,000,000.

I shook my head, flipping through the pages. “I did not write this.”

“Seriously, Salem, you are seeing the proof right in front of you and you still insist on lying?” Ben’s voice was loud enough to attract even more attention toward where we were standing, and they were all pointing and whispering.

“She is going to be fired today for sure.”

“Good, she deserves it. Does nothing but make a ruckus with her friend all day.”

“Finally this office is getting some well-deserved cleanup. A lot of poor rats stink up the area.”

Rejoice stood up instantly. “I know Salem. In all her years of working here, she has never made such a mistake.”

“Rejoice…”

“No!” She walked forward to stand in front of me. “You know the kind of person that Salem is—she is one of the best there is… Something must be wrong!”

Ben glared at her. “It seems like you are really in the mood to leave here with Salem, right?”

“You fucking—”

I stopped her. “Rejoice, please, let me handle my own matters.”

I tried to look strong, but inside I was panicking.

No, I really could not lose this job; a lot was hanging on it. How was I even going to begin to dream of paying Atlas back if I was rendered jobless?

I turned back to Marilyn. “I have the proof. The original quotation is here in my laptop… Yes, I will prove it to you,” I said frantically.

She folded her arms. “You can show us then.”

Ben scoffed. “Better be warned today, Salem. If there is no proof, then you are leaving this company today.”

“Shut up, Benjamin!” Rejoice shouted, not backing down even as he pointed warningly at her.

I rushed and turned on my laptop before going straight to my documents.

“…What?”

The original document was nowhere to be seen. I even went to the Recycle Bin, but still nothing.

Ever since I started working here, I always had backups for all my documents, and even those backups had backups… I could have never been this sloppy.

So why did it seem like all of my work was just wiped clean?

It was then that it dawned on me that I had been set up.

The tears that I had been trying to keep at bay burned fiercely at my eyelids as embarrassment threatened to swallow me whole.

“What is wrong, babes?” Rejoice asked worriedly.

“Someone tampered with my laptop.”

Marilyn scoffed. “You said that you had proof. Turns out that you were just really looking for an excuse to embarrass yourself,” she said harshly.

I wiped my eyes. “You can call me all sorts of names, but don’t spit on my integrity. I did not make that mistake.”

She smirked and raised her hand.

THWACK!

The entire office erupted into gasps the second her hand landed heavily on my face.

“You are not even repentant… Still trash-talking even after costing us that much money!”

I forced my tears back. “I am not the one, Miss Smith! If it was my mistake, then I will compensate, but I did not do it!”

She folded her arms. “And you, street rat, how do you expect to pay that money back?”

“…”

People were laughing, murmuring, and pointing at me, and I just stood there, unable to do anything about it.

I wanted the ground to just open up and swallow me.

Ben smirked. “You see, I told you to watch your back, Salem. Stupid decisions always make you end up in stupid situations.”

I glared at him. “You did this.”

He laughed. “You are out of your mind, Salem.”

Rejoice glared at him. “You have always had a hatred for Salem because she rejected your sorry ass… You are despicable.”

He folded his arms and raised a brow at her. “If you think this is so unfair, then you can as well leave with her… And I can’t even say that you both will be missed.”

I marched over to him with the full intent of strangling him. “You asshole!” I slapped him right across the face.

“You will get what’s coming to you, Benjamin, just you wait!”

“Security, get this mad woman out of here!” Ben said, and suddenly I was grabbed. I fought against their hold. “Stop it, what are you doing?”

Marilyn stepped forward with a cynical smile on her face. “Don’t you understand, Miss Grant? You are fired!”

“No, no, no, you can’t do this to me!!” By now, some people had brought out their phones and were videoing me.

This was it…

Suddenly, the boss’s door burst open, and I heard the heavy footsteps that I could recognize without even turning to look.

One stray tear fell down my face…

This was it.

“What is going on here?”