Chapter 2

Less than ten minutes after the liability agreement was signed, the company Slack blew up.

Cassie had just dropped ten $200 Venmo requests in the group chat.

"Thanks for believing in me, everyone! This Black Friday, we're about to take off!"

The energy in the chat ignited instantly.

"Cassie is the real deal, that's the kind of vision that gets things done!"

"Unlike some managers who just pinch pennies and never take a single risk."

I read through the thinly veiled jabs at me on my screen, took a sip of my sparkling water, and didn't react.

Then my phone buzzed with an Instagram notification.

Cassie had posted.

The headline was hard to scroll past: Gen Z Reclaims the Workplace: How I Disrupted Our Stale Director with Next-Level Strategy.

In the caption, she'd cast herself as a fearless innovator who broke all the rules and refused to be held back.

I, naturally, was the bitter, out-of-touch antagonist who'd been left behind.

The comments were already piling up, hundreds of them.

"Iconic. Spend $300, save $350?? She's not playing, she's about to bury the competition."

"Queen behavior. That director must be absolutely fuming lol."

"I live for this kind of story. Go off, sis!"

I tapped the like button and put my phone face down.

It was three in the afternoon, less than five hours until the pre-sale went live.

Cassie was going absolutely wild in the backend.

Marco, one of our senior ops employees, came sprinting into my office drenched in sweat.

"Erin, you need to stop her. Cassie's lost her mind!"

He dropped the iPad on my desk, his hands shaking.

"She didn't just change the promo structure; she set every no-minimum coupon to stackable!"

"And that's not all. She just added a referral bonus on top: bring in a new user and knock off another $50."

Marco was beside himself.

"Do the math. A new user who refers three friends gets $1,000 worth of product for free and pockets $200 cash on top of that!"

I looked at the insane configuration on the screen. Even I had to admit I was a little stunned.

Last time, she'd only changed the promo threshold.

This time, emboldened by David's backing and pushed by the adrenaline of that liability agreement, she'd gone so much further and was burning the whole thing down.

"Marco, breathe."

I pushed the iPad back across the desk.

"I already transferred full operational authority to Cassie."

"You were there for the liability agreement. If anything goes wrong, she covers everything."

Marco stared at me, jaw slack with disbelief.

"Erin... you're really just going to sit here and watch her trash the place? This is the company's money!"

Before I could respond, the office door was shoved open.

Cassie strutted in, David trailing behind her.

"Marco, catching me out to the boss, are we?"

Cassie crossed her arms and looked at him sideways.

"My campaign has been carefully calculated. This is called viral marketing. You ever heard of it?"

"You think people share things out of the goodness of their hearts? You have to give them a reason."

Marco's face went red. "That's not an incentive. You're literally handing them the whole bank."

"Easy, Marco." David stepped forward, putting himself between them.

"Times have changed. Stop judging Cassie's ideas through that outdated lens of yours. If you can't keep up, just stay out of the way."

Marco jabbed a finger at the two of them, unable to get a word out. Then he threw his hands up and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

Cassie spun toward me without missing a beat.

"Erin, since you've already handed me operational control, I need you to transfer me the admin access too."

"The current system capacity is too low. I need to rework the backend logic and open up the traffic intake."

She held out her hand like it was already a done deal.

Last time, I'd fought to hold onto that access and refused to let her touch it, and she'd flipped it around on me, telling everyone I was throttling her on purpose.

This time, I let her have it.

"Sure."

I pulled the keyboard toward me and typed for a few seconds.

"Access has been transferred to your employee account."

I grabbed a sheet from the printer and set it on the desk.

"Sign the transfer form. From this moment, every single change in this system is logged under your account and your IP."

Cassie didn't even glance at it. She grabbed the pen and signed.

"Just sit back and watch, Erin. I'm about to take this company to ten times where it is now."

I watched her walk out, then locked that signed transfer form in the safe.

And turned on the hidden camera in the office.