Chapter 3

"Apologize? Are you insane? You're the one who screwed up first. Why should Mr. Cooper apologize to you?" Justin was the first to jump out and attack me.

"So, this is what it was about. Back when Mr. Cooper asked everyone to draw lots for the holidays' duty shifts, you were unusually enthusiastic. You even volunteered to draw first. Turns out you just wanted to stay behind so you could leak corporate secrets!"

I frowned immediately. The accusation was sheer nonsense.

Back then, when Samuel proposed the overtime duty, all the staff had been complaining nonstop. It was Samuel who singled me out for being the so-called department's top performer and told me to set an example for everyone else.

Who would've thought I would end up drawing the overtime shift on the very first try? Now that I thought about it, maybe they had been setting me up from the moment that the lottery started.

Whether I had actually leaked anything never mattered in the first place. What mattered was whether everyone believed I was the mole.

That thought sent another surge of anger rushing through me. My fingers slammed against the keyboard hard enough to make it rattle.

"For the last time, I did not leak corporate secrets! And if I did, so did every single one of you here! You're all doing it every day!"

That statement alone triggered outrage among the spectators in the group chat.

"Come on, Mr. Young. Even if you want to defend yourself, you can't just start saying ridiculous stuff like that."

"Exactly! If we're all leaking corporate secrets, Mr. Cooper should fire every single one of us!"

"Seriously, this is getting absurd. He's obviously lashing out because he got caught!"

Watching one uninformed coworker after another step forward to condemn me, I felt nothing but a cold bitterness.

Before the holidays, Declan McGrath, the CEO of a rival company that had been competing with us for years, personally invited me to join his firm. Out of loyalty to my current company, I kept turning him down.

In hindsight, I had been unbelievably foolish.

As the members of the group chat continued piling accusations onto me, Samuel finally intervened at a leisurely pace. On the surface, he sounded like he was trying to calm everyone down. In reality, he was just dragging my name through the mud.

"Alright, everyone. Let's stop arguing. To be honest, Levi and I were college classmates. He was already doing things like this back then. I kept quiet out of respect for our history together, though looking back now…

"I guess my tolerance is to blame for indulging all his reckless behavior!"

The second he finished, Justin chimed back in to accuse me.

"I can confirm Mr. Cooper's telling the truth. Back when I was learning under Levi, he never let me handle contracts independently. Every single deal had to go through him first.

"He was obviously scared I'd discover he was leaking corporate secrets. That's why he guarded everything so carefully!"

My mind went blank as I read their messages. They were both pathetic and laughable.

Company policy clearly stated that junior sales staff were not authorized to sign contracts independently.

The reason I never let Justin handle deals on his own was, first, because I abided by company regulations, and second, because I didn't want him to become overconfident and forget the rules.

Somehow, in his eyes, that had become proof that I had been leaking corporate secrets.

As the accusations flooded the group chat like endless waves, I spoke up once more. "For the very, very last time, I did not leak corporate secrets!"

Samuel immediately tagged me in the chat and dropped a screenshot, showing the pricing for a new product launch from Declan's company.

"Holy crap. Am I seeing this right? Their product is the same type as ours, and their price is only a cent lower than ours!"

I froze instantly. I stared at the screenshot he posted over and over again, checking every detail carefully.

"That's impossible!"