Chapter 4

"Charlie." He had clearly been drinking. His tone was languid, like a victorious general looking down at a defeated foe he had trampled underfoot.

"I hear you're having trouble finding a job lately? Haha! I get it. Young people have ambition, but you have to face reality sometimes.

“What do you think? How about you consider apologizing to me? Then sign an agreement promising not to take a technical role at any other company for five years—no, make that ten.

“If you do that, I’ll drop the blacklist order. What do you say?" He spoke with absolute confidence, certain he had me in the palm of his hand.

Ten years? How many decades does a person have in a lifetime?

Franklin was not just trying to fire me. He was trying to crush me completely.

I said, "No way in hell!"

I hung up, spent the night gathering evidence, and filed for arbitration.

Barely half an hour after I submitted the paperwork, Franklin showed up with a lawyer to accuse me of ‘stealing company secrets’.

Their grounds were that I had frequently lingered at the office after hours, acting suspiciously.

They twisted my hard work and overtime into evidence against me.

Refusing to accept this, I stormed back to the office and made a scene.

I wrote countless letters of complaint and filmed endless videos to prove my side of the story. However, I just got drowned out in the comments section of every post.

[This guy is a former colleague of mine. He was always acting weird. He’s probably suffering from paranoid delusions.]

[Former colleague here too. He was just struggling at work and wanted to extort money from the company.]

[People like him should’ve been fired ages ago. They just poison the company culture.]

A tidal wave of online abuse and skepticism crashed down on me, leaving me gasping for air.

I had worked overtime for the job and to prove my worth. How did I end up branded a shady villain who stole company secrets?

I could not understand it, nor could I accept being misunderstood and slandered like this. Thus, I fought even harder to prove myself.

In the end, even my mother was alarmed.

She sounded terrified over the phone, as if she were holding back tears. "Charlie, people are calling the house every day, and there are people downstairs cursing us in the middle of the night.

“We can't win this fight. Just come home. I'll take care of you."

Her voice trembled as she pleaded with me.

As I recounted this, I let out a light chuckle as if I were telling someone else's story.

However, Alex’s eyes had turned red with rage. He asked me hoarsely, "And then?"

Afterward, I chain-smoked all night in my rented apartment.

The next day, consumed by bitter resentment, I returned home.

I did not touch a computer for a year after that. My hands were fine, but my spirit was dead.

I took a job delivering food, forcing myself to forget everything about Kinetix. I transformed from a highly educated tech elite into a down-and-out, middle-aged man.

As I spoke, I pulled a lighter from my pocket and lit a cigarette, speaking in a casual, nonchalant tone. "But fortunately, there’s always a way out. Two years ago, Apex Systems’ executives approached me with an offer on Christmas. A chance for revenge!

“Come to think of it, I actually owe Franklin some thanks. If it weren't for him, I never would have had the opportunity to join Apex Systems and become their fiercest rival to take them down."

I enunciated those last three words slowly.

The hallway grew noisy. My current boss, Jack Everton, approached me, flanked by a group of men who were bowing and scraping. He turned and said to another man, "This is Apex Systems’s current Tech Director. You should speak with him regarding the technical partnership with Kinetix."

"Sure, sure." Franklin nodded obsequiously, his face plastered with a sycophantic smile.

However, he froze at the sight of me.