Chapter 3

The next day, the main conference room was packed. It wasn't just our department—people from Marketing and Customer Service had wandered in with their coffee to grab seats too.

The HR manager sat in the corner. VP Bradley Cohen sat beside the head of the table, twirling a pen between his fingers.

Marcus had on a brand-new suit, his tie knotted crooked. Tiffany wore bright red lipstick and hugged a thick stack of printer paper to her chest. Manager Dawson sat at the head of the table, his eyes half-closed behind his gold-rimmed glasses.

This was a public trial, and I was the one on the stand.

The moment Marcus saw me walk in, he slammed his hand on the table. "Warren! You actually showed up!"

I pulled out a chair, set my bag on the table, and didn't say a word.

Tiffany dropped her stack of paper onto the table, letting it fan out. "Three years of Warren's screwups. It's all right here."

She jabbed a finger at the first page, her voice rising. "March 2022—he delayed a poster delivery for my team, we got a client complaint, and the department lost a potential order over it!"

Marcus jumped in. "June 2023—he got a client's logo color wrong and nearly cost us the contract!"

Tiffany flipped to another page. "November 2023—the client said his design looked like it was ten years out of date. It seriously damaged our department's professional image!"

Manager Dawson took off his glasses and sighed, putting on his best look of wounded disappointment. "Warren, I've always believed in you. But look at all these mistakes—how many times has this department covered for you? And now, you're hoarding the entire bonus for yourself and tearing the team apart. I'm giving you one last chance. Split the hundred thousand with everyone, write up a sincere self-criticism, and I'll do what I can to keep you from getting fired."

Two dozen pairs of eyes were fixed on me. Some people were staring at their phones, some were hiding smirks behind their hands, and a few—the ones I'd bailed out at midnight more times than I could count—couldn't bring themselves to look up at all.

I reached into my bag, slowly pulled out a flash drive, and set it on the table. Then I tapped a finger against the stack of paper.

"This is the evidence you've got?"

Marcus sneered. "Trying to weasel out of it? It's all right there in black and white."

I smiled, stood up, and walked over to the projector screen. "Fine. I'm not denying anything. I actually want everyone here to see exactly what I've done for you for free these past three years."

I plugged my phone into the display cable, and the big screen lit up instantly. The first folder opened, clearly labeled: [Marcus Reed — Performance Reviews & Promotion Materials].

I opened the first file. The creation timestamp read: April 11, 2022, 2:47 a.m.

"Marcus, your performance report for your promotion to supervisor—thirty-eight pages." I scrolled down. "Thirty of them were written by me."

Marcus's face went bright red. "You—you stole files off my computer!"

I laughed. "You were on your knees next to my desk begging me to finish it by three in the morning. Funny how you didn't call it stealing then."

Second folder: [Tiffany Collins — Side Jobs & Client Records]. I pulled up a screenshot of a group chat and zoomed in.

"Tiffany, last August, you told me you had a rush order and offered me thirty percent of the take. I made eighteen images and did six rounds of revisions. How much did you actually pay me?"

Her lips trembled. "That was... a friend helping out! We never discussed money!"

"Oh, a friend." I nodded. "Were you two still 'friends' when you collected five thousand dollars from the client?"

A wave of gasps went around the room.

Third folder: [Manager Dawson — Annual Reports & Management Materials]. I opened the 2025 banquet presentation—forty-seven tracked revisions in the file history.

"Manager Dawson, you win Manager of the Year every single year, and you've told people this presentation took you two weeks of sleepless work. Want me to pull up the timestamp on every single one of those revisions?"

Sweat broke out on Manager Dawson's forehead. "Warren, we can settle this after the meeting. We're discussing who the bonus belongs to. Right now."

Marcus lunged for the lifeline. "Right! The bonus! That client project was a group effort from this whole department! We had three separate meetings to work out the concept!"

Tiffany shrieked in agreement. "That's right! The concept was everyone's idea! Warren was just the one who executed it!"

I looked around at all of them and spoke slowly.

"You don't even know what the project is called, and you're still going to sit there and call it a group effort?"