Chapter 3

I'd never realized Eric could be so patient. After all, in all the years he'd been with me, he'd never once behaved this way. He'd never looked that genuinely happy either.

In every photo, Eric was smiling brightly, a side of him I'd never seen before.

In the past, I carefully picked out a camera and even spent several months learning photography just so I could surprise him on his birthday.

To my surprise, he immediately pulled a long face and said sternly, "I've hated having my picture taken ever since I was a kid. As my fiancee, shouldn't you know that? Claudia, don't pretend like you know me so well. It makes me sick."

Because of that, he gave me the silent treatment for an entire month.

Later, it was only after I worked on projects for two straight months to help him get promoted to Deputy CEO that he was finally willing to speak to me again.

It was funny how easy it was to tell when someone loved you and when they didn't.

Loving someone meant you knew their favorites and pet peeves by heart. Even the stuff that got on your nerves—you'd value it, because it came from a genuine place.

At the thought of this, I put away my phone and went straight to Leslie Fritz in HR to hand in my resignation.

Just as I was about to hand over my work, I glanced at the documents and realized there wasn't much to begin with.

I used to have a few projects under my belt. But not long ago, Eric had handed them over to Eunice just to cheer her up. Thus, the handover didn't take much time at all.

I was sorting through the files when the head of the project department, Nathan Stout, came storming over with a rejected bid proposal, demanding an explanation.

"Claudia, you've been in charge of this bid the whole time. Now the client says something's wrong with the proposal. I'd expect you to give me a good explanation."

Hearing this, the colleagues around me recalled how Eunice had told them on a daily basis about all the ways I'd supposedly bullied her. Now they'd finally caught an opportunity to deliver justice, and they could hardly wait to get rid of me.

"Claudia, how could you mess up such an important project? Surely you know how much this means to Mr. Powell."

"I really don't get why Claudia was put in charge of the bid proposal in the first place. If Eunice had been given the responsibility from the start, it definitely wouldn't have turned out like this."

"Do you guys think Claudia's salary is even enough to cover the damages?"

"Cover the damages? Is she even capable of covering them? If you ask me, she should just get lost as soon as possible."

Ignoring everyone's comments, I glanced at the subject line of the bid proposal and let out a cold laugh.

"I wasn't in charge of this project. Eunice was."

Jenny Gould, the lackey who followed Eunice around everywhere, piped up, "Wow, you can't even own up to your own mess. You really have no shame, do you? This was obviously your project, and now you're trying to throw Eunice under the bus? What, you think the rest of us are idiots?"

The other colleagues chimed in one after another.

Just then, Leslie came over to inform me that my resignation had been approved.

Jenny caught wind of it and sneered with contempt. "You think quitting gets you off the hook? It's way too late for that. You'd better start thinking about how to cover the company's losses and explain yourself to Mr. Powell.

"The company should've gotten rid of a liability like you a long time ago. The only reason you're still here is that Eunice, out of the goodness of her heart, kept telling Mr. Powell not to fire you. Otherwise, you'd have been gone ages ago."

No sooner had she spoken than the others started clamoring to throw me out of the company immediately, lest a bad apple like me poison the whole barrel.

Within minutes, they'd crammed my belongings into a black trash bag and tossed it out the front door like garbage.

Jenny, at the front of the pack, saw me still standing there and asked disdainfully, "Claudia, are you seriously going to make us throw you out ourselves?"

I glanced at her smug expression. Since when did a spineless fence-sitter like her get to act all high and mighty in front of me?

I raised my hand and slapped her twice across the face, then walked out of the company while everyone stood there in stunned silence.

A few days later, I received another couple of photo shoots from Eunice. She was showing off like always.

"Say, in all the time you were with Eric, have you guys ever even done a photo shoot together? Because I've never seen a single picture of you two at his place. Wait, don't tell me you don't even have one ordinary photo together."