Chapter 2

A funeral was an expensive undertaking.

Clara emptied her bank accounts, but she could only scrape together two hundred dollars.

It was a pathetic amount.

Ever since she joined Vance Enterprises, every hour of overtime, every sacrifice, and every sleepless night had been treated as her basic duty.

Consequently, Julian never paid her a single cent in salary.

She had been forced to burn through all her personal savings just to survive. Until she was left utterly cornered.

Still, a funeral had to be held.

Desperate, Clara contacted the finance department to request an advance on six months of her salary.

The accountant stumbled over his words while sounding deeply apologetic.

"Mr. Vance left strict instructions. He said no special exceptions are to be made for you..."

"How is this a special exception?!" Clara raised her voice in sheer disbelief.

Vance Enterprises prided itself on employee welfare.

In the past, similar requests from other staff members had always been approved without question.

Why was it suddenly a violation of corporate policy when it came to her?

Furious, Clara arranged for the funeral home to hold her mother's remains temporarily.

After that, she rushed straight back to the corporate headquarters.

Julian was in the middle of a board meeting.

When Clara insisted on seeing him immediately, his assistant, Austin, blocked her path with a rigid expression.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Gabriel. Interrupting Mr. Vance during a meeting is strictly forbidden.

"Especially for you. You of all people should know better than to break the rules."

Before Clara could push past him, the heavy oak doors opened.

Chloe stepped into the conference room holding a laptop with a bright smile on her face.

Julian's freezing, impassive gaze melted the instant he caught sight of her.

He raised a hand with long, slender fingers and signaled the board to pause.

Then, he offered Chloe a gentle smile. His voice was unusually soft. "What is it?"

Chloe blinked, her tone sweet and innocent. "Julian, I forgot how to format the presentation slides."

Right there in front of dozens of senior executives, Julian patiently taught Chloe how to adjust the layout step-by-step.

Outside the glass doors, whispers and pitiful glances rippled through the open-plan office.

"Chloe is the only exception Mr. Vance ever makes. If you didn't know better, you'd think Chloe is his fiancée.

"Looking at how Clara is treated, she's basically just an unpaid servant."

"Remember last month when Clara was drowning in work trying to fix the marketing team's mess?

"Mr. Vance took Chloe out for a six-course candlelit dinner at a private rooftop restaurant. It costs a fortune for just one night."

Clara let out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh.

Julian spent thousands on Chloe for a single evening.

But Clara was too destitute to afford a basic burial.

He poured infinite patience into teaching Chloe the most elementary tasks.

But whenever Clara asked him for guidance in the past, he would only glance at her with cold indifference.

"Get out. My fiancée shouldn't need hand-holding for the basics."

Julian only gave his patience to the person he loved.

It was such a simple truth. It was a shame she had to be battered and bruised all over before finally understanding it.

She forced herself to wait until the meeting concluded.

Taking a deep breath, Clara squared her shoulders and walked straight up to Julian. "I need an advance on my salary."

She expected him to refuse outright.

Instead, he simply nodded with his sharp profile cutting a clean silhouette against the office lights.

"Granted. Under one condition. There's a high-priority project with a tight deadline. You will take Chloe and finish it together."

Everything Julian gave her always came with strings attached.

Clara stood in silence for a long moment. She forced a hollow, aching smile and agreed in a low voice.

She had already calculated the workload. The proposal wasn't complicated.

Given her expertise, she could easily wrap it up in two days.

There would still be plenty of time to hold the funeral within seven days.

She never imagined that Chloe would thoroughly sabotage the process.

First, Chloe 'accidentally' spilled a full cup of black coffee directly onto Clara's laptop which wiped out days of compiled research.

Then, Chloe managed to email an unpolished draft to a rival corporate competitor.

Clara was forced to rebuild the proposal completely from scratch to salvage the deal.

The endless traps and delays dragged a two-day project into a grueling seven-day nightmare.

When Clara finally submitted the completed dossier, her eyes were bloodshot from a week without sleep.

At the same time, a notification popped up on her phone.

[Her salary advance had been deposited.]

She checked the balance in disbelief.

For six months of advance pay, the total amount deposited was a mere two thousand dollars.

Refusing to believe her eyes, Clara marched over to the finance department.

The accountant looked uncomfortable but insisted the calculations were correct.

"Your compensation was processed using the company's absolute minimum entry-level tier.

"Furthermore, Mr. Vance deducted the vast majority of the funds.

"The reason given... was that you failed to execute your assigned tasks to his standards."

At that moment, Chloe strolled over.

The accountant's face lit up with a warm, flattering smile as he spotted her.

"Chloe! The fifty-thousand-dollar project bonus just cleared. Mr. Vance personally fast-tracked it for you. Congratulations!"

"Julian is too generous," Chloe murmured and pursed her lip with feigned modesty.

Her gaze drifted toward Clara with a sly gleam in her eyes.

"We should also thank Clara. The project rating was exceptionally high, so the payout is generous."

Her soft-spoken words dripped with calculated provocation.

Clara's heart plunged into an icy abyss.

She cut through the noise with her voice sounding like shards of glass.

"I wrote every single line of that project from start to finish! You didn't contribute a single thing. What gives you the right to get the bonus?"

Chloe immediately flinched, her eyes widening in theatrical distress and her face turning pale. "This was... Julian's arrangement..."

Clara ignored the clumsy, manipulative display and pulled out her phone to dial Julian directly.

—