Chapter 2

When I went back to my desk to pack, plenty of people were already waiting for me to turn over my work.

Maggie wanted the report files she was supposedly responsible for organizing every day. In the past two years, she had not prepared a single product quality report herself.

Every time it was almost time to get off work, she would look at me apologetically.

“Nat, my son is out of school. I have to pick him up. These reports came in too late today. Could I trouble you with them?”

That one word, trouble, handed me work that had never been mine.

Dylan Brooks wanted me to brief him on one of his projects.

After a year at the company, he had never completed a single project on his own. Every time, he would hand me an unusable proposal and tear up in front of me.

“Natalie, I’m under so much pressure. I’m scared that if I don’t do well, I’ll get fired.”

Back then, I felt sorry for him because he was trying to save for his wedding, so I helped him finish project after project.

He promised that after he got married, he would try harder and start handling projects independently.

But after he got married, he voted to kick me out of the company.

The first person to speak was my trainee, Chloe Ward.

“Natalie, hand over my client data to me. Make sure you note each client’s preferences so I don’t mix them up.”

Maintaining client relationships was a basic part of sales.

From the moment Chloe joined the company, she kept saying clients were making things difficult for her, so she asked me to handle them for her.

Every holiday, even sending out greeting messages took me longer than it did for everyone else.

I looked at her. “They were your clients to maintain in the first place. What exactly am I supposed to hand over?”

Chloe looked completely justified.

“You’ve been maintaining them for me this whole time. If you don’t turn them over, are you trying to walk off with the company’s client resources?”

I gave a cold laugh. “So you do know I was the one maintaining them for you.”

Chloe shot back immediately, “What do you mean, for me? You were using my client resources to become the top salesperson. Now hurry up and hand them over.”

I refused. “I’ve already left the company, and I’m not receiving a cent in severance. I have no obligation to turn anything over to you. Especially not work that was never my responsibility in the first place.”

The moment they heard my refusal, my coworkers panicked.

Without all the things I handled for them every day, none of them could get through today’s work properly.

People around us started urging Chloe to do something.

Chloe was so anxious that she shouted at me, “Sabrina was right. You really are a selfish little snake who only looks out for herself.”

Sabrina Blake was my rival.

Ever since she found out the promotion would be given to either her or me, she had been spreading rumors about me within our team.

She stirred everyone up and pushed them to isolate me.

I had thought our team got along well enough, and our performance had been rising steadily.

I thought my coworkers would not be swayed by a few careless words from her.

But the result was truly chilling.

Still, I wanted to ask Chloe, “How exactly am I selfish?”

Before Chloe could answer, Sabrina had already walked over.

“Stop pretending. You probably can’t even count how many digits are on your paycheck anymore, can you?”

I pulled up my bank statements on the spot to prove myself, but they still refused to believe me.

They were convinced I had other sources of income.

Sabrina lifted her chin. “That money was never clean to begin with. Why would it show up in your bank statements?”

“You impatient little schemer. Back then, you deliberately made sure everyone’s core work passed through your hands.”

“You must have been planning this all along. Once you got fired, you could refuse to hand anything over, throw everyone’s work into chaos, and get them demoted or fired.

“You’ve been using your coworkers to make money for so long. Now that you’re leaving, you still want to hurt them on purpose. That’s disgusting.”

I was so angry I almost laughed.

Other people might not know the truth, but they knew it perfectly well.

The reason their core work ended up in my hands was simple. No matter how many times I taught them, they could not learn it.