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Home / Emotional Realism Short Story / When Misplaced Trust Leads to Ruin / Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

All Chapters of When Misplaced Trust Leads to Ruin: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

11 Chapters

Chapter 1

The intern, Jake Wilson, stood before the projector screen. The red dot from his laser pointer jittered across an enlarged screenshot of backend logs, finally settling on a string of IP addresses."Mr. Miller, data doesn't lie."His face lit up with the excitement synonymous with catching a thief red-handed."Ms. Chapman has been hogging company server resources for months. Traffic spikes always hit in the middle of the night. I dug into it. These ports are all running private rendering jobs she took on the side."It's classic resource siphoning by using the company's electricity to make her own money. This kind of behaviour doesn't just drive up operational costs, but it's also slowing down our core workloads."If we don't shut it down now, next week's cloud launch is going to crash hard. And it could be even worse—she might be selling the company's core data! That's straight-up misappropriation of assets!"Everyone turned to look at me. There was contempt and a trace of smug sa

Chapter 2

Jake paused, greed flashing in his eyes. "If you've got nothing to hide, transfer the machine's access rights to the company. Let everyone see what's really going on under the hood."The cards were finally on the table. So, this was the setup all along.The company was about to seek funding. A six-figure piece of hardware running the core stack, still registered under my name, was a glaring liability on paper.Martin wanted to use Jake's accusation as leverage and strong-arm my private property into company assets."Jake has a point," Martin insisted with a nod, his tone leaving no room for debate. "Susan, if you've got nothing to hide, hand over access. Besides, servers should be under centralized company control anyway. You holding root access alone isn't exactly compliant."Not compliant, huh?Back when he begged me to bring the machine in to put out fires, he had called it loyalty. Now that he wanted it all for himself, it was suddenly "the company's policy".I swept my gaze

Chapter 3

Jake swaggered over and slapped a printout onto my desk. The way he carried himself, one would think he was already the tech lead."Electricity's calculated on peak power draw, plus depreciation," he said. "Mr. Miller said he'll cut you some slack. It's your first offense, and you've been here a while. The most we can do is not press charges for corporate espionage."I glanced at the sheet, and I had to say, they had itemized everything down to the last detail. Even GPU wear was prorated by the hour."I'll pay."I pulled out my phone and transferred the money right in front of him.Jake raised an eyebrow, a little disappointed. He had probably been hoping I would make a scene so he could flex again."Straightforward. I like that," he said, folding up the paper. His eyes drifted to the monitor on my desk."By the way, this monitor came with the setup, right? Since the workstation is under company property, you shouldn't be holding onto this either. I'll move it to the server room

Chapter 4

Jake was active on Instagram.One post showed him standing in the server room, posing with my workstation and flashing a peace sign. The caption was clearly aimed at me."Taking over the core position and cleaning up an old fart's mess. System efficiency improved by 30%!"Another one came later that night. A photo of a cup of instant noodles was captioned, "Going all out for the launch. The most romantic thing for a tech guy is watching code fly across the screen."Some coworkers left comments of approval. Martin even left a thumbs-up emoji.I couldn't help but scoff at his old-fart remark. What he called a mess was probably my thermal control service and load-balancing scripts.Although the workstation might've been powerful, it unfortunately ran hot—terribly.Without my throttling logic, and now with summer heat and a cramped server room, I could already hear the fans screaming at full speed.On Friday night, I received a text message from the front desk lady."Ms. Chapman,

Chapter 5

With the heat nowhere to go, core temperatures spiked in seconds.Thermal paste cracked under stress. Solder joints softened and failed. This was no longer a system crash, but physical destruction at a hardware level.…My estimate was accurate. 20 minutes later, my phone vibrated again.This time, it was Jake. I picked up and put him on speaker."What kind of trap did you leave in that goddamn machine, Susan?" he cried out in a panic, alarm sirens blaring in the background."It's smoking! All services are down! Even the backup data can't be read! Did you remotely lock the system?""Watch your words," I replied calmly. "That's a serious accusation. You had the hardware key, reset the gateway, and revoked my access. I can't even get into the building. How exactly am I supposed to lock anything?""Then, why didn't the UPS kick in?" he questioned harshly. "Why didn't the power failure protection trigger?""Oh, that?" I chuckled softly. "The UPS was leased. The contract expired,

Chapter 6

Martin and Jake had innocently believed that as long as they physically held onto the machine, it would magically become company property. They forgot that law and ownership rights existed."That's… That's the company's server…" Jake stuttered, still trying to argue his way through."Is it?"I pressed the invoice right up to his face. "Read it. It says, 'Product name: High-Performance Graphics Workstation. Buyer: Susan Chapman.' This is my production tool. You forcibly requisitioned it and then issued me a fine on top of that."The police officer took the documents and scanned them. His brow slowly furrowed."Mr. Miller, if this equipment does belong to Ms. Chapman personally, your company's unauthorized use and resulting damage may constitute civil infringement. Given the scale of loss, it could also carry criminal liability."Martin's face went ashen.I wasn't quite done yet. I pointed at the ceiling."And the leased dedicated broadband line for this office is also under my n

Chapter 7

What happened to "not taking things too far" when Martin decided to suspend me, not even giving me a cardboard box to pack my things?"Martin," I said finally, "some things, once burned, are gone for good—literally and figuratively."I shook his hand off and walked off without looking back. Behind me, he let out a desperate wail.Only I knew that the real show was still ahead. The investors who had been tricked out of their money were probably already on their way.…As expected, a crowd gathered outside the company entrance the next day.The investors who were supposed to sign the contract had seen the whole fiasco on the livestream. They were no longer here to invest. They were here to demand their money back.Naturally, Martin was hiding in his office, away from the angry crowd.Outside, the glass door was being slammed so hard it sounded like it would break."Get out here, Miller!""Fraud! What private cloud architecture? It's just a souped-up machine!""Refund us! Give

Chapter 8

This was the consequence.In the real world, every choice came with a tag. No matter how young one was, nobody could run away from paying the price.…The company collapsed even faster than I expected. In less than a week, the office was cleared out.The plants that used to be mine and the ergonomic chair I picked out myself were all taken away to settle debts.Martin sold his car, then his apartment. Still, it was nowhere near enough to cover the breach penalties and the loss of my equipment.So, he started texting me, or rather, harassing me.At first, he begged. Then, he started cursing. He said I was ruthless, that I watched him fall and did nothing. He even said I had planned all along to bring him down.I took screenshots of every message and saved them. They would be evidence in court later.One night, when I went downstairs to take out the trash, I saw someone curled up in the corner of the stairwell. It was Martin.He was holding two bottles of cheap liquor, eyes unf

Chapter 9

Chester said that kind of thinking—squeezing every last bit of performance out of severely limited hardware—was exactly what they needed for edge computing.Right there on the spot, he made me an offer.I would become the technical director, with double the salary and stock options on top. Compared to slaving away in Martin's ramshackle setup, this actually felt like a real place to build a career.Before I could officially start, though, there was one thing I had to deal with—the lawsuit against Martin.On the day of the hearing, he actually showed up with a lawyer. I had no idea where he scraped together the money.In court, the lawyer pulled out what he claimed were screenshots of our chat history. They showed me saying things like the machine had been assigned to the company.Martin sat at the defendant's table, his eyes dark and calculating. He clearly thought this was his winning move.The judge turned to me. "Plaintiff, how do you explain this piece of evidence?"I laugh

Chapter 10

As for Jake, I heard he never graduated.The faculty put him on probation, but his reputation in the industry was completely ruined. No proper company wanted anything to do with him.One day, I was in my new office, standing by the floor-to-ceiling window with a cup of coffee in hand. Below me was a bustling tech park.The HR manager knocked and came in, looking a little awkward. "Ms. Chapman, there's a delivery guy downstairs insisting on seeing you. He says he's your… acquaintance."A delivery guy? That caught me off guard."Send him up," I said.A while later, Jake walked in wearing a yellow delivery uniform. He had drastically lost weight, and his skin was tanned from long hours in the sun.The eyes that once exuded arrogance and calculation were gone, displaced by avoidance and unease. In his hand was a cup of coffee that had yet to be delivered."Ms. Chapman…" Jake kept his head down, not daring to look at my spacious, brightly lit office or my tailored suit. "I'm here to

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