Feel-Good Story Short Stories & Hypocrisy Workplace Novels

On our seventh wedding anniversary, my husband—Don Enzo Cavina—suddenly put a motion before the family council: The Donna would be barred from taking part in family affairs. “One vote in favor.” “Two.” “Three.” The motion passed unanimously. Being forced off the council just as I completed seven years meant the family no longer had to honor its promise to grant me the twenty-percent stake that was about to vest. I had been reduced to nothing more than an appendage to the Don. My fingertips turned cold, but my gaze remained steady as it swept over every face around the long table. “Why?” Jack was the first to stand. “You’re nothing but an outsider who married into this family, yet you’ve controlled the port, the banks, and the union for seven years. Who knows how much you’ve skimmed for yourself?” James sneered. “If we let you take twenty percent, sooner or later, the Cavina family will become the Medici family.” I turned to my husband, Don Enzo, seated at the head of the table. “Is that really what you think?” Enzo came to me and pulled me into his arms. “You’ve given seven years of your life to this family. I just can’t bear to watch the council drain you any longer.” “You won’t have to sit through these pointless meetings anymore. But you will always be my wife.” Without a seat on the council, I had no say in any decision. But the Cavinas couldn’t manage their dealings with the Five Families without me. So that was it. They still expected me to bear every risk—they just didn’t want to give me the share I had earned. I smiled, slipped off my wedding ring and family badge, and slapped them both onto the long table. Three days later, Enzo came to me with every elder who had voted for the motion. Together, they knelt before me, begging the “outsider who did nothing but steal everyone else’s credit” to come back and save them.

In my previous life, my brother and fiancé teamed up to sabotage my company for the sake of my so-called best friend. After I went bankrupt, they stood beside her watching me collapse in the pouring rain, laughing mockingly at my pathetic state. "Linda Turner, you look as pathetic as a drenched dog!" they sneered. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the project bidding meeting three years earlier. In my previous life, when my company was just starting out, my brother and fiancé had warned me against using the Turner and Peterson family connections. They claimed it wouldn't be fair to others, but then turned around and handed projects to my best friend under various pretexts, just to see her smile. Now that I was back, I watched them secretly manipulating things just like before, giving my projects to my best friend. I finally gave up on them completely. When they found out I was leaving the country, my brother and fiancé set off fireworks all night, celebrating that they'd finally gotten rid of me, the burden. But three years later, at the Trada Corp's bidding meeting, I took the stage as the CEO's wife—and they couldn't hide the redness in their eyes.

Out of sheer boredom, I randomly clicked into a livestream titled "Taming an Innocent Housewife." In the stream, a woman in a silk chemise was lazily puttering around the kitchen. When the camera finally showed her face, I was completely stunned—it was me. Not only that, but on the public chat, the top donor was spamming gifts like crazy. [Make her drink that spiked milk.] Soon after, a man groveled in response: [Thanks for the gift, bro. She'll drink it right now. I promise you a hell of a show tonight.] I'd recognize that voice anywhere—it was my husband, Jake, who was supposedly on a business trip overseas. My own husband had turned our home into a hidden-camera setup, treating me like his personal reality show star. And now, he was trying to feed me illegal drugs just to rake in donations. Most people would've broken down or called the cops. But I'm what you'd call the ultimate pro at playing nice—everyone in our circle knows I'm the queen of manipulation. I picked up that glass of milk, looked straight into the camera, and gave a fragile, tantalizing smile. "Since my husband's not home, drinking this milk all alone feels so lonely... I wish some strong, capable guy would come take care of me." The chat exploded. Donations went through the roof. Later that night, Jake burst through the front door, ready to "discipline" me—but froze in his tracks. There I was, sitting in lingerie on the lap of the top donor, grinning at my husband. "Honey, you're back! I helped you hit your goals tonight!"

At lunch I'd barely finished handing around the beef jerky I'd made when our department manager, Derek Pritchard, followed the smell to my desk. He grabbed a piece, tasted it, and announced at full volume. "Dylan, this is good. Way better than anything you'd buy to go with a beer." Before I could get a modest word out, his tone shifted. "Perfect timing. The owner isn't coming to the department dinner tomorrow night, so there's no sense throwing money around." He pulled three hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and slapped them on my desk. "We'll eat in the break room. Dylan Woodward's doing the cooking. There's your grocery budget. "Twenty people in this department. Spend it carefully, but I want drinks, I want meat, and I want a couple of real entrees." Three hundred dollars? For twenty people? A project I'd led had brought the company a serious profit, and I'd worn the owner down over weeks to get thirty thousand dollars approved for a team retreat. Derek meant to pocket nearly all of it and have me cover the difference so he could look generous. Looking at that oily, entitled face, I smiled. "Sure. Since you think that highly of me, Derek, I'll lay it all out nice and clear." Then I turned away and texted the owner. "Aunt Victoria, the budget came through. We're having a surprise department dinner tomorrow night. Care to come taste it?"

After I left prison, my best friend and I opened an auto repair shop together. He provided the money, while I brought the skills. We agreed from the start to split the profits seventy-thirty. Thanks to my talent for performance tuning and custom car builds, our shop quickly became the talk of the local wealthy car‑enthusiast scene. In our first year alone, we cleared a net profit of eight million. When I went to collect my share at the end of the year, my so‑called brother handed me a check for only one hundred thousand. “The business is doing well because I became friends with those rich kids,” he said with a dismissive laugh. “Anyone can modify cars. Do not tell me you actually think you are someone special.” He looked at me with open contempt. “Most repair shops pay their mechanics six grand a month at best. I am giving you ten. You should be grateful.” I stood there in stunned silence, and anger rose in my chest. I had trusted him like family, only to discover that my loyalty had been repaid with lies and betrayal. I quit on the spot without another word. I rented the workshop across the street and opened a repair shop of my own. Six months later, he showed up at my door with all his arrogance gone. “If you come back,” he pleaded, “I will pay you five hundred thousand a year. That should be enough to keep you with me this time… right?”

I lent the company two hundred thousand dollars' worth of camera equipment for three years, and my boss repaid me by cutting my salary. My monthly pay dropped from two thousand dollars to six hundred. I went to ask him for an explanation. But when I arrived, the newly hired photography intern was showing him a refurbished camera. "The company can use my equipment too. Six hundred dollars a month is enough for me." My boss spotted me coming in and seized the chance to put me in my place. "See, Joe? If you won't do the job, plenty of other people will." I froze for a moment, then asked the intern, "How can you live in Fairhaven on just six hundred dollars a month?" He answered with self-righteous conviction. "Why couldn't I? I've done the math. A room in a shared place farther out costs a hundred and sixty. Food is six dollars a day, so a hundred and eighty a month. If I'm still short, I'll take out a loan." "What's wrong with enduring a little hardship when we're young? We should be working hard and learning, not constantly making demands of the company. How do you not understand something so basic?" My boss beamed as he listened. I smiled too. So, you enjoyed suffering? Fine. I bought the company. It was time to show them how a real capitalist operated.

I find a slip of paper on the back of a flyer I'm holding during the first day of club recruitment. It says that the president of the dance club, Donna Shaw, will announce in front of more than 100 people that I'm pregnant. She's got everything ready—ultrasound reports, hospital records, and even eyewitnesses. Henry Baker, her boyfriend and president of the Student Activities Board, will step in to save the day in front of everyone. Consequently, the whole school will condemn me, and I will be expelled. I stare at the paper, wondering what kind of lame prank this is. I turn the paper over. The smile on my face fades when I see that the handwriting is identical to my own. I slip the paper into my pocket. At 3:00 pm, I make my way past the dance club's booth. The second I stop, Donna points at my stomach, her eyes red. "We don't accept people with no morals… I saw it. Your belly is already showing." Everyone looks at me, and someone gasps. I look down at my completely flat stomach, then back at her. I smile. My voice isn't loud, but everyone can hear me. "I'm pregnant? Are you sure about that? "I'm a guy. Tell me. How exactly did the baby get inside me?"

After two years of development, my game finally launched successfully. My wife had promised me a $75,000 bonus, but instead, she gave the entire $750,000 payout to her male secretary, Wayne. All she tossed me was a $50 grocery coupon. "You're just a stay-at-home husband," she said casually. "You don't spend much. Go buy some groceries and cook dinner." I stared at her in disbelief. "That money is for our son's transplant surgery," I said. "If it's delayed for even a few days, he'll die." Her expression did not change. "He's weak. If he dies, he dies," she said flatly. "At least you won't bring any more bad luck into the office and pass it on to Wayne." She turned away, her tone instantly brightening as she talked about taking Wayne out that night to celebrate with a lavish dinner worth tens of thousands of dollars. In that instant, my heart froze. She had forgotten one thing. The game might be registered under her name, but I still held the core encryption key. I picked up the phone and called a rival company. "You've been trying to get Genyxis's core technology for a long time, haven't you?" I asked calmly. "All I want is $75,000, and it’ll be yours.”

Carina Lewis, the head of the department, has been a friend of mine since college. While she successfully climbs up the corporate ladder, I'm stuck being the workhorse at the bottom of the totem pole. When she's late for work, I sign in for her. When she messes up, I clean up for her. I'm happy to play along with her, of course. It's not easy to find someone dumb enough to be the scapegoat. One day, a billionaire investor shows up at the company's doorstep, and the senior executives instruct me to take care of him during his visit. This evening, when the rest of the office is empty, Carina takes my hand and tells me earnestly, "Bailey, investors like him are ruthless. You won't even know what's coming for you. An innocent woman like you won't be able to handle him. Let me, your best friend, test the waters with him first. Once everything is settled, I'll make you a manager." I nod sweetly in response. Hours later, I scurry over to the presidential suite at the hotel, where the billionaire investor is staying, and kick down the door. "Open up, Dal!" It's one thing for Carina to constantly take advantage of me, but how dare she dream of becoming my sister-in-law to steal half of my family's assets? That deluded pipe dream of hers will even make the marble statues in my family's garden roll their eyes.

During a round of truth or dare, my boss, Victoria Hale, leaned in and kissed my husband, Ethan Graves. As just another junior employee, I didn’t even have the chance to call her out in front of everyone. Instead, I slipped away to the restroom and asked Ethan for a divorce. He brushed it off as if I were only sulking. "Don’t take it so seriously. She’s just had too much to drink. In the corporate world, you have to entertain, play along for the sake of the project." However, in the very next round, when Victoria was dared to kiss someone else, Ethan flipped the table in front of everyone. "Touch her, and see what happens."

For ten years, I've served as the lover supporting Catherine Sanders from the shadows. With my help, she's able to save her company from the brink of bankruptcy and eventually gets it listed. On the day before we're about to ring the bell, just as I'm about to propose to Catherine, she introduces her childhood sweetheart, Benedict Shaw. Apparently, he is to take over my position in her life. She thanks me for my contributions throughout the decade, but her company is about to embark on a new journey. That means I'm no longer suitable to stay by her side. As I watch the woman I spent the last ten years loving and sacrificing everything for using a bank card to dismiss me, I feel as though my heart has plunged into the icy abyss. "I spent ten years devoting everything I have to you. In the end, it's nothing but a huge mistake." But Catherine remains blind to the truth. Once I quit my job, her company will cease to exist, just like my love for her.

To land a ninety-million-dollar contract, I drank so much entertaining the client that I ended up in the hospital with a bleeding stomach. But at the company awards ceremony, the person who stood up to accept the recognition was my own trainee, Bella Young. I lost it on the spot. “Bella, why are you taking credit for my deal?” But Bella calmly pulled out the contract. The name on the signature page was hers. “Gina, I know you trained me, but that doesn’t mean you can just steal my work in front of everyone.” She gave me a mocking smile. “Isn’t that a little shameless? “Besides, closing deals takes skill. You’re getting old. Maybe you just can’t keep up anymore.” Just like that, she claimed everything I had worked for as her own. I was about to go straight to our boss and clear things up when I heard Bella’s voice coming from inside his office. I stopped outside the door. She was curled up in his arms, speaking in a spoiled, sugary voice. “That idiot Gina has no idea. “As long as she gets the client to sign, my Contract Transfer System automatically changes the name on every deal to mine! “The harder she works, the more I get!” My hand froze inches from the door.

A former classmate of mine, Zack Lindell, is unlawfully fired by his company and denied a severance package. With nowhere else to turn, he becomes so desperate that he threatens to take his own life. I represent him entirely free of charge and run myself ragged until I secure a 500,000-dollar settlement for him. Yet on the day he receives the money, he comes to me with a 50-dollar parking receipt. "William, I drove my car that day, so I'll let the gas money slide, but the parking was because you had business at the courthouse, so that should be your expense, right?" Beside him, his wife, Helena Lindell, adds sarcastically, "I hear you big-shot corporate lawyers make insane money. Tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. You're not seriously going to stick us with a 50-dollar parking bill, are you?" As I watch the couple count their money, I lose whatever goodwill I still have toward them. I turn down an acquisition worth millions of dollars to handle his case, only to end up owing Zack 50 dollars for parking. I toss a hundred-dollar bill onto the table and block them. A year later, Zack sinks his life savings into a residential development that is never completed. When he can't find anyone willing to help him recover his money, he corners me with tears in his eyes. "William! Please, you have to help me! That money was everything we had." I have my assistant hand him a retainer agreement. "I can help you, but my consultation fees run at 5,000 dollars per hour, and my contingency fee is 30% of the total asset value. Those are my terms. Not a penny less."

Our pack’s pups were born with weakened wolf spirits. I paid for their treatment out of my own pocket, only for their mothers to drag me online.They accused me of using the free wolf treatment I provided for their pups to test serums on children from the contaminated zone, making poor families' pups bear the risk for Alpha pups. What they didn't know was that the pack was badly contaminated. Without treatment, those pups would die. To save their wolves, I brought in the best healers and used the best medication and treatment protocols. Care cost more than eight thousand dollars per pup every month, all of it out of my own pocket. Now the entire internet was accusing me of experimenting on pups and doing the Alpha elite's dirty work. So I made up my mind and sent a pack-wide announcement: "In response to the mothers' request for autonomy over their children's treatment, Moonbridge will suspend the free wolf treatment program, effective immediately." "Starting today, eligible wolf moms will receive a monthly childcare subsidy of two hundred dollars." The moment the announcement went out, every one of them lost it. Now they were all crowded outside my office, begging me not to stop.

The Nebula Algorithm I spent countless sleepless nights building single-handedly saved the company’s flagship project. Yet, when the annual promotion list came out, my name was nowhere to be found. Instead, a man named Julian Monroe, who had joined the company less than a month earlier, skipped several ranks to become my direct supervisor. When I marched into my boss Sebastian Carter’s office to ask why, he lashed out at me without hesitation. “You really think a community college graduate like you can compete with a master’s graduate from an elite overseas university?” I clenched my fists, raising my voice to fight back. “The employee handbook clearly states that engineering promotions are strictly performance-based, regardless of your degree!” He pointed a finger right at my nose, his eyes filled with unyielding disdain. “Rules are rigid, but people aren’t. “A community college graduate like you should be down on your knees thanking God for the base salary this company throws your way! “Know your place. This company will keep spinning just fine without you!” I turned around and handed in my resignation letter on the spot, taking my core algorithm with me. I couldn’t wait to see just how long his company would last without me, the “community college graduate.”

As I walk out of the emergency room, a woman rushes over to me. "You're a doctor, right? My son scraped his knee. Hurry up and come treat him!" I am about to explain, but she glares at me and questions indignantly, "Isn't a doctor supposed to save people? You have time to slack off, but you have no time to treat my son's wound. Is that it?" She grabs my collar and drags me toward the ward. I try to explain, "Ma'am, I’m not—" But she doesn't listen at all and slaps me across the face. "Not what? Are you blind? Can't you see my son is bleeding? Instead of helping my son, you treat those poor nobodies! If you keep delaying my son's treatment, I won't let you off! "Get on your knees and apologize to him right now! Otherwise, I'll file a complaint and have your license revoked!" I endure the sharp pain and struggle to lift my head. In my five years of practicing medicine, this is the first time I have ever been complained about by a living person. "It's not that I won't treat him. I am a forensic pathologist..."

I was the A-list celebrity in the country, the youngest actor ever to win all three major acting awards, and the man Monroe family's heiress treasured above everyone else. Zara Monroe had not only founded a talent agency dedicated to promoting me alone, but had even set aside her status as the heiress of the Monroe family to work as my personal assistant for love. Everyone in the industry knew that crossing me meant crossing the Monroe family. Yet no one could have imagined that in the latest S-tier film production, the male lead I had been all but guaranteed to play would be snatched away by an obscure actor barely known beyond the industry's bottom tier. People across the industry all placing bets on how long it would take before Zara had this newcomer, Kyson Bentley, blacklisted across the entire industry. But instead of a public takedown, they got an official announcement from Monroe Media. [Welcome to our company's second signed artist, @Kyson Bentley! Mr. Bentley will be partnering with Monroe Media from here on out. His future is full of promise.] The entire industry was shaken. Everyone mocked me for having fallen out of favor. The award-winning actor himself was now expected to play second fiddle to a newcomer. On set, I watched Kyson deliver a painfully amateurish performance. My face cold, I followed the and slapped him using a camera angle that made it look as though I had hit him. But Kyson clutched his cheek and fell to the ground, accusing me of using the scene to get revenge on him. Zara ordered her people to pin me down and made the production team add a hundred more slapping scenes to my schedule. By the time they were done, I had been slapped until I lost my hearing in my right ear. My face was so swollen that I was barely recognizable.

For three years, I worked for my coworkers for free—designing, covering for their mistakes, cleaning up their messes. They used my work to get promoted, to win awards, even to run side jobs on the sly, and I never took a cent for any of it. Then I single-handedly landed the hardest client project the company had ever taken on and walked away with a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus. That was the day everyone lost their minds. The same people who'd leeched off me the hardest led the charge, cornering me at my desk and tearing into me in front of the whole office. "The whole concept for that project was a team effort. What gives you the right to keep the bonus for yourself?" "Your work has always been garbage. That free labor of yours was never worth anything anyway!" Worse, they spent the whole night digging up old grievances, stitching together every minor slip-up they could find, and spreading rumors through the entire company—that I'd stalled projects, that my work was worthless, that I'd tanked the department's numbers. Finally, they gave me an ultimatum. "Either split the entire bonus with the department, or pay us two hundred thousand dollars for our trouble. Take your pick." Even the department manager tried to smooth things over, telling me, "We're all colleagues here. You've already got a big bonus—taking a small loss won't kill you. Don't be so difficult about it." Wonderful. So three years of quietly covering for everyone had just produced a pack of lazy, credit-stealing backstabbers. Since they wanted to gang up on the one person who'd always played fair, fine. I was going to lay out three years of original files, timestamps, and proof of exactly who'd done the work—all of it, all at once. And what none of them knew was that the special project behind my bonus was an AI system built to replace every single one of them.

After I was reborn into the World Cup training camp locker room, the first thing I did was not train harder, but quietly watch the head coach running around the room with his phone in hand. "TactiGenie says it pulls from the world's largest database! If we follow the Invincible Spiral tactic it generates, we'll definitely win this World Cup! We'll win every match by a huge margin!" In my previous life, I had objected, saying, "TactiGenie doesn't understand football at all." The captain immediately slapped me across the face. "Don't talk nonsense. Do you think you know more than TactiGenie? Or more than the coaching staff?" In that life, Team Libertas conceded a total of 16 goals across three group-stage matches. The head coach cried in front of the cameras and said, "If it weren't for Christian's words before the match shaking the team's morale, we would never have ended up like this." After a public vote of 30 million people, I was named the person most responsible for the national team's elimination. I received 50 million hateful messages, and in the end, I couldn't take it anymore and jumped from the 23rd floor. This time, when the coach pulled out the TactiGenie tactics board with its AI watermark and win-probability curve, I just smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. "Coach Hudson, this tactic is amazing. I'd really love to play." Then I lowered my head and sent a message to the team doctor. "Theodore, my old Achilles injury is acting up again. Please help me get a medical certificate."

At the New Year’s team-building event, the intern, Lilith Woods, did not obtain my approval and changed our suburban trip to a seven-day tour of Baline. “Mr. Lucian Stone, I hear a change of scenery can really spice things up. Don’t lock up tonight. I’ll come by for a deep dive into our collaboration.” She pretended to be drunk and fell into my arms while slipping the room key into my pocket in the process. To avoid suspicion, I did not return to the hotel. However, in the middle of the night, the police called me in for questioning—someone had reported a dine-and-dash. Only then did I realize that the reserved budget of $100,000 for the accommodation had long since been exceeded. Lilith had upgraded their room to a presidential suite, feasted on high-end seafood buffets, and even used company funds to buy luxury handbags! When I showed up at their private room, the interns were still casually taking king crabs and several unopened bottles of the Macallan Whisky with them. “Mr. Stone, you’re just in time. Could you please settle the bill?” Lilith looked utterly righteous as she said this with a grin. “Young people like us make mistakes, while adults help to pay the price. You’re not exactly short on cash, anyway. Just think of it as buying my happiness.” I stared at the $700,000 bill and paid it in silence. The next day, the payment invoices made their grand entrance in the group chat, accompanied by my pinned message. [Upon financial review, this team-building event does not meet reimbursement criteria. All expenses will be shared equally among the seven participants.] [Each person will need to pay $100,000, payable immediately. If payment needs to be deferred, please print the proof and submit it to the President’s Office.]