Independence Workplace Short Stories & Novels

“Sign this agreement. It extends your probation by three months and cuts your pay by forty percent.” Adeline Lancaster, the HR manager, casually filed her nails. She didn’t bother looking up as she rolled her eyes. “Don’t think this company can’t run without you just because you wrote the core architecture. “Tristan Rothwell has taken over all your code. You can pack your things and get out whenever you want.” I stared at her arrogant face and let out a cold chuckle. I had been with the company for three months and written every single line of the core codebase. Yet she had stalled my permanent position approval for over twenty days. She wanted to steal my hard work, cut my hard-earned pay, and use it to feed a connected slacker who couldn’t even parse basic scripts. Fine by me. Rip! I tore the agreement to shreds and slammed the pieces right into her face. Before she could scream, I pulled out my phone and tapped the screen once. I revoked every internal network authorization linked to my encrypted core scripts. “No need to wait,” I said. “I’m leaving right now.”

At the company’s quarterly awards ceremony, the CFO suddenly announced a new performance criterion. He produced a raffle drum decorated with lucky symbols. “Any employee who draws the grand-prize ticket will receive a quarterly bonus of $150,000.” After a few seconds of stunned silence, all my colleagues rushed forward, and somehow, every one of them drew a winning ticket. Yet I, the company’s top salesperson with a $60-million contract in hand, drew the only losing ticket. The CFO tossed a good-luck charm onto my desk. “Alex, you may be our top salesperson, but your luck is terrible. You’re going to drag the whole company down. “The company prepared this charm especially for you. Take it and get rid of your bad luck. Work harder next quarter, and maybe you’ll earn the bonus.” In an instant, all the colleagues who had once showered me with flattery backed away with mocking looks, as if I were some piece of trash that brought misfortune to everyone around me. I swallowed my humiliation and confronted my boss. He didn’t even bother looking up. “Mr. Lee is doing this for the company’s growth. As a veteran employee, you should understand. “Besides, it’s your own fault for having such terrible luck. Instead of wasting my time, why don’t you hurry to a church and pray?” I argued my case, but the security guards threw me out. Furious, I suddenly felt a strange sense of relief. I turned around and called our rival company. “I have the contract your company has been fighting us for. Would you be interested in making a deal?”

When the kiss cam swept across the stands at the baseball stadium Warren Doyle, a married investor in the league, had his arms around his PR director and was kissing her. The two of them went up on the jumbotron, and the crowd erupted in hoots and cheers. Warren stormed into the camera bay and demanded I hand over my camera. I told him the camera pointed wherever the control room told it to. He stared at me for a few seconds, then suddenly let go and let me leave. I thought that was the end of it. The next day, audio from the crew channel shot to the top of the news feeds, with nothing left in it but two ambiguous lines from me. "Camera locked on row seven. Keep rolling. Don't cut." Overnight I became the shameless camera operator who'd filmed them on purpose. I was suspended from my job, my father's food cart was trashed, and Warren sued me for a million dollars. But he didn't know that the recording he was using to convict me could only ever convict him.

"For Kate's year-end bonus this year, let's just give her 500 dollars to keep up appearances." My boss' nonchalant conversation with the accountant drifts through the half-closed break room door. "500 dollars? But Mr. Ribeiro, she's our top salesperson this year," the accountant reminds Rupert Ribeiro cautiously. "The new guy, Carter Stevens, just closed a small deal, and you just approved a 5,000-dollar bonus for him…" Rupert scoffs. "You don't get it. Carter's a man—a rising star. You have to throw money at him to bring out his killer instinct. "As for Kate, she's a 40-year-old woman. She's old. Even if she leaves us, who's going to want her? Giving her 500 dollars is already doing her a favor. In fact, she should thank me for even giving her a paycheck." My fingers tighten around my coffee mug until my knuckles turn white. As it turns out, my relentless hustle is nothing more than a cheap commodity to them. When I get back to my desk, I find Carter kicked back in his chair, legs crossed and absorbed in a mobile game. The moment he sees me walk in, he pushes a stack of documents toward me. "Kate, Mr. Ribeiro wants you to review this contract for me. We men are careless. This kind of detail-oriented work is best left to the women." Looking at his smug face, I pull out my phone and call the recruiter from a rival company. "That offer with triple my current salary? I'll take it. And one more thing. My five biggest clients have already made their stance clear—wherever I go, their business goes with me." After I hang up, I look Carter straight in the eye and calmly push the stack of documents back toward him. "I'll leave this kind of detail-oriented work for the pillars of the company to tackle. Take your time." Without me, let's just see how long it takes before this company comes crashing down.

At the Alpha Summit, my younger brother Felix accused me in front of everyone. "I grew up crushed under my older sister's thumb. If I so much as ate a piece of candy, she'd pry my mouth open and dig it out." I swirled the red wine in my glass and gave a cold laugh. "That wasn't candy. It was a pill made from wolfsbane. If I hadn't saved you, you wouldn't even have the chance to stand here talking to me." Felix's face froze. Refusing to give up, he said, "When our cousin Toby came to stay with us, you gave him every single moonstone I'd worked so hard to find. I'm your own brother, and you played favorites with someone else?" I sighed. "Your cousin had it rough. A big fire burned his family's house to the ground." "What does that have to do with me? Just because he had it rough, I'm supposed to give in to him every time?" "You set that fire." The room went dead silent. The reporters hammered their shutter buttons, capturing Felix looking as if he'd swallowed something foul. "Well, didn't I find him a job afterward? I went out of my way to help him, but the second you found out, you beat me up. Do you have any idea how badly that scarred my fragile young heart?" His eyes reddened as he spoke, while the memory made my blood boil all over again. "You shipped your cousin off to work in a mine in the Wastelands. How is that any different from exile? "You locked him into a five-year contract when you sent him there, so he's still serving hard labor in the Wastelands. You're telling me you didn't deserve that beating?" The viewers watching the livestream didn't know whether to laugh or cry. [Poor Toby. He still hasn't escaped that family?] [See, no beating is ever wasted.] [Just get a new brother. This one's a lost cause.]

During the thunderstorm, I struggled through the Pack Institute alone, dragging a heavy feed cart behind me. My rain-soaked lab coat clung to my skin, and my shoes were caked with mud. The message I had sent through the mind-link to my fated mate, Arthur Voss, half an hour ago was still unanswered. "Could you come down and bring me an umbrella?" I should have heard back from him instantly, but there was still no response. The power had gone out in the animal facility during the downpour. I pulled out my nearly dead phone and found Arthur's number. He was listed as the lab's emergency contact. My finger hovered over the call button. Then I looked up. Through the thick curtain of rain, I saw two figures sitting side by side inside the glass-walled lab. They were my mate, Arthur, and Lina Brooks, a junior researcher in our lab. He was gently ruffling Lina's hair. "Don't worry. I'll take care of everything for you." The instruments on the table were the same ones I had begged Arthur to teach me to use three years ago. His voice was as gentle as I'd ever heard it. I remembered how I had been when I first met Arthur. Back then, I was too scared to take a cab alone. When my wolf spiraled out of control, I would panic. When problems came up, I would hide. When an experiment failed, I would call him for help and keep him on the phone for three hours. Every single time, he brushed aside my pleas for help. "Irene, you need to solve your own problems. You can't keep waiting for someone to rescue you." So I learned. I gritted my teeth and handled everything alone. When samples were contaminated, I tracked down the cause myself. When a project fell apart, I dealt with it on my own. I spent countless nights teaching myself technical skills that had once seemed impossible to master. Yet none of it ever earned me even a hint of his approval. I looked down. This time, I didn't hesitate. With the last sliver of battery, I deleted Arthur's number.

The day before my wedding, my ex-boyfriend asked me to meet him in a hotel room. "I heard you're getting married," he said. "Could you meet me, just this once? There's something I need to tell you." I agreed, and that night I went to the address he gave me. But the person waiting for me wasn't him. It was my fiancé, his face like a storm cloud, and beside him, his self-satisfied childhood sweetheart, looking thoroughly pleased with herself. "See, Julian, I told you she wasn't being honest with you," she said. "She's finally slipped up." My fiancé's jaw clenched. He grabbed my wrist hard enough to bruise. "Why?" he demanded. I lowered my eyes and answered calmly, "Because I don't want to marry you anymore. This is the eighth time you and your childhood sweetheart have tested whether my feelings for you were real. "I'm exhausted. Aren't you?"

For three years, I used my family's mob ties and my own money to pave the way for Declan's crew. He was the boy I survived the streets with as a kid. But at this month's sit-down, his newly hired secretary, Roxy, tossed my casino ledgers and club records onto the table in front of all the guys. She accused me of skimming profits and slacking off. "These underground banks, these smuggling docks," she read the numbers out loud, her voice full of fake outrage. "Every time she bribes someone, she skims thousands of dollars! She's lining her own pockets." "I say the Boss strips her of her club manager title right now to save our cash flow." I glanced at Declan, the boss of the crew. He knew better than anyone what that missing money actually paid for. He knew how much dock security it covered. He knew how many nods of approval it bought from politicians and cops. He also knew what I was doing when I wasn't at the club. I was making deals with dangerous gun runners. I was drinking hard liquor to secure guns and ammo for his boys. But he just stared at me coldly. "Katerina, do you have anything to say about these ledgers and the proof Roxy just showed us?" I smiled. "I have nothing to explain." Very soon, all of them would find out exactly what happens when you pull a stunt like this on a Principessa's turf.

To end two years of long distance, I quit my job behind my boyfriend's back on Valentine's Day and moved to his city. The candlelit dinner he'd promised to welcome me turned into him leaving halfway through when his boss Diana called, asking him to entertain a client over drinks. I told myself it was just the way corporate life worked. We made plans to see an exhibition that weekend. We'd barely reached the entrance when another call pulled him away to fix an urgent proposal for Diana. I told myself he was just ambitious. We'd planned an island getaway to celebrate my birthday. The night before we were supposed to leave, he called. His voice was tinged with guilt. "Diana says this business trip is a test from upper management, and I really need to make a good impression. You understand, right?" Then he went to the neighboring city with Diana. I was silent for a few seconds, then said okay. I quietly canceled the hotel and sat alone in our rental apartment, eating instant noodles. The next day, the doorbell rang. It was a courier. "Hi, I have a delivery for Diana Lawson." "You've got the wrong address," I said. The courier looked certain. "That's impossible. I've been delivering here for a year. It's always this address." That's when it hit me. All his so-called overtime, business trips, and obligations he claimed he couldn't get out of were just excuses to keep his boss happy. He thought she was his ladder to climb. He had no idea that I was the one who could have taken him straight to the top.

I was an employee of Starmax Group, the country’s business giant, and the husband of its president, Willow Lawrence. To keep our love untainted, I refused every shortcut she offered me and stubbornly chose to work my way up from the bottom, determined to prove through my own abilities that I was worthy of her. Until Jasper White came along. He was more handsome than I was and had a more tragic past. The way he pretended to be strong easily brought out Willow’s instinct to protect him. Thus, Willow personally gave him the promotion meant for me at the most pivotal moment in my career. Afterward, she offered me hefty ‘compensation’. I did not argue or make a scene. I accepted it all with a smile, completely at peace with the outcome. Because from that moment on, Willow was no longer my lover. She was simply my ‘top-tier investor’ and a reliable ‘human ATM’.

It is 1:00 am, and I'm still in the inspection office in the suburban power plant, compiling the equipment defect records for the week. Suddenly, there's loud kicking at my door. Brad Greer's panicked voice rings out. "Sam! Come with me right now! The pressure-regulating valve on the main steam pipe of Unit 4 is completely stuck! "The automatic pressure relief device didn't get activated! If it explodes, the three maintenance workers in the control room next door will be burned to a crisp!" Just as I grab my hard hat and am about to rush out, an anonymous encrypted email pops up on my office computer. It said, "Don't go there. The three maintenance workers have already been burned to death by the gushing steam. "He is the one who violated regulations by performing the pressurized maintenance after replacing the valve core with a substandard one, and now, it's completely stuck. He's just trying to make you take the blame. "If you touch the valve even once, you'll get your fingerprints all over it. The CCTV footage will show only you fiddling with it. You're going to take the fall for him and spend the rest of your life in jail. "You're going to have to pay tens of millions of dollars in compensation, and the victims' families will even have the right to sell off all your assets for compensation. You'll never have a peaceful life in prison either." The kicking at the door continues, and the hinges on the wooden door are about to fall off. "Samuel Williams! What are you dawdling for? You're the only one in the whole plant now who's received valve debugging training! You're the only one who can do it! "If you come out any later, those three maintenance people are going to be cooked!" I grip the computer mouse and withdraw my hand from the doorknob. I then say, "I'm sorry, but I'm only an inspector, not a maintenance technician. You need to call the plant's emergency number right away."

The sales department organized a team-building trip and turned it into a killer-instinct trail race, with a $30,000 prize for the winner. I volunteer with a search and rescue team, and I stayed up all night mapping the safest route with supply points along the way. The new VP they had parachuted in tore up my map right before we set out. "What's the fun in a paved trail? We take the undeveloped Wildman Gorge. That's how you show real killer instinct! "To keep anyone from cheating with GPS, everyone hands over their communication devices." I pointed at the thunderheads on the horizon and tried to stop him. Wildman Gorge floods easily, and going in without radios was suicide. Instead, he smashed my radio to pieces in front of everyone. "You're just jealous that I got to lead this thing, and you want to keep everyone from taking home the prize money, right?" For that $30,000, my coworkers lined up to call me a coward who cared nothing about the team. Fine. I took off my shell jacket and volunteered to stay at base camp at the bottom of the mountain. A storm was coming. If this pack of office wolves wanted to take on a mudslide in Wildman Gorge, I would sit there with a hot cup of tea and wish them a triumphant return.

Right after the Christmas holidays, my former boss called me. The moment I picked up, he immediately barked down the line. "Do you know what time it is? Why aren't you here yet? The project on your desk is due today, and if it falls through, can you take responsibility for that? Get your butt over here right now!" He spoke with entitlement, as if I were still his overworked corporate slave standing by at his beck and call. Before I could get a word in, he slammed the phone down. A moment later, human resources called me. "Why aren't you here yet? Mr. Howell is furious! You've always been our most reliable employee. Even if you're unhappy with your bonus, you can't just throw a fit and walk out!" I was unimpressed. "Have you forgotten? I resigned before the holidays!" Today was my first day starting at one of our clients' firms.

After the New Year's holiday, my former boss called. The moment I picked up, she tore into me. "What time do you think it is? Why aren't you here yet? The project is about to be handed over. If it falls through, are you going to take responsibility for it? Get over here now!" She sounded completely entitled, as if I were still the same pushover who came running whenever she called. Before I could say a word, she hung up. Then HR called. "Why aren't you here yet? The boss is furious! You're usually the most reliable one. Even if you're unhappy about your year-end bonus, you can't just walk away from your work!" I laughed and explained, "It's not that I'm refusing to work. I already quit before the holiday!" Today was my first day at the client company.

I spent a few minutes in the bathroom during work hours, and my 20,000‑dollar salary was cut down to 3,500 dollars. I went to my boss to demand an explanation. He acted fair‑minded, and every word carried sarcasm. "According to last month's security footage, you spent a total of 40 minutes in the bathroom. Don't tell me you were working there. "Five hundred dollars for every minute you spent in the bathroom. "It’s a new company policy. As a senior employee, you should set an example. Honestly, I went easy on you." I had been one of the company's key employees for ten years, and the deals I brought in had generated over 100 million dollars in revenue. Now, even my most basic rights were taken away. When I did not react, he smiled coldly. "If you don't like it, quit. You really think this company can't function without you? "And don't forget that you still have five years left on your contract. Who's going to hire you?" I did not argue with him. However, when my contract expired five days later, he was the one who panicked.

The boss' daughter, Pamela Thompson, returns from overseas to take over the family business. The moment she sees me growing vegetables in an empty lot on the factory grounds, she covers her nose in disgust and sneers. "Our factory is a flagship company in this industrial hub!" she barks. "What kind of riffraff grows vegetables here? Do you think this is your personal farmer's market? Fire him, scrape that patch clean, and pave it over with concrete!" "And you!" she snaps, pointing to another worker. "Aren't you getting a little too old? You don't exactly fit our corporate image. You're fired too!" I take off my work uniform, load up my bicycle with my homegrown harvest, and pedal away. Behind me, the workers are all dumbfounded. One after another, they strip off their uniforms as well and fall in line behind me. "Where Drew goes, we go!" This time, it's the spoiled heiress who's left staring in utter disbelief.

The annual performance review came around. I was the company's top revenue generator. They gave me a D. I looked at the evaluation form in my hand and laughed, because the alternative was worse. "A D? No raise? You people call this a comprehensive assessment?" Even a dog that drags a forty-five-million-dollar deal home gets a couple of bones for it. Sonia Blake, our HR director, was busy touching up her lipstick. She didn't bother to look up. "Ethan, don't get arrogant. This company values character. It values teamwork. You lean too hard on individual heroics. The D was a unanimous decision by the board." "So that's the justification for wiping out my entire year-end bonus and cutting my pay twenty percent?" I didn't understand. That was when my direct supervisor, and the man I hated most in the building, Grant Palmer, walked in. "If you don't want the job, you can leave." He was flushed with satisfaction, waving around the letter of intent I had just closed. One and a half billion dollars. "Sonia, why are you still arguing with him? Ethan, here's the termination agreement. Sign it. And while you're at it, hand over the core code for the new platform." Use a man up, then throw him away. Fine. Wonderful. I picked up the pen and signed my name across the agreement with a flourish. "I hope you don't come begging me to come back."

Everyone in our neighborhood knew me as the meek full-time housewife. I had no income and no social life. Every hour of every day went to the kitchen, my child, and my hypercritical mother-in-law, Sofia Carter. Yet when I woke up, I had somehow swapped bodies with my insufferably smug husband, Kevin Carter. My phone lit up as he sent one mocking message after another: [Olivia, you act like having a baby entitles you to lie around at home all day, watch the kid, and throw together a couple of meals.] [For your information, this swap is permanent. I can finally get some rest.] [Don't run your mouth at my office. That management job is way beyond what a brain that never even made it through college can handle.] When I finished reading, I stared at the stubble-covered man in the bathroom mirror and burst into tearful laughter. He had no idea. My meekness and numbness had been bought with my health. From the day I married him, I never got more than five hours of sleep. At twenty-two, I suffered a severe hemorrhage during a difficult delivery. At twenty-four, I developed severe tendinitis. At twenty-six, after years of exhaustion and Sofia grinding me down, I was diagnosed with moderate depression. To him, I was never a wife. I was a live-in maid he didn't have to pay, someone he could take his temper out on whenever he pleased.

Six months later, Carlo, who once terrorized Port San Vito and forced us to pay protection money, knelt in the muddy water and blocked my path. Red-eyed, he begged me to bring the Moretti convoys back. "Ms. Moretti, if you come back, there'll be no protection money and no parking fees... I'll even pay you." I regarded him coldly and remembered how, six months earlier, he had flicked ash onto my financial statements and looked down at me as he said, "Pay, or get out of Port San Vito."

Just after the New Year, as I was about to return to work, my phone suddenly rang. "Charlie." With just one word, I immediately guessed who it was. Franklin Wood, my former colleague and superior, who had my ex-company and the entire industry blacklist me. We had not been in contact for three years. I did not understand why he was calling me out of the blue. "Is there something you need?" Hearing my response, the man on the other end of the line suddenly took a deep breath, his voice becoming a bit urgent. "Charlie, do you have a job now? What happened back then was my fault. The company needs you now. Can you come back?" 'Needs me?' I thought and laughed. Three years ago, he was the one who told me, "The company's success depends on the connections of its employees, not on their personal merits." 'Now, he's asking me to go back?' I thought, hanging up without replying. After all, the company I was working for now, Apex Systems, was their biggest rival.