Chapter 5

Monday's project meeting lasted forty minutes.

Ethan announced Chloe would be taking over the core project I was leading.

No one in the conference room made a sound.

He asked if I had any objections.

"None," I replied calmly.

Throughout the afternoon, I meticulously organized three years' worth of project documents and personally handed them to Chloe's desk.

She accepted them, smiling as she said, "Thank you, Summer."

I nodded, returned to my desk, placed the voice recorder behind the pen holder and pressed record.

Four days after Chloe took over, the core database crashed.

That night, the client sent a letter of accountability. I counted the zeros after the loss amount three times.

Ethan called me into his office.

His tie was loosened halfway, his forehead slick with sweat.

"You go deal with the client."

"Ethan, this isn't my project anymore."

"But you know the process."

"Chloe knows it too. You put her in charge."

He slammed his palm on the desk.

"You don't know what's going on?"

I knew perfectly well.

The voice recorder was put there precisely for this day.

Every incompetent instruction Chloe gave, every wrong call she made over those four days, all of it was recorded.

"You want me to take the fall?"

He didn't speak. His silence was an admission.

I stood up.

"Fine. I'll handle it."

He leaned back in his chair, his shoulders visibly slumping in relief.

I left his office, but I didn't go to the client.

I opened my phone and went into the company-wide WhatsApp chat group.

Two hundred thirty-seven people.

I dragged the compressed files into the chat window: recordings, screenshots, original client communication logs.

Each file was timestamped and identified by the operator.

My finger hovered over the send button, a cold prickle running through it.

A second later, I pressed it.

Phones across the entire floor vibrated simultaneously.

The group chat was silent for a few seconds, then messages flooded in rapidly.

Someone tagged Ethan, someone tagged Chloe, others just typed a string of ellipses.

Chloe sprang up from her desk, frantically tapping her screen.

She tried to recall them.

Thirty-seven files. The recall window had long since closed.

By the time Ethan burst out of his office, I was already standing in the center of the hallway, holding two items.

One was my resignation letter.

The other, a collective resignation statement from the core team, with eight signatures, not a single one missing.

His steps skidded to a halt in front of me.

"Summer, are you insane?"

"No."

I handed him my resignation letter.

He snatched it directly.

In front of everyone in the hallway, he tore it in half with both hands.

The paper ripped into fragments, white confetti fluttering onto the dark gray floor.

"You think you can survive without this?"

His voice was already ragged.

"What about the client? What about the channels?"

The sound of leather shoes on floor tiles echoed from the end of the hallway.

The receptionist led a man in a sharp suit down the hallway.

The cover of the folder in his hand bore the major client's corporate logo. In the bottom right corner, a red official stamp was stark against the paper.

"Mr. Ethan Hayes?"

"...Yes."

"This is a legal notice from our firm."

The man's tone was all business.

"Regarding Ms. Summer's departure as your company's core project lead, per Article 17 of our contract, our firm officially terminates all ongoing collaborations with your company."

"All further matters will be handled directly with Ms. Summer's team."

Ethan's hand trembled as he reached for it.

I turned and walked toward the elevator.

My heels crunched over the scattered paper fragments, each step a faint whisper.

The elevator doors opened.

I stepped inside and pressed the basement floor button.

In the last sliver of space before the doors closed, Ethan was still frozen in place, not moving an inch.

The legal notice dangled from his hand.

The resignation letter he had so carelessly torn now lay in fragments, being scattered by the hallway's draft, drifting toward his feet.

And the elevator doors in front of me had already closed completely.