Chapter 4

I was woken up by my phone vibrating violently. The sky was barely gray.

I swiped the screen. Forty-seven missed calls. My Snapchat and messages were absolutely blowing up.

I tapped on a voice note sent by Jane Vance, our HR Director.

"Elena, have you looked at YouTube or TikTok? Someone leaked a voice recording of you from our executive meeting. It's trending everywhere. PR is trying to contain it, but it's spreading too fast!"

I opened TikTok. The video already had over thirty million views.

It was just an audio track set against a backdrop of heavily edited, unflattering security footage photos of me from the conference room. They made me look like an angry, greedy tyrant.

I pressed play.

My voice came through the speaker:

"...The interns? It's fine if we invest heavily in them early on. We feed them, we get them nice and fat, and once they sign those full-time contracts, we can handle them however we want. You have to understand---the more a person feels you've invested in them, the harder it is for them to ever leave you."

The clip cut off abruptly.

The comments section was an absolute toxic wasteland.

[So this is Elena Sterling, the supposedly 'ethical' CEO? Wow. The mask slipped fast.]

[I knew those housing stipends and paid training were too good to be true. There's no such thing as a free lunch in capitalism.]

[Ex-employee here. I always felt something was off. No boss is that nice to interns unless they're raising pigs for slaughter.]

[Boost this, guys! Make this corporate vampire famous!]

I threw my phone face down on the bed and closed my eyes.

The recording was real.

But it had been sliced to pieces.

The first part of my original statement was actually me screaming at a department manager who had been treating interns like modern-day slaves. I had chewed him out for ten straight minutes.

The second part was me explaining how we could retain top talent by actually investing in their career growth and showing them we cared, creating a mutual bond of trust.

But in the edited version, my anger at the bad manager was gone. My explanation was gone.

Only those few sentences remained, twisted into a malicious confession.

It was a brilliantly executed hit job.

I got up to wash my face. As I was brushing my teeth, Jane called again.

"Elena, we traced the leak. The audio came from inside the office. The security cameras and the audio recording systems are on separate networks. Only the eight people in that executive meeting had access to the raw files..."

With the toothbrush still in my mouth, I interrupted her. "I know."

"You know?"

"The circle of people who could get that audio is tiny. Don't panic, Jane. I'll see you at the office."

I hung up and looked at myself in the mirror.

My hair was a bit messy, my eyes were slightly bloodshot, but my expression was perfectly calm.

I whispered to my reflection: Elena, just because you want to do something good doesn't mean everyone wants to see you succeed.