Chapter 1

I spent a whole month training a team of fresh graduates until they could finally work on their own. Then, a "genius manager" parachuted into our company and announced at the all-hands meeting:

"Your outdated, low-efficiency methods should have been phased out ages ago."

He took over my team right then and there, bragging that he would double our revenue in just thirty days.

I felt a sting of disappointment at first, but I cooled off quickly. If he didn't respect my methods, I wasn't going to volunteer any advice.

Sure enough, within two days, it was painfully clear he didn't care about what the client actually needed—all he knew was cracking the whip and pushing deadlines.

On day three, the project blew up. The client’s complaint line melted down.

Livid and panicking, he rushed in and blamed the entire disaster on the junior devs in front of everyone.

I didn’t get angry. Instead, a wave of relief washed over me. This dumpster fire was officially not my problem anymore.

That night, I quietly typed out my resignation letter.

Watching him make blunder after blunder while the team’s morale hit rock bottom only made me more certain: this place wasn’t worth another second of my life.

A week later, the "genius manager" hit a dead end. He came to my desk with his head bowed, desperately begging me to bail him out.

Without even looking up, I slid the crisp resignation letter across the desk right into his hands.

I had spent an entire month personally training a team of fresh recruits until they could finally run independently.

Then Julian Vance, the "genius manager" parachuted in by the board, slapped me right in the face at the all-hands meeting.

"Evelyn, your slow, low-efficiency leadership style is long overdue for the trash can."

His crisp, smug voice echoed through the boardroom, dripping with arrogance.

The room froze.

The fresh grads on my team sat with their jaws dropped, their faces flushed with shock and anger.

I could feel dozens of eyes darting straight at me—some sympathetic, some secretly gloating.

I looked up, meeting his gaze with complete calm.

Julian was in his late twenties, sharply dressed in a bespoke suit with every strand of hair gelled into place.

Word was he’d been aggressively headhunted from a top Silicon Valley firm, backed by a golden resume.

He didn't flinch under my stare. In fact, the corner of his mouth curved into a mocking smirk.

"Starting today, I am personally taking over this project."

He lifted his chin like a king marking his territory.

"I give management my word: within one month, this project’s performance will double."

A wave of muffled gasps swept the room, followed by a few hesitant, scattered claps.

My heart sank.

To build this project, my team of interns and I had pulled countless all-nighters.

We started from scratch, building the architecture line by line and locking down every single requirement with the client.

Now, right when the finish line was in sight, this guy was waltzing in to steal the credit.

"Evelyn, you’ll step into a project consultant role for now. If anything comes up, I’ll be sure to… 'consult' you."

Julian dragged out the word "consult," practically coating it in sarcasm.

Under the conference table, my fingernails dug hard into my palms.

Still, I didn't lose my cool. I even managed a polite smile.

"Understood, Julian."

After the meeting broke up, Maya, the youngest girl on my team, walked up to me with teary eyes.

"Evelyn, how could he do this?! You built this entire thing from scratch..."

I gently squeezed her hand, cutting her off.

"Welcome to corporate life. Just focus on your own work."

I comforted her, but as soon as I turned back to my cubicle, my hands started trembling.

I took three deep breaths until the racing in my chest quieted down.

Once the adrenaline faded, anger didn’t take over. Instead, a strange, razor-sharp clarity set in.

Sitting at my desk, I created an encrypted document and titled it: Julian Vance - Incident Log.

Then, I typed out the very first entry:

April 15th. Project handover, Day 1.

Mr. Vance threw out the established development roadmap. He demands the core features of Phase One be completed in three days for a live client demo.

Looking at the words on the screen, I scoffed inwardly.

The original plan gave us an entire week for Phase One. That was because one of the core modules required complex data integration with the client's legacy database.

It had taken me three grueling days of back-and-forth alignment with three different tech leads on the client side just to lock down a safe protocol.

Julian obviously hadn't bothered reading a single line of my handover notes.

He saw the words "Core Features" and assumed he could just brute-force his way through.

Sure enough, his idea of "hands-on leadership" was dragging everyone into the glass meeting room, grabbing a marker, and scribbling a laughably crude flowchart on the whiteboard.

Then, he dished out impossible tasks like junk mail flyers.

"Liam, you’re on frontend UI. I want to see live visual mockups tomorrow."

"Ethan, backend APIs must be finished by end of day today."

"And Maya, get me the complete user testing dataset before you clock out tomorrow."

The new hires looked at each other, their faces screaming this is impossible.

"Any questions?"

Julian scanned the room, his eyes sharp and unforgiving.

Silence.

"Great! Get to work. I only care about results, not excuses!"

He slammed his hand on the desk, looking absurdly self-satisfied.

I sat quietly in the back corner like a ghost, taking in the entire circus.

A manager who couldn’t even be bothered to understand real client specs, relying purely on panic, high pressure, and fake urgency to puff up his ego.

He didn't realize that the lifeblood of this project was stability and backward compatibility, not his delusional idea of "speed."

His downfall was already written in stone the moment he opened his mouth.

I minimized the doc and started organizing my personal files.

This company wasn't getting another drop of my loyalty.

When the clock struck 6 PM, the floor was still ablaze with fluorescent lights.

Julian was still in the conference room, aggressively dangling fake carrots about massive bonuses once the project went live.

The kids staring back at him had lost all their sparkle, their eyes glazed over with exhaustion and numbness.

I grabbed my bag and gently clicked the door shut behind me, leaving the chaos behind.

The cool evening breeze hit my face, and I had never felt lighter.

The real show was just getting started.