Chapter 3

Over the next two weeks, the entire office descended into the battleground of Project Starlight.

The prospective client was Julian Sinclair—a billionaire mogul notorious for being the most ruthless perfectionist in the entire industry.

His quality standards were impossible, and his budget was tighter than a vice.

In my previous life, I pulled thirty straight days of all-nighters, crafting eighteen complete iterations before finally securing his signature.

Now, Richard and his three intern minions practically lived in the primary conference room, talking a massive game.

Meanwhile, I didn't work a single minute of overtime. I packed up and walked out at 5:00 PM sharp every single day.

Rumors quickly ran rampant across the department, claiming Chloe Bennett had run out of ideas and completely surrendered.

During lunch one afternoon, I stopped by the breakroom for some water.

Inside, Mia and Logan were whispering excitedly.

"Mia, that creative hook you pitched yesterday was absolute genius!" Logan raved.

"We're definitely taking first place in the internal pitch. We're going to humiliate Chloe on the main stage!"

Mia put on her signature sweet voice.

"Oh, stop it, Logan. It was just a lucky thought."

"It's all thanks to Richard's incredible coaching."

I pushed the door open and calmly poured myself a glass of iced water.

They snapped their mouths shut, glaring at me like cornered rats.

Mia squared her shoulders, her chin tilted up with arrogant defiance.

"Manager Bennett, the internal tender is the day after tomorrow."

"Have you even finished your slides? It'd be so embarrassing if you get chewed out by Mr. Sterling for showing up empty-handed."

I took a sip of water, my face utterly devoid of emotion.

"Don't lose sleep over my schedule."

"I heard your team has prepared a game-changer. Don't disappoint me."

Logan let out a harsh laugh.

"Enjoy your arrogance while you can, Chloe!"

"This time, we will prove that hungry new talent runs circles around washed-up veterans like you!"

"You'd better start packing your desk!"

I didn't waste my breath on barking dogs. I turned around and headed back to my desk.

In reality, my master pitch had been finished days ago.

Safely locked behind two-factor encryption in my private cloud storage.

However, I hadn't just prepared a master pitch. I had crafted a "Trojan Draft."

On the surface, this bait proposal looked breathtakingly brilliant, packed with dazzling metrics and sophisticated models.

Under the hood, however, I had deliberately sabotaged the core profit-margin formula.

If executed according to this poisoned draft, the firm wouldn't make a dime—it would plunge into a catastrophic thirty-million-dollar loss.

I intentionally printed out this Trojan Draft and slipped it into an unlabelled folder right on top of my desk.

Every evening, I left it sitting there in plain sight.

Sure enough, the fish couldn't resist the bait.

The night before the internal tender:

I pretended I had forgotten my car keys and walked back into the office around 11:30 PM.

The floor was dark, save for a tiny beam of light shining over my desk.

I walked over with silent footsteps.

There was Mia, holding her iPhone, frantically photographing every single page of my Trojan Draft.

Her movements were practiced, her eyes blazing with greedy excitement.

After snapping the final page, she quickly reviewed the photos and hurried toward the emergency exit.

Standing in the shadows, I nearly burst out laughing.

What an absolute textbook thief.

She didn't even bother to read the numbers before stealing the whole damn thing.

Mia, since you love taking shortcuts so much...

I'll make sure this one takes you straight into an abyss.

Tomorrow was the internal pitch.

Mr. Sterling would preside in person, and Julian Sinclair himself would join remotely as a VIP guest.

I couldn't wait to see how she planned to justify a thirty-million-dollar disaster in front of the entire boardroom.