Chapter 1

Today was the day of the big pitch to our biggest client. Whether we succeeded or not would decide my year-end promotion.

I had pulled all-nighters for three months straight, just to give myself a bit more leverage.

In my past life, my boss’s reaction to my presentation had been incredibly bizarre, and I had immediately demanded to know why.

His excuse was that I wasn’t the one who had actually created the pitch deck.

Back then, the blood rushed to my head. Believing they were deliberately targeting me, I yanked my USB drive out and stormed out of the office.

Afterward, Becca took over with a completely nonsensical proposal, utterly ruining the partnership. Yet, she turned around and pinned all the blame on me, forcing me to bear the brunt of the financial losses.

Reborn into this life, I stood once again in front of the projector screen in the company conference room.

Right in front of me was our CEO, Richard Davis, his face tightly knit in a deep frown.

Suddenly, without any warning, Becca’s inner voice echoed clearly inside my head.

[Director Sterling looks so glamorous, getting a promotion and a raise off a pitch deck I stayed up all night to write. Oh well. Who cares if she threatened me with my full-time conversion? I don’t have any family connections here. I guess I’ll just swallow my pride and bear it.]

The voice appeared so abruptly.

I recognized instantly that the person "speaking" was Becca.

Yet, her mouth was shut tight. She hadn’t opened her lips at all.

At the same time, the expressions of the other colleagues around the room shifted slightly. The looks they threw at me instantly filled with disdain.

Obviously, they had all heard it too.

Richard cleared his throat and slammed the folder in front of him shut.

"Chloe, you don’t need to go to the big pitch with the client this afternoon. Also, your promotion proposal is suspended indefinitely."

I stopped clicking the presenter remote in my hand and looked at him calmly.

Richard leaned back in his chair, his tone carrying the weight of a final judgment.

"You need to have some professional ethics. Taking credit for a proposal a young intern stayed up all night to write goes against everything this company stands for. Becca will be taking full charge of this project from now on."

Becca, standing at the far end of the conference table, shrunk her neck back right on cue, her eyes pooling with tears.

"Mr. Davis, please don't blame Chloe. I'm just an intern. I'm already so happy to be of help to the team. As long as I can transition to a full-time role, it doesn't matter if Chloe takes the credit."

Her voice was thick with grievance and fragility.

At the exact same time, her inner thoughts rang through the room once more.

[I'm so scared Chloe will be mad at me. If it weren't to save everyone's bonuses for this month, I would never have dared to stand up. I don't want anything. I just want Mr. Davis to recognize my hard work. Chloe comes from a rich family and doesn't care about this little commission, but this job is all I have.]

Hearing this, Richard looked at Becca with an extra touch of pity in his eyes.

But when he turned to look at me, his gaze became incredibly harsh.

In my past life, I had hysterically tried to prove that I had typed out every single word of this proposal.

I had even pulled up dozens of version histories from the cloud drive to vindicate myself.

All I got in return was finger-pointing. Not a single person believed me.

I would never taste that suffocating feeling of being helpless and defenseless ever again.

I ripped the ID badge off my neck and tossed it onto the conference table.

"Mr. Davis, you’re absolutely right. I did steal Becca’s proposal."