Chapter 2

Amber rolled her eyes, reached into her bag, and tossed a printed document onto my desk.

"Fine. Let's lay all our cards on the table then."

"This is a petition signed by every single unmarried, child-free employee in our department."

"Our demands are simple."

"Either you calculate the operating cost of that preschool and pay it out to us as a cash stipend, or you shut down this 'privileged' facility that only serves a select few."

I picked up the petition. Several familiar names jumped out at me.

There was even the head of our Tech Department, Sarah Jenkins, who just last week had held my hands and cried tears of gratitude because her daughter had gotten a spot.

Close to the end of the day, I watched Bea Miller, one of our chronic underperformers, slink over to Amber’s desk.

Bea was in her late forties, a master of office politics and stirring up drama.

"Amber, sweetie, you are a literal hero! You said exactly what we’ve all been thinking!"

Amber smirked, tossing her hair. "Of course. Don't worry, Bea. I’m going to fight this to the very end."

Bea lowered her voice, casting a sneaky glance toward my glass office.

"Keep pushing. We’ve got your back. I know Chloe—she’s all bark and no bite. The louder you scream, the faster she’ll back down."

"Think about how much money it takes to run a preschool. She should be handing that cash to us instead. Besides, who cares about her fancy school? Public preschool is basically free anyway. She didn't even consult us before making this stupid decision."

Watching them whisper, a wave of disgust washed over me.

As the company grew, it had accumulated a lot of dead weight.

I had been planning to introduce a new performance-based rewards system to tie benefits directly to actual productivity, breaking up this "equal-share" mentality.

But every time I brought it up, senior employees like Bea would push back, claiming it would "destabilize the team."

Now I realized they weren’t afraid of instability. They were just terrified of losing the free ride they’d been coasting on.

That evening, as soon as I got home, a new notification popped up on my phone.

This time, Amber had explicitly leaked our company's name and my personal headshot.

"Exposing the toxic female boss who uses 'free preschool' to discriminate against single employees!"

In the video, she sobbed hysterically again, claiming I was bullying her.

"She pulled me into her office today and threatened me! She said if I don't delete the video, she’ll fire me before my probation is even over!"

"She literally told me that single people are 'liabilities' to this company!"

But what actually made my blood run cold was a screenshot shown in the video. It was an internal budget sheet of the preschool.

Even though the key numbers were blurred, that specific spreadsheet format was highly confidential. Only two people in the entire company had access to it.

Myself, and Bob Harrison, our Administrative Director.

Bob had been with me for five years. He was always incredibly deferential, constantly calling me "the most visionary CEO."

I treated him as my right-hand man, and he was stabbing me in the back?

It suddenly clicked. How could Amber, a fresh graduate on probation, have the guts and resources to pull off a campaign this coordinated?

All her talk about "fairness" and "self-love" was just a script written by someone else.

The real puppet master was Bob!

He had probably been resentful of me pouring capital into a "non-profitable" preschool for a long time.

Or maybe... he had his eye on my chair.