Chapter 1

“What’s with this tie?”

I tossed the brand-new tie, tags still attached, onto the coffee table.

Ethan Gray glanced at it without even frowning.

“The new management trainee slipped it into my bag when I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Mia Smith?”

“Who else would be clueless enough to do something like that?”

I let out a cold laugh.

The entire company knew we were sworn enemies—I slashed his budgets, and he mocked me for not understanding technology.

What nobody knew was that we’d been secretly married for seven years and already had a five-year-old child.

The next day, she cried in the cafeteria:

“President Gray told me privately that he feels suffocated in his marriage…”

On the third day, she deliberately scalded herself in the stairwell and tearfully accused me of pushing her.

Cyberbullying. Doxxing. Number one on the trending charts.

Mia Smith, do you know what an Audit Director does best?

—Gather evidence.

I found a brand-new tie in Ethan Gray's briefcase.

The pattern was tacky, and the tag was still attached.

"Explain this."

I tossed the tie onto the coffee table with a thud.

Ethan had just come out of the shower. He glanced at it, and his brow furrowed so deeply you could crush a fly between them.

"One of the new management trainees gave it to me."

He toweled his hair while kicking the tie farther away with disgust. "Said she wanted to thank me for teaching her how to write weekly reports. I refused it, but she stuffed it into my bag when I wasn't looking."

"Mia Smith?"

"Who else would be that clueless?"

I let out a cold laugh.

Not only clueless, but bold too.

As the Group Audit Director, my daily job was finding faults.

And Ethan was the Group VP of R&D.

In the eyes of the company's thousand-plus employees, we were sworn enemies who couldn't stand each other.

Last month, I had just killed a three-million-dollar budget for the R&D department. Ethan publicly mocked me in a meeting for not understanding technology, and I fired back in the group chat that he didn't understand compliance.

The entire company thought we were at each other's throats.

Who would've thought that this cold and aloof VP Ethan heated up milk for me every night and blow-dried my hair?

We went from high school uniforms to wedding dresses. Seven years of secret marriage, and we even had a five-year-old child.

"Did she pull something again today?" I asked.

"Yeah." Ethan sat down beside me and naturally took the audit report from my hands to help me organize it. "In front of a dozen people, she insisted on reaching over to straighten my collar, saying my tie was crooked."

"You let her touch you?"

"I asked her if she wanted to file for workers' compensation for a workplace injury."

Ethan's sharp tongue was as reliable as ever.

"Then she started crying, saying I was too mean and didn't understand a young woman's feelings."

"Feelings?"

I picked up that tie. "Giving a male superior such a personal item—that's sexual harassment."

She'd been on the job less than two months, hadn't accomplished much, and was putting all her energy into trying to seduce executives.

Treating the workplace like a dating game.

In my audit red-line standards, this counted as a high-risk uncontrollable factor.

"Let's just throw it away." Ethan got up to grab the trash can.

"Wait."

I stopped him. "It'd be such a waste to throw it away."

"What are you planning?"

"We should let everyone see just how 'polite' Miss Smith is."

I put the tie back in the bag.

Ethan understood the look in my eyes and smiled. "You're going to mess with her again?"

"I'm in audit."

I turned off the living room light, my tone calm.

"Tomorrow, keep her away from you. That perfume of hers is giving me a headache."