Chapter 3

Over the next month, Karen pushed things even further.

She dumped all the hardest projects in the company on me, calling it "training."

Those were all projects nobody else could handle and had thrown away, with difficult clients, tiny budgets, and tight deadlines.

I stayed silent and took them all on in silence.

I ran around meeting clients during the day, revised proposals at night, and was still at the company on weekends.

Even the coworkers couldn’t stand it and tried to talk me out of it:

"Nina, of all people, why did you have to offend her? Her husband is the company vice president. You can’t beat them."

Her husband was the vice president?

No wonder.

I checked the company’s org chart. Karen’s husband was named David Brooks, and he had been in charge of operations for eight years.

Karen had only been in the company for two years, and she’d gone from an ordinary employee all the way up to manager. Her promotion speed was really fast.

But I didn’t have time to care about any of that.

The client for my current project was a very difficult middle-aged woman. Three previous project managers had all failed to handle her.

I ran around for two weeks straight, showing up every day outside her company, and finally I got to meet her.

The first time we met, she rejected my whole proposal.

The second time, she cursed me out for half an hour and said I clearly didn’t understand her industry.

The third time, she started cursing Karen.

"Your company’s manager Chen promised me a rebate when I signed the contract last time, and in the end I got nothing. Go back and tell her this deal can be done or not, but don’t think I’ll ever trust anyone in your company again."

I immediately caught the word rebate.

"The rebate you’re talking about is...?"

"What, playing dumb? Isn’t your company always like this? Five percent of the contract amount gets privately kicked back to the client contact. That’s exactly how she talked to me back then."

On the surface, I didn’t show any reaction, but inside, my heart was already pounding out of my chest.

"You mean the person who handled you before?"

"The one surnamed Chen. She said her husband was the vice president, and she got to call the shots at the company."

I silently memorized everything the client said.

But I didn’t make a scene. I just kept working on the proposal.

After another week of running around, the client finally gave in and signed the contract.

The contract value was twelve million dollars.

It was the biggest deal the company had this year.

I brought the contract back and handed it to Karen, thinking she would finally shut up.

I never expected that at the company meeting, in front of everyone, she would say—

"This deal was landed because I laid a ton of groundwork in advance. Young people like her just do the running around. The real tough parts were all handled by me."

After she finished speaking, the whole room erupted into applause.

I sat in the corner, watching Karen on the stage, holding up the contract I had spent a month getting signed, smiling with pride.

The project bonus was five hundred thousand dollars, and all of it went into her pocket.

I didn’t get a single cent.

After the meeting, I went to her privately.

"Manager Chen, I handled this project on my own from the early stages all the way to the signing. The bonus..."

"The bonus?" She leaned back in her chair and rolled her eyes. "Who pays your salary? The company gave you a platform, so what more do you want? Young people shouldn’t be so petty."

"I’m not being petty. I just want to know why my work achievements got..."

"Your workachievements?" she cut me off. "Is your name on the contract? Does the client even know you? You’re just a small employee on the execution side. Don’t think so highly of yourself."

I took a deep breath.

"Fine, I understand."

"Then get out."

I turned and left.

Back at my desk, I opened my phone and sent the client a message.

"Ms. Turner, about the rebate you mentioned last time, I’d like to know the exact amount."

The client replied in seconds: "Why are you suddenly asking about that? Isn’t your company always doing it that way? That time it was five hundred thousand."

Five hundred thousand.

The contract was twelve million dollars, and a five percent kickback was exactly six hundred thousand.

She took the client’s rebate and pocketed my project bonus too.

I started organizing the evidence.

Chat logs, transfer records, project files, company accounts...

I found that after David Brooks was promoted to vice president, the reimbursement process for multiple projects in the company changed. The expenses that originally needed layer after layer of approval would move insanely fast as long as they went through Karen’s department.

And all those projects had one thing in common—the client contact had changed.

I sorted through each clue one by one and saved them on a USB drive.

Before I could make my move, Karen made hers first.