Chapter 5

“You. You are going to bring this home for me. This is the company's final test of you, and your one chance to prove yourself all over again. Pull it off, and whatever you want, the company can give you.”

Her words dropped like a stone into still water, sending a ripple through the room that no one could see but everyone felt.

Jude sat beside her, envy and resentment plain on his face no matter how he tried to hide them. The other executives wore the look of people who had seen this coming all along. They all knew it: besides me, no one in this company could carry a project like this.

The conference room was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

Every eye was on me, waiting for me to stand, to accept this “gift” with tears of gratitude, and then, as I had countless times before, to work myself to the bone for her, for this company, until there was nothing left of me.

Instead, I let out a very small scoff.

It was faint, but in that dead silence it grated on every ear in the room.

Geraldine's brow drew together.

I didn't get up right away. Unhurried, I closed the laptop in front of me, the one I had barely opened.

That soft click was like a signal.

Then, slowly, I rose to my feet.

I didn't stoop the way I used to, spine bent a little to show how humble I was. This time I stood perfectly straight.

I met every gaze in the room, a smile on my face they had never seen before, bright and cold at once.

“Thank you, Ms. Harding, for your ‘generosity.’”

I leaned hard on that word, generosity, dripping with mockery I made no effort to hide.

Geraldine's expression changed in an instant.

I looked around the room and let my gaze settle at last on her stunned face, saying each word slowly and clearly:

“But I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you.”

“As of yesterday, I've formally accepted an offer from your competitor, Chavez Global. Position: technical partner. Salary: five million a year.”

Boom.

The words had barely left my mouth before the whole conference room felt like a bomb had gone off in it.

Everyone was stunned speechless, staring at me in disbelief.

Jude's jaw dropped wide enough to fit an egg.

The color drained clean out of Geraldine's face in one stroke, and that confident, everything-under-control smile froze solid there.

I looked at her, and the smile at the corner of my mouth deepened, edged with a cruel kind of pleasure.

“Oh, right, Ms. Harding. The first project Chavez Global has put me in charge of, as it happens……”

I drew the words out on purpose, savoring the way her face teetered on the edge of collapse.

“……is also called the Skyvault Initiative.”

“So from this moment on, when it comes to this project, we're rivals.”

The whole room went dead still.

The air conditioning was running full blast, yet Geraldine felt as if she'd been dropped into an ice cellar, cold from head to toe.

The muscles in her face twitched stiffly. She wanted to say something, but her throat felt gripped by an invisible hand, and not a single word would come out.

Shock, humiliation, fury, panic. A dozen emotions churned through her all at once, until they collapsed into nothing but blankness.

She could not for the life of her understand it. That Kent Fox who had bowed and scraped in front of her, who had let her do as she pleased with him for three years, how dare he? How dare he strike her dead in front of everyone, and in a way like this?

“That's not possible……” she murmured, her voice thin as a mosquito's whine. “You're lying to me……”

I smiled, and there wasn't a trace of warmth in it “Ms. Harding, a business decision at this level, do you really think I'd joke about it? I've already had my assistant put my resignation on your desk, effective today. And if you need it, I'm happy to open my phone right here and show you the formal offer email from Chavez Global.”

My eyes swept over Jude, whose face had gone just as white. He was staring at Geraldine in terror, as if the sky had fallen.

I added, lightly “Also, per my contract, all my project files and my personal computer have been wiped and sealed, held by IT. I do have professional ethics. I would never walk off with a single line of this company's code.”

That line landed like another loud slap across Geraldine's face.

I was telling her that I was leaving with a clear conscience, above reproach. And I was telling everyone else that the biggest card she'd been counting on to turn this around, the technology and the plans in my head, had, as of this moment, nothing more to do with this company.

“Kent Fox!” Geraldine finally found her voice, slamming the table and shooting to her feet. She hit it so hard the glass of water beside her sloshed over and soaked the papers on the table.

“You can't leave! Have you forgotten everything the old chairman did for you? The company spent years training you, and this is how you repay it?” She was playing the loyalty card now. It was her last weapon.

At the mention of the old chairman, the smile finally faded from my face.

“I haven't forgotten. It's precisely because I remembered what Tom Salazar did for me, seeing something in me, that I stayed these three years no matter how you treated me. I landed you one project after another, filled in one hole after another. I thought all that diligence would earn me at least a little respect.”

I paused, and my voice went cold “But the facts proved me wrong. Respect isn't given by others. You earn it yourself. Ms. Harding, you taught me one thing: endless swallowing and giving doesn't buy respect. It only buys more of being trampled.”

“As for repaying the company,” I looked around at the executives with their various expressions, “over the past seven years, the profit I created for this company was a hundred times what it paid me in salary. That two-hundred-million contract from the Blue Ocean project is still sitting in your drawer to this day. I don't owe this company anything. This company owes me.”

When I finished, the conference room fell dead silent again.

I didn't look at Geraldine's bloodless face any longer. I straightened my collar and picked up the closed laptop off the table.

“Everyone, until we meet again.”

I turned and walked, one steady step after another, toward the conference room door.

Every step felt like it landed on the wreckage of Geraldine's pride.

The moment my hand touched the door handle, Geraldine's voice came from behind me, a thread of hysteria in it.

“Stop! Kent Fox, get back here! We can talk again! The salary…… I'll give you five million too! No! Six million!”

I didn't slow down. I only left one last line behind me, flat and quiet.

“Ms. Harding, it's too late. This was never about the money. It's about dignity.”

I pulled the door open and walked out without looking back, shutting the whole storm behind me for good.