Chapter 2

The building security guards arrived quickly and escorted the two of them out, politely but firmly.

As the door was closing, Chloe glanced back at me. Tears were still wet on her face, but the corners of her mouth were smirked upward.

That look of triumph was something I would never forget.

The next morning, I arrived at the office with dark circles under my eyes. The moment I sat down, I was called into the director's office.

"Avery, you’ve been working on the Apex Group account for three months now. Is everything ready for the pitch this afternoon?"

I nodded. "Yes, Sarah. Everything is ready."

Sarah smiled warmly. "Good. If we land this, your promotion to manager for the second half of the year is practically guaranteed."

Apex Group was one of the top three real estate conglomerates in the country.

Three months ago, we won the initial bid to handle the marketing campaign for their new luxury high-rise development. Today was the final round of the pitch.

I had pulled over twenty all-nighters for this project. Even on the night Carter cheated on me, I had been at the office revising the proposal until midnight.

But I never expected that when I walked into the Apex executive boardroom at two o'clock that afternoon, I would see the two people I wanted to see least in the world.

Chloe was sitting right next to Carter. She was wearing a tailored Prada suit, her makeup flawless and elegant.

When she saw me, she gave me a sweet smile, as if the screaming match from last night had never happened.

"Hi Avery, what a coincidence. I recently joined Apex as Carter's executive assistant."

Carter, dressed in a sharp, expensive suit, sat in the seat right next to the head of the table. The ID badge pinned to his chest read: "Carter Vance, Director of Marketing."

I froze for three whole seconds.

He had never once told me that he worked at Apex Group, let alone that he was a director.

For the past three years, he had constantly complained about working at a small startup with a mediocre salary, claiming he couldn't afford to help me with my mortgage.

It turned out he just thought my place wasn't worth his money.

"Ms. Shen, please take a seat." Carter raised his hand in a formal gesture, his tone so cold and distant we might as well have been strangers.

I suppressed the boiling anger inside me, opened my laptop, and began the presentation.

The first twenty minutes went incredibly smoothly. But the moment I flipped to the market analysis slide, Chloe suddenly raised her hand.

"Excuse me, Ms. Shen, but there seems to be a major error in your data."

I arched an eyebrow. "Oh? What error?"

She stood up, walked to the projection screen, and pointed to a bar chart.

"According to Apex's internal research, home-buying interest among women aged eighteen to twenty-five has dropped by twelve percent. But your presentation uses last quarter's outdated figures, overestimating the market by a whopping eight percent."

The boardroom fell dead silent.

I quickly glanced at the section she was pointing to. It was indeed the data from our initial bid three months ago. I hadn't updated that specific chart.

But that was because Apex’s original brief had explicitly instructed us to keep the baseline bidding data for consistency.

"Ms. Vance," I said, looking her dead in the eye. "This data was kept in accordance with the brief your company provided. If updates were required, we should have been notified beforehand."

Chloe turned her head to look at Carter.

Carter spoke up slowly. "The brief was issued three months ago. The market changes every single day, Ms. Shen. As a professional marketing strategist, you should have had the foresight to anticipate these shifts."

With a single sentence, he threw the entire blame onto me.

The other Apex executives in the room exchanged glances, whispering among themselves.

I gripped the presentation clicker tightly, my nails digging into my palms.

"Director Vance is absolutely right. It was my oversight." I clicked to the next slide. "However, it doesn't matter. I’ve prepared real-time dynamic updates for the rest of our metrics. We can proceed with those."

A flash of surprise crossed Chloe's eyes. She clearly hadn't expected me to have a backup plan.