Chapter 2

The moment the layoff rumors leaked, panic spread through the department like wildfire. The entire office was suffocating under a thick blanket of anxiety.

My colleague, Liam, slid his chair over to my desk and clapped a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

"Ethan, man, why do you look so stressed? Even if they fire the entire building, they’d never touch you."

"You’re the backbone of this place. We all know this company is only standing because of your code."

"As for me, I’m probably toast. But hey, at least I got to work with a legend like you."

His voice was filled with genuine respect, and several other senior developers nodded in agreement.

I forced a faint smile. In truth, the company was indeed my baby.

During our startup days, the servers would crash every other day. I literally slept on a cot in the server room for a month straight, stabilizing the platform line by line.

Just before Christmas last year, our core database suffered a catastrophic failure.

I was hooked up to an IV in a hospital bed, recovering from an emergency appendectomy. High on painkillers, I worked remotely for three straight days to pull our data back from the brink of total destruction.

Besides, the CEO was my wife, Rachel. There was no universe in which I’d be on a layoff list.

While I was trying to calm the team down, Chloe, the HR director, walked into the open office holding a stack of folders.

She scanned the room, her eyes landing on me. She rolled them dramatically.

"Ethan. My office. Now."

The entire room went dead silent. My colleagues looked at one another in confusion, though most of them assumed I was being called in for a massive promotion.

Under their intense, disbelieving stares, I stood up and calmly walked into her office.

Before I could even sit down, Chloe slid a termination agreement across the desk with an impatient sigh.

After a brief flash of shock, I laughed.

Classic Rachel. She was trying to pull a surprise on me.

A few days ago, I had jokingly complained that I was getting too tired to write code anymore. Rachel had given me a mysterious smile and told me to wait three days.

I figured she was just looking out for me. After ten years of running myself into the ground, she probably wanted to "fire" me so I could finally rest, take a massive payout, and enjoy life.

Plus, I had recently accepted an offer to join the SEC's cyber-forensics division, though I hadn't had the chance to tell her yet.

This worked out perfectly. Now I could actually spend some quality time with her.

But when I picked up the pen to sign, my eyes caught the severance section. It was completely blank.

And under the "Financial Liabilities" section, there was a paragraph in bold, aggressive font:

“Due to gross negligence by the employee, Ethan, resulting in direct financial damages to the company estimated at $2,000,000, the employee agrees to assume full personal liability for the debt.”

I froze.

Two million? Personal liability? Me?

I slowly pushed the contract back toward her, my voice turning icy.

"Chloe, what is the meaning of this? Where is my severance?"

Chloe leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms as her voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Oh, cut the act, Ethan. We’re both adults here. Why play dumb?"

"Last month, the core database for our biggest client crashed under your watch. We lost their data, and it cost us a two-million-dollar contract."

"The company didn't call the FBI on you, which is already a miracle. And you actually have the audacity to ask for money?"

The puzzle pieces clicked together instantly.

The "screw-up" she was talking about wasn't mine. It belonged to Jackson, Rachel’s "nephew."

To hit a ridiculous deadline, Jackson had bypassed every single testing protocol and forced a buggy, unverified codebase directly into production.

I had tried to stop him, but Rachel shut me down, claiming we needed to "let the younger generation show their potential."

After the crash, Rachel had practically begged me. She cried in our kitchen, asking me to take the fall temporary to protect the kid's career, promising she would make it up to me.

So this was her way of "making it up to me."

I stared at Chloe and said coldly, "The server logs clearly show the crash was caused by database modifications made from Jackson's terminal. This had nothing to do with me."

Chloe didn't understand a thing about server logs. All she knew was that Rachel wanted me gone. She tilted her chin up arrogantly.

"I don't care about your nerd talk, Ethan. The liability assessment sheet has your signature on it. The company says it’s your fault, so it’s your fault."

"If you know what’s good for you, you’ll sign this. Otherwise..."

"I’ll post your name and what you did in the national HR WhatsApp groups. Good luck finding a job when every recruiter in the country knows you’re a saboteur."

Disgusted by her petty power trip, I didn't say another word.

I folded the liability agreement and the termination papers, slipping them quietly into my jacket pocket.

Fine. If they wanted to play dirty, I didn't need to hold back anymore.