Chapter 3
I let the rest of the month slip by in Willowfield, only making my way back to Riverdale when the month was nearly over.
I didn't even set foot in that cold, model-home condo of ours. With my suitcase in tow, I headed straight for Emily's little apartment instead.
Emily gave me a long, searching look, her lips moving like she wanted to say something.
"Go ahead," I said, rolling my suitcase over by the wall and parking it there.
Olivia watched my face and said carefully, "The day you left, the company intranet totally exploded.
"People were saying that Ashley made her first move a warning by cutting down you, a leftover from the former leadership."
"And then what?" I asked.
"Then she framed the two key players you had trained and got rid of them. She stuffed in a few of her own people, and now the accounting department is a complete mess," Emily said.
I nodded, not surprised at all.
Ashley was the type who wanted to assert her authority right away. The fastest way to do that was to reshuffle the team.
But she really underestimated this whole mess. She didn't know that accounting didn't just run on yelling and slamming desks.
Especially with a company like Voyage Tech, which grew out of the gray area and clawed its way to a public listing. Only I really knew what was buried beneath the surface.
The cross-structures designed for tax avoidance, the reporting metrics tweaked to look pretty, and the fund flows hidden in offshore shells were all traps.
What I left them was a system that looked spotless on the outside, but underneath, it was layered with hidden pitfalls and tripwires. And I was the only one holding the key to unravel it all.
"And one more thing," Emily said, her expression soured. "Looks like Ashley's moved into your place."
My hand paused in the middle of pouring. Hot water spilled over the rim, stinging my fingertips.
"A couple of days ago, my friend passed by your neighborhood and saw Ashley taking that Aston Martin Richard gave you for a spin. Wasn't that car just sitting in your parking spot, gathering dust?" Emily said.
He gave me that car on my birthday three years ago, just as an afterthought.
I never drove it.
I didn't want to stand out. And the color was too loud for me.
It was like an expensive piece of decoration, sitting in a corner all that time.
Who would have thought that Ashley would get to use that car first before I even sat in it.
I calmly set the glass back on the table and used a tissue to dry my fingertips.
On the surface, I looked composed, but my nails were digging into my palm so hard it stung.
Classic Richard. He was always brainwashing me about how we had to keep our marriage secret for the company's sake, but the second he got a new woman, he couldn't wait to parade her around.
He wasn't scared of exposure. He just didn't want the person in the spotlight to be me.
"Olivia, are you..." Emily looked at me, worry written all over her face.
I waved her off, forcing a smile. "It's okay. We're going to split sooner or later. Everything ends up where it belongs. If he wants to be the one collecting the scraps, let him."
I brushed it off like it was nothing, but inside, my heart felt like being torn apart.
Damn, it hurt so much.
It was the last day of the month, a Friday.
This was the company's big day. The month-end close.
As per the old routine, the accounting team would be pulling an all-nighter, going through every department's transactions to make sure the monthly reports landed in the directors' inboxes by nine sharp the next morning.
For the past ten years, every single one of those nights, I was the one holding down the fort.
Emily was eating fruit while scrolling on her phone. She suddenly choked. "Come here quick. Your company's anonymous gossip group chat is blowing up."
She shoved her phone right in front of my face.
On the screen, a bold red headline read: [Did the New Finance Boss Turn Company Books into a Riddle?]
The post had just two sentences. [Heard tonight's closing completely crashed, with a nine-figure shortfall. Now the whole finance team is losing their minds.]
The replies below had already stacked into a long thread.
[Nine figure? Holy crap! Did they mortgage the whole office building to the bank or something?]
[LMAO, I saw this coming a mile away. Those people Ashley brought in can't do anything but spout slogans. They don't even know how to filter a pivot table.]
[The real victim is Maeve, the one stuck cleaning up the mess. Word is, she's locked herself in the bathroom three times tonight, eyes all red from crying. She's barely out of college. How's she supposed to survive a disaster like this?]
[That's not even the half of it. Tons of major project payments aren't matching up. The partners are freaking out and pushing hard, and we can't even get the account details to show up.]
[Remember when Olivia was running the show? We never had chaos like this. Every month-end, we'd clock out early and hit up BBQ joints.]
[Shh. You got a death wish? No one would say that blacklisted name right now.]
[Don't even get me started. I just walked past accounting, and it was as quiet as a grave. Ashley looked furious, slamming files onto her desk.]
[I'll bet a case of beer that nobody can fix these books tonight, not even a miracle worker.]
Emily laughed so hard she slapped her knee, and crow's feet formed around her eyes from the laughter. "Karma, baby. This is what they deserve. Olivia, you must be on cloud nine right now."
I casually scrolled through a few comments, but I was surprisingly calm.
Everything was unfolding exactly as I intended.
That financial system? Sure, it looked like another off-the-shelf program, but underneath, every bit of logic was custom-coded by me.
I put in dozens of backup plans for when things went really wrong.
I knew which entries were just on the books, which were real payments, which money was visible, which was hidden, and which bad debts I had moved to other accounts.
I was the only one in the whole company who had a clue.