Chapter 4
I stared at that half-sentence, but I didn't bother calling back.
A minute later, Edward sent another message.
[The doctor said it's just low blood sugar and she got too worked up. Nothing serious. Call me back as soon as you see this.]
Right after that, Margaret's voice message popped up.
"Emily, what are you playing at? There's no food at home, I'm starving and ended up in the hospital. Is this what you wanted?"
Her voice was loud and strong—she sounded more fired up than someone who needed to be taken care of.
I saved the voice message and took screenshots of all Edward's messages nagging me to come back.
I replied: [If you can't cook, just order takeout. If you're in the hospital, talk to the doctor. That's your problem, not mine.]
Edward called me right away.
As soon as I picked up, he barked, "Where the hell are you?"
"Rosenheim," I said.
"Why didn't you tell me you were going to Rosenheim?"
"You asked, I told you it was a business trip."
"Who takes a business trip for this long? Book a flight and get back here now."
I opened my laptop and kept checking the client files.
"The project's six months long."
He went silent on the other end.
A few seconds later, his voice shot up.
"Six months? Are you out of your mind? What about my mom? What about the house?"
"Weren't you always saying it doesn't matter if I'm here or not?"
"That was just me venting! You're a married woman, and you go off for half a year without even talking to your family? What kind of wife does that?"
"Did you ask me when you sent your entire salary to your mom?"
He paused, then said coldly, "Here we go again with the money. Emily, if you come back now, I won't make a fuss."
I let out a short laugh.
"Oh? And what exactly are you going to do about it?"
He had nothing to say.
Margaret started yelling in the background.
"Drag her back here! If she doesn't come back, You should just divorce her!" she shrieked.
I hit the record button.
"Go ahead. Say that again," I said, my voice calm.
Margaret suddenly went silent.
Edward gritted his teeth. "When did you get so scheming?"
"Ever since you and your mom decided to give me just 3 dollars a day."
I hung up and set his number to Do Not Disturb.
The next morning, the client suddenly added three new requirements.
Carl Schneider, the technical lead of the Rosenheim Project Team, immediately objected.
"There's no way we can finish this in ten days. The previous three versions already used up the budget. If we keep tweaking, it'll just get worse," he said.
Everyone in the conference room turned to look at me.
I pulled up the new task breakdown on the screen.
"We're not just tweaking it. We're starting over from scratch," I said.
Carl frowned.
"Do you even know anything about the client's production line?"
"I just finished going through their last five years of operational data last night."
I pulled up a fault report.
"The first three versions all focused on upgrading the equipment, but they missed the real problem, which was the system's response delay. Replacing the hardware would just bump up costs by 20% and wouldn't actually cut down on downtime."
Henry Fischer, the client rep, stared at the chart, slowly sitting up straight.
"We didn't give you this data," he said.
"It's all out there—public annual reports, insurance claims, and supplier records," I replied.
I flipped to the next page.
"And one more thing—the core parameters used in the last version of the proposal were taken from a production line scrapped by another company three years ago."
The room went dead silent.
Carl's eyes snapped to the files left behind by the previous project manager.
If the source of those parameters was questionable, this wasn't just a failed project. It could mean commercial fraud.
Richard joined the meeting remotely and instructed everyone to stop sharing information externally.
We spent a full seven hours reviewing the materials.
At 11 PM, a Rosenheim engineer found a deleted email in an old mailbox.
The sender was a senior executive from the domestic headquarters.
The last sentence of the email was very clear.
"Submit according to the old parameters. After the client rejects it, initiate the Preferred Vendor replacement procedure."
And I happened to know the actual controller of that Preferred Vendor.
He had just recently had dinner with Edward last month.