Chapter 3

On the day of the meeting, Jessica, just as expected, walked into the conference room with more than a dozen cups of coffee.

She announced it was her treat and personally handed one to me.

I smiled as I took it, and when Sarah wasn't looking, I swapped my cup with the one on her desk.

I watched as she came back and drank all the coffee.

Halfway through the meeting, it was Sarah's turn to present.

She tried to stand but stumbled and fell back into her chair, looking as if she were drunk.

When Estella asked what was wrong, Sarah, in a daze, slammed her hand on the table and glared at her. "Estella! You slept with your superiors to get to the top, and now you're pretending to be so virtuous!"

Gasps and whispers rippled across the room.

While a small amount of nerve anesthetic can cause a loss of composure, her public outburst was far more shocking than I expected.

Then Sarah swung her rage at me. "And you, Helen, you can't have children, you're just a hen that won't lay an egg! Haha, your husband married a useless hen. Why keep you around? He might as well just butcher you!"

Jessica, thinking she had mixed up the coffees herself, turned deathly pale and tried to sneak out.

As soon as she moved, she caught Sarah's attention.

Amidst the gasps of the crowd, Sarah suddenly grabbed Jessica's hair. "You little brat, what are you to me? You dare to laugh at me for not knowing a new lipstick? Today I'll give you a real new look!"

She grabbed a red marker pen and scribbled all over Jessica's face.

Jessica cried out, "Sarah! Let go of me! Helen! Are you dead? Why don't you save me!"

I then pretended to come to my senses and pulled Sarah away from behind.

I looked at Jessica again. Her face was covered with red marker, looking distorted and monstrous like a demon.

She rubbed her face vigorously, but the oily ink was stubborn. Her skin was nearly rubbed raw, but the marks did not budge.

Sarah, having used up all her strength, slumped onto the table but still kept cursing all the colleagues around her.

Her words were extremely crude and vulgar.

The faces around the conference table went from stunned to mortified.

Especially our boss, Estella, whose face was livid.

No one could have imagined that Sarah, who usually acted like a good person, was so two-faced.

A few hours later, when Sarah woke up, she rushed into Estella's office and cried, saying that it was all nonsense from being drunk, and she didn't mean any of it.

I also put in a good word for her. "The current project is a heavy task, and Sarah is a veteran employee. The project will definitely be affected without her. Estella, please give her another chance."

Sarah sobbed until her voice was hoarse, "Estella, you know my child is still young, and there are many expenses at home. I can't lose this job! If I lose my job, my husband will beat me to death!"

After my repeated persuasion, Estella weighed her options and finally relented. Sarah wouldn't be fired—at least for now. But from then on, Sarah was marked with a big red cross in Estella's mind, and any chance of a promotion was gone forever.

Once we were out of the office, I asked Sarah helplessly, "You've always been able to handle your liquor, and you've never had a slip-up before. How could you get so drunk during work hours?"

Sarah's face contorted with remorse. "What do you mean? I've always known my limits when drinking. Today I just, I just..."

She kept trailing off until her eyes suddenly snapped wide. "Wait—before the meeting, I had that coffee Jessica brought. She must've put something in it!"

My expression instantly changed.

Sarah, sensing my unusual reaction, pressed me further. "What's wrong? You know something, don't you?"

I said in a panic, "It's nothing, don't read too much into it. It was just a false alarm anyway, so let's just forget about it."

But of course, there was no way Sarah would just let it go.

She gripped my arm tightly. "Stop dodging, Helen. If you don't tell me, I'll assume you were the one who spiked my coffee. And trust me, I won't let you off easy."

Her unreasonable and aggressive manner was just as it had always been.

Suppressing my disgust, I put on a look of dejection and embarrassment. "It's not that I don't want to tell you, it's just that this is too humiliating... The truth is, my husband is having an affair with Jessica, and he has used all our family's property and savings to win her over."

Sarah froze for a second, then her face twisted into a smug and gloating grin. "And you still helped her land a job here? Helen, I never thought you could be such a pushover."

I let my tears slide down, voice trembling. "If I don't help Jessica, Daniel will hit me. I'm really scared of him."

With a look that was both smug and disdainful, she said, "I thought your life was better than mine, but now I see I'm the lucky one."

I wiped my tears and showed her the surveillance video from the study.

However, I had already edited this video, and Jessica's words had become:

"It was my first day at work, and all my colleagues said I was beautiful, but that Sarah bullied me nonstop. Dan, you have to help me, please!"

"There's an important meeting the day after tomorrow. Can you get me some more of that drug? I'll make her a fool in front of everyone. It'd be best if she got fired."

As expected, Sarah's face turned beet red with rage. Her hands shook, and her eyes practically burned with fury.

In my previous life, the reason Sarah framed me was nothing more than her jealousy of my quick promotion and my husband's excellence.

Now, her workplace enemy was Jessica, and my excellent husband's beloved was also Jessica.

Her target of jealousy and hatred, naturally, became Jessica.

In the next few days, Sarah faced obstacles everywhere at the company. Her colleagues, whom she had cursed, gave her the cold shoulder.

She suppressed her temper and humbled herself, but no one was buying it.

Jessica, on the other hand, made a brazen demand for Sarah to pay her for mental distress.

Still plotting her revenge against Jessica for her son's death, Sarah adopted a submissive attitude and even transferred a sum of money to Jessica.

One evening, as I drove home from work, Jessica was in the passenger seat scrolling on her phone. "Don't you think Sarah is pathetic? To please me, she even sent me a video of her son. Ugh, who wants to see her ugly kid?"