Chapter 2

I walked back to my desk, and the air around me felt thick and heavy.

The open office floor had gone dead silent—no more keyboard clicks, no hushed conversations. Just dozens of eyes tracking my every move, some sympathetic, some pitying, but most just carefully distant.

That was corporate life for you. The second you fall, everyone scatters.

I didn't care.

I calmly pulled my personal items from my drawer and started packing them into a cardboard box.

My beat-up German dictionary with the worn-out spine, my coffee mug with my favorite celebrity's face on it, and the pothos plant I'd been nursing for three years that had finally grown thick and lush on the corner of my desk.

Just then, a wave of overpowering perfume hit me, growing stronger as it drew closer.

Jason strutted past with his arm around Angela, his girlfriend, who was dressed to the nines. He wore that smug expression he always had, like he owned the place—which, technically, his father did.

Jason was the company's crown prince, a man-child who did whatever he wanted because Daddy was the boss.

He'd hated me from day one because he couldn't stand that some outsider with no connections was making top dollar as the company's lead translator.

Getting me fired so his girlfriend could take my position? That had his fingerprints all over it.

He stopped and looked down at me with unconcealed mockery twisting his lips. "Well, well, if it isn't our chief translator, the brilliant Emily Lane. What's this? Finally getting kicked out?"

Angela stood beside him with this triumphant look on her face, like a peacock who'd just won a fight. She spoke in that sickeningly sweet voice of hers. "Jason, don't say that. Emily's skills are actually pretty strong. She just doesn't really get office politics."

That backhanded compliment made my stomach turn more than a straight-up insult would have.

Jason let out a derisive laugh. "Who cares if she's good at her job? It's not like she owns the company. The place runs fine without her, and the world keeps spinning."

I didn't even bother looking up at them and just kept wiping down the pothos leaves with my cleaning cloth.

My silence appeared to them as weakness, as defeat.

Jason seemed frustrated that I wasn't reacting, like he'd punched a pillow and gotten nothing back. His face flushed with irritation, and he grabbed Angela's hand.

He said, "Come on, babe. Let's go show those German clients what you're made of. Time to prove who's actually irreplaceable around here."

I listened to their footsteps fade down the hallway and felt absolutely nothing.

Ignorance really was bliss, and idiots always had the most confidence.

Angela rushed into the conference room, and it didn't take long before I heard her butchered German drifting through the walls.

Her grammar was a disaster, and she stumbled over every other word like she was reading a foreign language for the first time.

It wasn't translation. It was linguistic murder.

She completely mangled Ronald's requirements about product precision, twisting his words into something unrecognizable.

Suddenly, Ronald's voice erupted from the conference room in furious German, and the sound was so loud that everyone in the office could hear it.

He snapped, "Unsinn! Das ist absolut inakzeptabel!" (Nonsense! This is absolutely unacceptable!)

A second later, my phone buzzed with a message from Amy, one of the few colleagues I actually got along with. She was giving me a play-by-play.

Alice: [Emily, it's a total disaster! Angela just translated "0.01 micrometer (Toleranz)" as "0.01 micrometer (Unterschied)"! Ronald lost it on the spot!]

I stared at my phone screen and let out a cold laugh.

Toleranz and Unterschied—sure, you could swap them in casual German, but in precision instrument manufacturing, one was a technical term for allowable tolerance range, and the other just meant "difference."

The meanings were worlds apart.

It was a fatal mistake.

Right on cue, the conference room door slammed open, and Richard came barreling out like an enraged bull. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and his face was flushed with panic.

His eyes locked onto me as I packed up my things, and I could practically see the desperation radiating off him. He looked like a drowning man who'd just spotted a life raft.

He rushed over to me, and his entire attitude did a complete one-eighty. His face twisted into an ingratiating smile that was equal parts desperate and pathetic.

"Emily, I'm begging you! Please, just go in there and save this. If we land this deal, I'll give you a raise. Double your salary. And I'll throw in a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus!"

I ignored him and carefully lifted the potted plant from my desk, cradling it in my arms like it was some kind of priceless treasure.

It was the only thing in this entire company that I'd ever actually cared about.

Richard saw that being nice wasn't working. Hence, his expression darkened, and he switched back to his usual corporate bully routine. He started threatening me instead.

"Emily, don't push your luck! Don't forget your mom's in the hospital and you're still way short on her surgery costs, aren't you? This industry isn't that big, and one word from me can make sure you never work in this field again!"

My blood felt like it had frozen in my veins, and then in the next second, it rushed backward and surged straight to my head.

I lifted my head sharply and stared right at his greasy, ugly face. "So that's why you think you can just use me and toss me aside?"

My voice wasn't loud, but it was cold as ice. "Too bad you miscalculated."

The chill in my eyes shocked him, and for a moment, he couldn't say anything.

I hugged my pothos close and didn't spare him another glance as I walked straight toward the elevator.

Every step I took felt like I was trampling on his pathetic ego.

Behind me, I could hear Richard's heavy breathing. He was shaking with rage but completely helpless.

The elevator doors slid open slowly, and right before I stepped inside, I saw Jason rush out too.

He shouted at Richard, "Dad, it's fine. Don't worry. I already had HR send her the non-compete agreement. She can't work in this industry for two years. She won't dare try anything. She still needs this field to make a living."

The elevator doors closed in front of me and shut out those two idiots and their nasty faces.

Non-compete agreement?

I held my pothos and looked at my expressionless reflection in the elevator's mirrored wall, and then I smiled.

That smile had no warmth in it whatsoever.