My phone suddenly rang. It was Yvette calling.

I put her on speaker phone, only to hear her high-pitched, frustrated voice coming through. "Where are you, Callum? The IPO event is about to end! Henry accidentally spilled champagne on his suit. You need to get back here right away and let Henry change into the bespoke suit you're wearing."

My hospital room was very quiet, with only a faint beeping audible. Yvette's screaming sounded particularly ridiculous in the empty room. "Did you hear what I said? Henry has an interview with the finance media later. He can't appear on screen in a dirty suit. I was the one who paid for your suit, and you need to bring it over right now!"

I stared at the bright light on the ceiling and replied in a hoarse voice, "I'm in the emergency room, Yvette. The doctor said my lower body is badly burnt, and was almost damaged permanently."

There was a second of silence, followed by Yvette clicking her tongue impatiently. "Are you done, Callum? Can you stop with your act? Why would you need to go to the emergency room when it's just some ointment? Are you trying to trick me into visiting you by acting all pitiful? I can tell you right now that it isn't working!"

Henry's voice could be heard in the background. "Forget about it, Yvette. If Callum isn't willing to loan me his suit, I'm fine with my dirty one. I just hope I won't end up embarrassing you…"

His little scheme of playing victim fueled Yvette's rage. "He won't refuse you his suit!" Yvette raised her voice. "Bring that suit over within 30 minutes, Callum! Otherwise, don't even dream of stepping through the office door again!"

I hung up right away and blocked her number. I closed my eyes to force myself to calm down. It still required some time for the funding to be stopped, and before that happened, I had to take back everything that belonged to me.

There was a copy of my core code and an emerald pendant that my mother left to me before she died. They were all kept in the safe at my office.

I tore off the IV tube from the back of my hand and forced myself to get out of bed despite the nurse trying her best to stop me. I hailed a cab and returned to the office.

The office was in a mess as the party for the IPO event had just ended. The employees gathered in different groups as they talked about the celebration. I avoided the crowd and headed straight to my personal office on the top floor. I was furious at what I saw when I pushed the door open. Someone had rummaged through my office table, leaving it in a mess.

Henry was seated in my office chair, acting like a boss with his feet on my redwood table. He was wearing the bespoke suit I had carefully put away because of its high value while playing carelessly with my emerald pendant.

"Well, look who it is. The man who declared our CEO's bankruptcy via cyberspace." Henry looked at me and laughed wildly instead of feeling guilty about what he did. "What are you doing here? Did you come back to the office to play with your simple app because the hospital has lousy Wifi?"

I stared at the emerald pendant in his hand, looking like my eyes could spout fire at any time. "Put it down." My tone was icy as I walked over to Henry.

Henry's lips curled as he waved the pendant under the lights. "What are you so mad about? Isn't this just an ordinary piece of stone?"

"Yvette said I could take anything I wanted because she paid for everything in your office. A fan from my streaming channel told me this stone has a retro look to it, and I was planning to use it as a lucky draw prize for my stream tonight," he said as he made a show of slamming the emerald pendant onto the table to crack it.

"Don't you dare!" I no longer held back as I lunged at Henry to grab him by the collar and dragged him out of the chair. The pendant fell from his hand. I managed to catch it midair, holding it tightly against my chest.

Henry squealed out loud like a pig when I dragged him to the ground. "Help! He's trying to beat me up! Murder!"

The office door was pushed open, and Yvette entered with several members of top management. When Yvette saw Henry on the ground, the look on her face changed, and she dashed toward me in her heels to push me off Henry.

"Henry! Are you alright?" Yvette helped Henry up with a worried look on her face before she turned to glare viciously at me. "Are you crazy, Callum?! How dare you hit Henry?!"

I looked at her coldly while holding my pendant protectively. "He touched the emerald pendant my mother left for me."

Yvette was taken aback, but quickly sneered with indifference. "I thought it was some sort of treasure, but that's just a worthless piece of stone. You should feel honored that Henry has eyes for anything you own. You're a big man, aren't you? Why are you acting so pettily?"

She pointed at my nose and said in a charitable tone, "Apologize to Henry right now. I'll let this go if you kneel and apologize to him, and you can return to my side at the celebration party tonight."

"Apologize?" I kept repeating those words as I looked at the confident look on Yvette's face, and I laughed in anger.

"Did you inhale that ointment and let it mess with your brain, Yvette? He was the one who poured that ointment down my pants and took my bespoke suit, and you want me to kneel and apologize to him? He was also the one who wanted my mother's emerald pendant as a lucky draw prize for his streaming audience!"

Yvette turned red from my retort as she felt she had been humiliated and disrespected in front of her top management. "You should know what's good for you, Callum! That thing with the ointment was just a harmless prank. That suit and the pendant are collecting dust here anyway. What's wrong with using them?"

She took a deep breath as a malicious look flashed in her eye. "If you insist on doing this the hard way, don't blame me for what I'm about to do next!

"Security! Throw this madman into the basement storage room! No one is allowed to let him out without my permission in case he causes a scene at the party tonight and embarrasses me!"

The security guards came toward me, but I did not fight back. While everything had been going on, I had quietly grabbed the USB with the core code from under the table. Now that I had taken everything that belonged to me, I no longer cared what these people were saying because they would be ruined very soon.

It was dark and damp in the basement, and it smelled heavily of mold. When the storage room's heavy metal door closed behind me, the sound of the door being locked echoed in the empty corridor.

I leaned against a heap of abandoned cardboard boxes and carefully hid the emerald pendant on me. After that, I took out my phone to check the countdown timer on the screen. Less than three hours were left before the funding for Yvette's company was pulled. It coincided with the peak of tonight's celebration party.

Footsteps were heard outside the metal door about 30 minutes later. The lock turned, and the door creaked as it opened.

Henry appeared partially from the door with a glass of red wine in his hand. He turned back to glance at the surveillance camera in the corridor to confirm that he had turned it off. After that, the kind look on his face vanished.

"Don't you feel like a total loser now, Callum?" He swirled the wine in his glass as he walked slowly toward me. "Don't you feel upset? You've sacrificed so much only to let me reap all of your benefits in the end."

I did not even blink as I sat on the ground. "Did you come here just to tell me this?"

Henry sneered as he crouched and lowered his voice. "I'm here to tell you that I swapped that bottle of ointment. That's not the only thing I did. I'm also taking everything of yours little by little. Your fiancée, your company, and your dignity! Why does a penniless nerd like you deserve to be a CEO while I have to keep making those losers in my streaming channel happy?"

Henry got increasingly agitated. His eyes were filled with mad jealousy as he continued.

"Yvette listens to me now. It'll only take one word from me, and she will sweep you out the door like garbage!"

I looked at the glee on his face as I quietly clicked on the recording button on my phone.

"So what if you do?" I retorted calmly.

"That means you'd better be obedient!" Henry stood up and poured the red wine on my head. The wine dripped from my hair, looking like bloodstains. "I'll get Yvette to announce that your wedding is off during tonight's party, and make her propose to me instead. You'll just need to be a good boy and stay in this rat hole while listening to us celebrating upstairs!"

Henry turned to leave happily as he locked the door behind him. I wiped away the wine on my face and made sure I saved the audio file of the recording on my phone, sneering as I got the job done.

In the outside world, bright lights were flashing with glamorous figures in the grand hall on the top floor. Yvette was in a haute couture gown and holding a glass of champagne as she chatted with every investor and member of the media attending the party, enjoying being the center of attention.

That was when the finance director appeared from behind the stage and came running toward Yvette, grabbing her arm. "Bad news, Ms. James. Something horrible happened!"

Yvette flung his hand off unhappily. "Can't you see I'm busy talking to Mr. Werner about a potential investment? What are you making a big fuss about?"

The finance director's voice was trembling. "It's an emergency, Ms. James. The bank just called to inform us that the money in our public account is empty!"

Yvette frowned. "Empty? How is that possible? Could it be a delay from the system? We have had major transactions today. It's only normal for some buffering time."

"But—"

"There are no buts!" Yvette interrupted him impatiently. "This is a big day for me, so don't jinx it! Get back there and find out if there is something wrong with the network!" With that, she turned away with a perfect smile on her face as she walked toward the center of the stage.

I looked at the countdown timer on my phone screen, which had reached the count of zero. "This is the start of your end."