After a relentless week of sleepless nights and back-to-back overtime, I finally produced a design that won the client’s approval.

Yet just as I was about to sign the contract, I found the design drawings on my desk had gone.

In their place, the sandwich wrappers the new assistant was selling to my colleagues looked disturbingly familiar.

I confronted her on the spot, my voice sharp with anger, demanding why she had used my design drawings as sandwich wrappers. Her eyes instantly brimmed with tears.

"I’m so sorry, Lana. I thought they were just scrap paper you didn’t need. This is my first time running a business and I was only trying to cut costs wherever I could."

Then my husband, Daniel Sanford, slapped a pay slip into my hands, the numbers glaring up at me—an overdue debt of one hundred thousand dollars.

"Mila is just starting her first small business. It’s nothing worth fussing over that she used your design to wrap sandwiches."

"You’re the careless one here, making mistake after mistake and costing the company huge losses. Keep this up and I'll fire you on the spot."

Yet, when I truly handed him both the divorce agreement and my resignation letter, just as he had demanded, panic flickered in his eyes.

——

Hearing Daniel’s words, disbelief crashed over me.

"That design took me an entire week! It’s a core piece for the company’s IPO later this year!"

"And now it’s wrapping sandwiches?"

Daniel cut me off, his voice thick with impatience.

"Enough, Lana Delmare. You just can’t stand seeing Mila make a little money, can you?"

"She just graduated and life hasn’t been easy for her. You’ve been here for over ten years. Can’t you stop targeting a young girl?"

"Besides, if you hadn’t carelessly left such an important design lying around, she wouldn’t have mistakenly taken it."

"Go pay the fine and finish the remaining proposals. The client’s already waiting."

Fine?

Confused, I took the freshly printed pay slip from Mila’s hands.

When my eyes landed on the negative one hundred thousand at the bottom, my breath caught in my throat.

So, I confronted Mila right on the spot.

"My base salary is 2,500 a month, plus bonuses—that’s at least 5,000 to 7,000, right?"

"Then why does this say I owe 100,000? How exactly did you calculate that?"

Daniel stepped in at once, shielding her behind him.

"What are you shouting for?"

"You were absent nearly every day last month and even when you did work, you made mistake after mistake. If it weren’t for Mila cleaning up after you, you would owe the company even more!"

"Pay the fine now—or even as my wife, I’ll fire you!"

My chest tightened like a vice.

Daniel Sanford and I had married young, spending ten years supporting each other as we built this company from the ground up.

His business sense was mediocre at best, so to keep the company alive, I shouldered role after role and worked endlessly.

He was the one who brought in the new assistant, Mila Palmer.

She spent her days peddling unregulated homemade lunches, accomplishing little else. Whenever I confronted her, she only wept pitifully.

"Lana, I just graduated and I’m short on money. Our colleagues need to eat and they all say they love the lunches I make."

I told her this had nothing to do with whether people liked it or not—running a side business in the company was absolutely unacceptable.

Besides, her lunches had no proper certification. What if someone got sick?

She nodded in agreement, then climbed onto the company rooftop, claiming she could not afford her living expenses and had no choice but to end her life.

To save her, Daniel immediately bought her a city-center apartment, gave her the highest salary in the company and even allowed her to continue running her side business at work.

Even projects I had nearly completed were taken from me by Daniel and credited as Mila’s work.

Unfortunately, Mila Palmer turned out to be just as incompetent as my husband, bungling a contract at the last possible moment and driving the partner to cancel the deal on the spot.

And yet, he still had the gall to dump all the blame squarely on me.

I tore the pay slip clean in half.

"I’m not the project manager—why should I be the one footing the bill for this mess?"

But instead of backing down, Daniel’s fury only flared hotter than mine.

"Then get out of this company!"

His roar cracked through the office, loud enough for nearly every head to turn and stare.

My ears rang. My thoughts went utterly blank. And then—everything went black.

When I came to, I was not in a hospital bed. I was sprawled on the pavement outside the company building.

Cars sped past in a blur. One driver slammed on the brakes, barely avoiding me, then leaned out the window, spitting rage.

"You idiot! If you want to die, go somewhere else! Don’t try to pull some pathetic scam here!"

I could barely hear him, but instinct made my lips form an apology. That was when a man stepped out of the Bentley parked just a few feet away.

It was my childhood friend and my senior, Eiden Rhodes. He drove off the rude driver, his brows drawn tight as he asked me. 

"Lana, did you turn me down, only to choose a jerk like Daniel and end up living like this?"

I must have looked utterly lost, because his frown only deepened.

Without another word, he swept me up, carried me to his car, buckled the seatbelt and drove straight to the hospital.

The diagnosis came quickly—a middle-ear infection, triggered by too many late nights and too much stress.

Thankfully, the hearing loss was only temporary. A course of antibiotics would take care of it.

Eiden stayed by my side during the IV drip, as if debating whether to speak, when my phone suddenly rang.

Daniel’s voice snapped through the line, sharp and impatient.

"Have you had enough of this act, Lana? If you’re done, get back to the office—now! Miss work again and I’ll fire you for real!"

The words were just muffled noise to me, so I turned to Eiden for help.

"What did he just say?"

He did not answer right away. Instead, he ended the call, quickly tapped on his phone and then showed me the screen.

[Quit your job. I’ll take care of you.]

My heart lurched painfully. I lowered my gaze, pretending to scroll through my phone, but my eyes landed on the company group chat.

Daniel was tagging me over and over again.

[Lana, how dare you hang up on me?]

[I’m giving you one last chance. Get back here and finish that proposal in ten minutes, or you’re fired!]

I snapped a photo of myself with the IV still in my arm and sent it to him privately. Almost immediately, a 60-second voice message popped up.

Since I could not hear what he said, I converted it to text.

As I read it, the words on the screen made my blood run cold.

At that moment, Eiden noticed the way my face drained of color. Without asking, he took the phone from my hands.

I tried to stop him, but my finger slipped and the voice message started to play aloud. An overly sweet female voice filled the ward.

"Lana, stop pretending already. Daniel told me you faked fainting just to avoid paying the fine. If you could survive being dumped on the street, then clearly he was right."

"You’d better hurry back to the office, or next month you’ll rack up another few hundred thousand in debt. How many years will it take you to pay that off?"

I did not even need perfect hearing to recognize that voice. It was Mila Palmer.

I had lived with a severe ear infection for years. Anger and sleepless nights always risked making me faint and robbing me of my hearing.

Daniel had known this from the very beginning.

Once upon a time, he had knelt in front of me with 999 roses, his eyes full of sincerity, making a promise.

"Lana, if you’re with me, I’ll never make you angry or wear you out. I'll make sure your ear infection will never trouble you again."

In the company’s early days, when we were desperate to land our very first major contract, I worked through the night without a single moment’s rest, pouring every drop of strength into the proposal until my body finally gave out and I was rushed to the hospital.

When Daniel arrived and saw me, his face went sheet-white with fury and he nearly ripped the proposal to shreds.

He swore then and there that he would rather see the company fail than watch me destroy my health for it.

But less than ten years later, that solemn vow meant nothing—because he had left me unconscious on the side of the road like I was disposable.

If Eiden had not happened to pass by, I might not even be alive to tell this story.

I was just about to speak when my phone lit up with a new email notification.

A dismissal notice—from Daniel himself.

A laugh slipped from my lips.

Meeting Eiden’s steady, concerned gaze, I said clearly, "Find me the best divorce lawyer you know. I’m ending this with Daniel."

The divorce agreement came together quickly.

That evening, I returned home with the agreement in hand.

But the password lock I could open in my sleep suddenly refused to yield, no matter how many times I tried.

Both the fingerprint and password systems rejected me and when I finally resorted to the physical key, a shrill alarm shrieked through the hallway.

Security guards came charging over. Before I could get a single sentence out, they shoved me to the ground, pinning me there.

I kept repeating that I was the owner, but the neighborhood had recently been hit by a robbery. The security team was new and none of them knew me.

Left with no choice, I called Daniel.

Once. Twice. No answer.

Instead, my phone lit up with a private video from Mila.

In it, she lounged in a barely-there swimsuit, strolling past a steaming private hot spring—until a large hand caught her ankle and yanked her playfully into the water.

I recognized the man instantly. My husband, Daniel.

I knew it because of the antique wedding ring I had scoured Europe to find—now snug around Mila’s toe.

"Lana, Daniel says this ring really suits my manicure today."

My cheeks felt as if they had been slapped, the sting spreading all the way to my ears, which, freshly healed, began to buzz with pain.

The security guard’s lips moved, but his voice was muffled, distant.

I reached for my phone, intending to hand it over so he could type his words—but instead, he shoved me down again, hard.

Eiden appeared out of nowhere and, with one clean, controlled punch, knocked the guard back.

Thanks to that, we both ended up at the police station.

There, I finally learned why my password lock no longer worked.

Daniel had brought another woman home, trashed the place and could not be bothered to clean up. Changing the lock was simply easier.

I did not waste a single second as I canceled every single one of his supplementary cards.

Seconds later, Daniel, who had been missing for an entire night, called me immediately.

A short, cold laugh escaped my lips before I hung up.

Then I blocked him. Without hesitation.

Eiden read my expression and asked quietly, "Want to go somewhere and talk?"

I shook my head. Too much had happened and my only wish now was for silence.

In the end, Eiden booked me a room at a hot spring hotel.

The moment I stepped into the lobby, I spotted a man and a woman arguing with the front desk manager.

"We’re not trying to skip the bill. Our card just declined all of a sudden!"

"Exactly! Our boss runs a huge company. You think we can’t cover a few bucks?"

Daniel. And Mila.

I turned to leave, but Daniel’s gaze locked onto me instantly.

He jabbed a finger toward me.

"That’s my wife over there! She can pay for this!"

He strode toward me, hand outstretched to take my money.

Finally, Eiden’s patience snapped. He stepped between us, blocking Daniel’s path.

"Daniel, are you even human? You party with other women and now you expect your wife to cover the bill?"

"And who the hell are you?"