The open vote for the Cloudridge Estates Luxury Residences project lead was held today.

Kenneth Fletcher: thirteen votes. Me: zero.

Thirteen people in the design department. Not a single one picked me.

Edmund James jabbed his pen against my name on the ballot, pressing hard.

The ink bled into an illegible smear.

"Ronnie, it was a fair vote. You don't have a problem with that, do you?"

The corner of his mouth curled into the kind of smirk that said I run this department, and you know it.

"Fair."

I rolled the word around in my mouth, slow and quiet.

I'd been on the Cloudridge project for a full year, practically living on-site since the day the structural work finished.

A thousand units. Eighteen buildings. Twenty stories each.

I'd climbed every single floor myself.

Seven unit types, a hundred and eight design plans. All mine.

Forty-five firms competing for the bid. I won it.

The $40 million design fee. I negotiated it.

And now it had been handed to an intern who didn't even know the name of the client's contact person.

And he was telling me this was a fair vote?

I looked down at the supplementary agreement Cloudridge had just sent over.

Under "Designated Project Lead," one name was printed: Ronnie Butler.

I let my gaze drift away from the screen.

Quietly, I opened LinkedIn and updated my resume.

"No problem."

……

Edmund looked mildly surprised. He reached over and gave my shoulder a pat.

"Well, well. Designer Butler's really showing some team spirit today. Then again, you've been here nine years. A veteran like you should understand how the company operates. Got to make room for the new blood."

I didn't respond. I turned and walked out of the conference room.

The moment the door swung shut, I caught a glimpse through the glass: Kenneth and Edmund, high-fiving each other.

"Eddie, we finally got rid of that dead weight."

Edmund was trying to keep his composure, but the glee leaked through the door like it couldn't be contained.

"Forty million in design fees, and he was taking all the credit. How was I supposed to do my job as director with him around?"

I turned and walked through the open office. Low murmurs rippled around me as I passed.

"Vote's done? Look at him, wilting like a frost-bitten plant. Guess he lost?"

"Holy crap, forty million in fees, twenty percent commission. That's almost ten million gone. I'd lose my mind too."

"So what if he's upset? He hogged everything. Every project that came through the design department, he'd show his face at the site for five minutes, slap his name on it, and pocket all the credit and the cash. Who does that?"

"Exactly. Meanwhile Kenneth, the new intern, was still at the site at midnight drafting plans. Not like Ronnie, who just sat at his desk all day warming his chair until the cushion fell apart."

Winston Chavez raised his voice deliberately, his tone dripping with spite:

"Isn't he supposed to be some hotshot mid-level designer? Thinks he's above the director, figured the project couldn't survive without him. Bet he never dreamed he'd get voted off. That's hilarious."

"Big deal, mid-level designer. Kenneth has a master's degree, and his father works at the Housing Authority. Getting his senior certification would be a cakewalk for him. His drafts are better than Ronnie's. He could pick up Ronnie's workload without breaking a sweat."

"I think so too. Kenneth's got the talent and the work ethic. He deserves to lead this project."

"Unlike certain people. No real skill, just good at stealing credit. Getting cut was inevitable."

"If I were him, I'd take the hint and leave before they push me out."

Those vicious mouths, every last one of them, spitting out their petty satisfaction and their twisted lies one syllable at a time.

Not a single person remembered how I'd spent the last nine years pulling all-nighters over design plans, sleeping in construction trailers on-site to keep the schedules on track.

These people came from every department: interior finishing, marketing, engineering, materials.

Which one of them hadn't come to me begging for help at some point?

Last week, the finishing team botched their measurements. They dragged me out of bed at two in the morning to renegotiate the design specs with the client.

Yesterday, marketing had a difficult client they couldn't close. I pulled an all-nighter and put together eight separate proposals to land the deal for them.

All they saw was the $8 million commission on a $40 million design contract. None of them saw me crawling through construction sites every day, caked in mud like a stray dog.

The guy they called incompetent, the "glory hog," the one who "hogged all the credit" — I was the one holding up more than half the company's revenue, making sure they had salaries to collect and bonuses to spend.

I held my breath, walked to my desk.

Picked up the glass "Outstanding Contribution Award" trophy, and hurled it into the aisle.

CRASH.

Glass shattered everywhere, the sound ripping through the entire office.

Every whisper died instantly.

The whole floor went dead silent.

The conference room door flew open. Kenneth still had a cigarette pinched between his fingers, not even bothered to put it out.

He spotted the shattered trophy on the floor and strolled toward me with a smirk.

"Ronnie, come on, no need for all that. If you've got a problem with how things were decided, I can step aside for you."

I sat in my chair, chin tilted up to meet his eyes.

Same face from three months ago when he first walked in as an intern. But the humble act had long been replaced by the gloating mask of a man who'd lucked into something he didn't earn.

"Sure."

I said it calmly.

"Go tell Mr. James right now. I'll wait."

The smirk on his face froze solid. His eyes shifted from shock to irritation, then landed on pure embarrassment.

He forced out a stiff laugh. "Bro, I was kidding. That's above my pay grade."

I ignored him and turned to my computer, sorting through my files.

Kenneth draped one arm over the glass partition of my cubicle.

The other arm planted itself on my desk. He leaned in, watching my face with that lazy, entitled look.

"Ronnie, Edmund wants you to hand over all the Cloudridge client files. Everything."

"Everything?"

"Yeah. Proposals, material quotes, contact agreements, and the design drafts."

He blew a lazy smoke ring, watching me like he had all the time in the world.

Last month, Cloudridge had requested a lighting design package. Kenneth submitted over a dozen proposals. Every single one got rejected.

On the last day before the deadline, he called me at midnight begging for help.

I pulled an all-nighter to finish it.

The next morning, he walked in with my designs and took full credit.

When Edmund reported to the boss, he said the entire design department had worked overtime to get it done.

I nodded.

"Fine. I'll organize them and send them over."

He smiled, satisfied, and turned to leave.

The stench of cigarette smoke lingered over my workstation long after he was gone.

I opened my hidden files and clicked on a folder labeled "IMPORTANT — DO NOT DELETE."

Inside were eight floor plans for Cloudridge, 108 design proposals, and 2,888 design sketches.

Every single one drawn by my hand. Every single one revised by me alone.

Every last sketch had only one name on it. Mine.

Not one of the other twelve people in the design department had contributed a single line.

Because none of them ever believed I could land this project.

When the Cloudridge luxury renovation project first launched, Edmund had been eager enough to submit a bid.

But out of 150 design firms, only 44 made the cut.

Pinnacle Design got eliminated in the first round.

Edmund gave up on the spot. I was the only one who kept going.

Every day, I showed up at the construction site and worked alongside the laborers.

Whenever I spotted something wrong, I spoke up. I was more thorough than Cloudridge's own construction supervisor.

One time, I noticed the bathroom drain placement was off and flagged it immediately.

"The drain's positioned so the washing machine and the toilet are going to collide. The machine door won't be able to open. I'd recommend shifting it back about four inches."

The site supervisor was a guy named Ken Lawrence, a stubborn old bulldog of a man who made no effort to hide his annoyance with me.

"That's how it was designed. Whether the door opens or not isn't my problem. I build to the blueprints."

I smiled. "But the interior finishing is on your team. A layout like this is going to cause major problems during renovation. Unless you swap the front-loader for a top-loader, but would the homeowners agree to that? Wouldn't that count as fraud?"

He checked the blueprints, measured the dimensions over and over again.

Then he looked up the washing machine specs, and went completely silent.

After a long pause, he finally asked me.

"How do you know all this so well?"

I didn't bother hiding my calculating smile.

"Because I want this project. I know the exact deviation of every single unit you've got here."

He studied me for a moment, something shifting behind his eyes.

"Kid, you've got grit. Reminds me of myself when I was your age."

It wasn't until later that I learned he was Herbert Delgado's uncle.

Three days later, I walked into a meeting with Delgado himself, carrying a thick stack of proposals.

He glanced at the first page and shook his head.

"Pinnacle doesn't have a Senior Designer on staff. You're not qualified."

The words hit me like a bucket of ice water, cold straight through to the bone.

But I wasn't ready to give up. I pulled out the certificates for my two national design awards.

"Mr. Delgado, I've already applied for my Senior certification. I meet all the requirements. It's just that the Housing Authority's approval process has been slow."

He looked at the two awards. The dismissiveness in his eyes faded, degree by degree.

"I've seen both of these winning designs. At the time, I remember thinking the designer had a remarkably intuitive sense of space. So that was you."

Only then did he start going through my proposals carefully, his expression growing more focused with every page.

"You did over a dozen variations for a single floor plan? Each one in a different style. You've got something going on up here." He tapped his temple.

My heart was racing, but I kept my face composed.

He nodded. "Leave these with me. If I have questions, we'll talk."

That day, he added me on WhatsApp. His initiative, not mine.

On my way out, his assistant Alfred Chavez said, "Forty-four firms sent representatives. You're the first one he's given his personal contact to."

I rushed back to the office, buzzing with excitement, and reported everything to Edmund.

No excitement. No praise.

He didn't even look up.

"You want to waste your time chasing pipe dreams, that's your business. I'm not going to the boss with some half-baked lead and getting chewed out for it."

But the moment the project was locked in, he was the first one in Mr. Donaldson's office to claim credit.

"Mr. Donaldson, the Cloudridge project came through because I led the team and ground out every last detail."

One sentence. A full year of my sweat and sleepless nights, reduced to a stepping stone under his feet.

I selected the files, compressed them, and uploaded everything to my personal cloud.

Then I deleted them. Permanently.

I packaged up the basic Cloudridge documents and sent them to Kenneth.

Ten minutes later, Kenneth came storming out of the director's office and marched straight to my desk.

"Ronnie, why is there no building orientation data in these files? Where's the solar analysis? The ventilation simulation models?"

"No idea."

"No idea?"

Kenneth's brows twisted into a knot.

"You practically lived on that construction site. How can you not know? What the hell were you even doing out there?"

I let my gaze sweep across the office, slow and deliberate.

"They told me I was just there for show. So that's what I did."

Every pair of eyes that met mine dropped instantly, heads ducking behind monitors, suddenly very busy.

Kenneth faltered, his expression flickering with unease.

"And the design drawings? You didn't include a single one. Send them to me. Now."

I leaned back in my chair, watching him with an unhurried gaze.

"No."

"No?"

His temper was slipping.

"On what grounds? That's a company project!"

I kept my voice even, measured. "You all voted me off the team. Those designs are my personal work. Why would I hand them to you?"

He was practically snarling now. "Your personal work? Without this company, your designs are nothing but scrap paper!"

I nodded. "Sure. Then go design your own. Stop asking me for scrap paper."

"What kind of attitude is—"

"Kenneth." Edmund pushed open his office door. "Send him in. You go contact the Cloudridge people."