At the end of the year, the company made employees vote on who would be laid off.

In front of the boss, the votes were read aloud one by one.

Natalie Reed. One vote.

Natalie. Two votes.

Natalie... thirty votes.

All thirty people on my team had voted me out.

I clenched my fists and looked around at my coworkers.

Every single one of them avoided my eyes.

Maggie Turner was the oldest on the team. I knew she had to pick up her kid, so whenever she could not finish her work and had to rush to her kid’s school, I stayed behind and cleaned up after her.

Dylan joined last year. He was losing sleep every night over money for his wedding. I squeezed time out of my own schedule, helped him complete his project, and got him a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus.

And the trainee closest to me started trembling the moment I looked at her.

She looked just as timid as she had when her hands shook and spilled wine all over a client.

Back then, to fix the mess for her, I apologized to the client and drank until I had a stomach hemorrhage. Only then did she pass probation.

I could not help feeling hurt.

The boss looked at the result and asked if I had anything to say.

I took a deep breath and asked everyone on the team, “Why did you vote for me?”

My timid trainee suddenly found her courage.

“Because you always pretend to help people, then steal our credit.”

“Otherwise, how could someone as useless as you become the top salesperson?”

I laughed, took off my employee badge, and placed it on the table.

A week later, my boss was kneeling outside my door, begging me, the so-called useless one, to come back to the company.

I had been with the company for five years.

Every month, I made a $5,000 base salary and about $5,000 in commission.

On paper, it looked like a six-figure job.

But only I knew how many nights I had stayed up for that money and how many major deals I had closed for the company.

I sighed softly. When I lowered my head, I caught sight of the heavy dark circles under my eyes on my phone screen.

All at once, exhaustion swept through my whole body.

My coworkers seemed to be waiting for me to make a scene.

But faced with the result of the vote, I did not argue with any of them. I quietly took off my employee badge and asked my boss, “My performance this year already qualifies me for the million-dollar year-end bonus. If you fire me before bonuses are paid, what happens to that money?”

My boss sneered. “Getting fired is your problem. The company won’t pay any severance. And like you said, bonuses haven’t been paid yet. When the bonuses are calculated, you naturally won’t have anything to do with them.”

“What exactly did I do wrong?”

I challenged him, but he answered as if he had every right.

“If there were nothing wrong with you, would the whole team have voted for you?

“If you’re unhappy, go ahead and take it to the labor board. You were voted out. I’m not paying you that money.”

“Stop clinging on shamelessly. Pack your things and leave before you affect everyone else’s work.”

That one word, shamelessly, made me think of the day I first joined the company.

Back then, he had been so eager to persuade me to stay.

The company was not doing well at the time.

To keep me, he promised that if I could bring in ten million dollars in sales within a year, he would give me a million-dollar year-end bonus.

But after I actually brought in ten million dollars in sales, he no longer wanted to pay that bonus.

He still did not understand that what I had given this company could never be matched by a mere million-dollar bonus.

“Fine. I’ll go.”

I did not argue with him any further.

After I said that, whether this crumbling company survived or collapsed had nothing to do with me anymore.

When I went back to my desk to pack, plenty of people were already waiting for me to turn over my work.

Maggie wanted the report files she was supposedly responsible for organizing every day. In the past two years, she had not prepared a single product quality report herself.

Every time it was almost time to get off work, she would look at me apologetically.

“Nat, my son is out of school. I have to pick him up. These reports came in too late today. Could I trouble you with them?”

That one word, trouble, handed me work that had never been mine.

Dylan Brooks wanted me to brief him on one of his projects.

After a year at the company, he had never completed a single project on his own. Every time, he would hand me an unusable proposal and tear up in front of me.

“Natalie, I’m under so much pressure. I’m scared that if I don’t do well, I’ll get fired.”

Back then, I felt sorry for him because he was trying to save for his wedding, so I helped him finish project after project.

He promised that after he got married, he would try harder and start handling projects independently.

But after he got married, he voted to kick me out of the company.

The first person to speak was my trainee, Chloe Ward.

“Natalie, hand over my client data to me. Make sure you note each client’s preferences so I don’t mix them up.”

Maintaining client relationships was a basic part of sales.

From the moment Chloe joined the company, she kept saying clients were making things difficult for her, so she asked me to handle them for her.

Every holiday, even sending out greeting messages took me longer than it did for everyone else.

I looked at her. “They were your clients to maintain in the first place. What exactly am I supposed to hand over?”

Chloe looked completely justified.

“You’ve been maintaining them for me this whole time. If you don’t turn them over, are you trying to walk off with the company’s client resources?”

I gave a cold laugh. “So you do know I was the one maintaining them for you.”

Chloe shot back immediately, “What do you mean, for me? You were using my client resources to become the top salesperson. Now hurry up and hand them over.”

I refused. “I’ve already left the company, and I’m not receiving a cent in severance. I have no obligation to turn anything over to you. Especially not work that was never my responsibility in the first place.”

The moment they heard my refusal, my coworkers panicked.

Without all the things I handled for them every day, none of them could get through today’s work properly.

People around us started urging Chloe to do something.

Chloe was so anxious that she shouted at me, “Sabrina was right. You really are a selfish little snake who only looks out for herself.”

Sabrina Blake was my rival.

Ever since she found out the promotion would be given to either her or me, she had been spreading rumors about me within our team.

She stirred everyone up and pushed them to isolate me.

I had thought our team got along well enough, and our performance had been rising steadily.

I thought my coworkers would not be swayed by a few careless words from her.

But the result was truly chilling.

Still, I wanted to ask Chloe, “How exactly am I selfish?”

Before Chloe could answer, Sabrina had already walked over.

“Stop pretending. You probably can’t even count how many digits are on your paycheck anymore, can you?”

I pulled up my bank statements on the spot to prove myself, but they still refused to believe me.

They were convinced I had other sources of income.

Sabrina lifted her chin. “That money was never clean to begin with. Why would it show up in your bank statements?

“You wretched schemer. Back then, you deliberately made sure everyone’s core work passed through your hands.

“You must have been planning this all along. Once you got fired, you could refuse to hand anything over, throw everyone’s work into chaos, and get them demoted or fired.

“You’ve been using your coworkers to make money for so long. Now that you’re leaving, you still want to hurt them on purpose. That’s disgusting.”

I was so angry I almost laughed.

Other people might not know the truth, but they knew it perfectly well.

The reason their core work ended up in my hands was simple. No matter how many times I taught them, they could not learn it.

I once had Chloe sign off on a project that had already been fully negotiated.

Just as the client’s boss was about to sign, Chloe suddenly asked, “Can this project actually make money?”

The client immediately assumed that if we had no confidence in the project, it had to be a losing deal. He refused to sign on the spot.

I stayed up all night drafting a new proposal that finally satisfied them.

I also promised that I would personally follow the project from start to finish. Only then did we manage to save the partnership.

Afterward, I asked Chloe for an explanation. She only lowered her head and wiped her tears.

“I can’t even understand the proposal. How was I supposed to know whether it would make money? Fine, I just won’t go sign anything next time.”

At the time, I was buried in work and too exhausted to argue with her, so I ignored her stupidity.

And it was not just Chloe.

I helped a lot of people in the company finish their work, largely because they were too stupid, and I was too tired to communicate with them.

But now that I was leaving, these idiots had finally realized something. If they could not properly take over the work I handed off, there would definitely be trouble.

So when they saw Sabrina pressuring me to hand over my work, they all blocked my way.

“Everyone has to hand over their work before resigning. Until you finish the handover, don’t even think about leaving this office.”

Their bloodshot eyes fixed on me.

It was as if we had truly been bitter enemies for the past few years.

Thinking back on all the times they had thanked me, I found it absurd.

At the same time, I had no desire to keep arguing with this rotten crowd.

So I sent each of them the documents they wanted me to hand over.

A full 3,200 pages.

Every page was proof of the overtime I had put in because of them.

But when they received the files, all they did was complain.

“How am I supposed to finish this much work?”

“Sure, it’s my job, but Natalie has always been the one handling it. Am I really supposed to start from the beginning? ”

“This work is so hard. How could anyone handle it properly?”

Sabrina quickly said, “Natalie is only sending you this much to scare you. The actual handover definitely won’t take more than ten minutes.

“Otherwise, how did she finish all of it by herself?”

Everyone thought Sabrina had a point, and they immediately looked much more relieved.

I was afraid I might laugh out loud, so I grabbed my box and tried to leave as quickly as possible.

But Sabrina spoke again.

“You’ve settled what you owe the company, but you still haven’t settled what you owe your coworkers.”

I frowned. “What do I owe any of you?”

Chloe gritted her teeth. “Money, obviously.

“Every project bonus gave you the biggest cut. You must have skimmed our share. Hurry up and give it back.”

After Chloe said that, my coworkers looked at me with even more resentment.

Only then did I understand why they had all turned on me with Sabrina.

They believed I had taken money that belonged to them.

“Bonuses are distributed based on each person’s contribution to the project. If you’re unhappy, take it up with the boss. Why are you coming after me?”

Chloe twisted the truth without blinking. “Because you stole our credit. That’s why the boss gave the money to the wrong person.”

“Then report me to the boss.

“Or report me to the police. Or serve me a court summons. As long as a court rules that I owe you the money, I’ll pay.

“But if you keep blocking me and refusing to let me leave, I’m calling the police right now.”

I took out my phone and was about to dial.

“Natalie, that’s enough. You’re already leaving the company. Do you still have to cause trouble for everyone?”