It was my luck that during my first month as a permanent hire at Vanguard Media, the founder’s son returned from his years abroad and took over the entire executive suite. And it was my even worse luck that the man in question happened to be Damian Wright—my ex-boyfriend’s former college roommate. I hadn’t seen him in six years. Back in school, Damian had been the quiet, impenetrable presence in the back of the room. Now, clad in a razor-sharp charcoal suit, he radiated an icy, imposing authority that made everyone in the room instinctively pull back. At that moment, his dark eyes were locked on me, narrowed in unadulterated disgust. “Who approved hiring someone of such bottom-tier morality and wretched character?” his voice cut through the open floor, deep and merciless. The bustling floor dropped into a dead silence. Dozens of eyes snapped toward me, wide with gossip and morbid curiosity. My face burned as if he had slapped me across the cheek in front of the entire company. “Mr. Wright, I personally headhunted Nora,” Evelyn spoke up, her voice steady as she stepped beside me. She was the Senior Vice President and my mentor—a woman I’d known and respected for three years. “Her professional credentials are ironclad, and her reputation in the industry speaks for itself.” Six months ago, I was a Vice President at another firm, but internal politics had pushed me into a corner. Evelyn stepped in, offered me a generous salary and a Department Director role, and pulled me out of that sinkhole. And now, she was still standing by my side. “Mr. Wright, I think you might have a personal misunderstanding regarding Nora,” Evelyn continued smoothly. “I brought her on board strictly based on merit. Before this, she reached an executive level at a remarkably young age and successfully spearheaded multiple eight-figure campaigns. Her expertise is top-tier. I trust my judgment, and I trust her ability.” Damian didn’t look at Evelyn. His eyes remained pinned on me, the hatred behind them naked and raw. “Ability?” Damian let out a cold, sharp breath. “Can talent wash away a rotten character?” Evelyn frowned, opening her mouth to push back, but I gently touched her arm to stop her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to defend myself; I just knew it was useless. Damian’s contempt for me was deep-seated and years in the making. And frankly, he wasn’t wrong. In his eyes, I was a woman of wretched character. During our college years, I had deliberately inserted myself into a relationship, tearing his roommate Aaron Cole away from his girlfriend, Fiona Reed. I had been ruthless, scheming, and relentless until I dragged Aaron away from her. Then, after six months of dating Aaron, I subjected him to months of cold psychological distance until he was broken enough to break up with me and flee the country. If Fiona and Aaron had every right to hate me… Damian’s feeling toward me was pure, unfiltered revulsion. Seeing him again today, I couldn’t blame him for his words. If a close friend of mine had been manipulated by a toxic ex and driven to the brink of despair, I would probably want to strangle that person on sight, too. Damian was just well-mannered enough to restrict his vengeance to a verbal execution rather than a physical strike. Still, standing there under the suffocating weight of his glare, staying completely silent made me look guilty. I swallowed hard, forcing my voice to remain even. “Mr. Wright, your impression of me seems locked in the past. People change. I’ve grown up a lot since then.” He let out a short, mocking laugh. “A leopard doesn’t change its spots, Nora. A rotten core stays rotten.” A collective gasp rippled through the onlookers in the cubicles. My fingertips trembled, but I forced the corners of my mouth upward, plastering on a polished, corporate smile. “You’ve only just arrived, Mr. Wright, and we haven’t worked together yet. Once you see my work, you might realize I’m not the person you remember.” He didn’t hesitate for a single second. He stepped right past me, his shoulder almost brushing mine. “There’s no need,” he said coldly. “I have zero interest in getting to know someone like you.” The rhythmic, heavy clicking of his leather shoes echoed against the marble floor—unhurried, aloof, supreme. He left me standing in the center of the hallway, exposed to dozens of staring eyes. Some held pity, some held curiosity, and others were bright with schadenfreude. From a corner cubicle, I caught a hushed whisper: “What on earth did she do to make the new boss hate her that much?” “Who knows? But she didn’t even deny it. That means it’s all true.” I stood anchored to the spot, holding that perfect, professional smile until Damian’s tall silhouette vanished down the executive corridor. Only then did the crowd slowly disperse. Evelyn pulled me into a vacant conference room and clicked the door shut. “You know Damian Wright?” she asked, leaning against the glass table. I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the wall. “We went to the same university. We have… a history.” Evelyn didn’t press for details. She simply reached out and patted my shoulder warmly. “Whatever happened back then, don’t let it get to you. I’ve worked with you for three years. I know who you are, both in your work and as a person.” Her words almost cracked the armor I was desperately holding together. “Thank you, Evelyn.” “Don’t mention it. Damian spent years abroad, picking up that blunt, arrogant attitude where he says whatever pops into his head. Don’t take it to heart.” I nodded slowly. “I won’t. Thanks again.” “Alright, get back to work. If he gives you a hard time again, come straight to me.” I walked back down to my department’s floor. The moment I pushed through the glass doors, a dozen employees snapped their heads up toward me, only to instantly drop their gazes back to their monitors, pretending to be frantically busy. Keyboards clattered; files shuffled. I knew they had been talking about me a second before I walked in. I pretended not to notice. I walked straight past the rows of cubicles into my corner office and pulled the door shut behind me. The moment the latch clicked, every ounce of my composure drained away. My hands began to shake—not a slight tremor, but a violent, uncontrollable spasm. My knuckles turned white, my fingers stiffening into claws. Cold sweat broke out across my forehead and trickled down my temple. My chest felt squeezed by an invisible fist, wringing the air out of my lungs in agonizing pulses. I collapsed into my desk chair, my trembling hands scrambling to pull open the bottom drawer. I missed the handle on the first try because my hands were shaking too hard. On the second try, I yanked it open, fumbled for the small white prescription bottle, twisted the cap off, and threw two pills into my mouth, swallowing them dry. The bitter, chalky taste coated my throat. I tilted my head back against the leather headrest, closing my eyes, waiting for the chemical calm to hit my bloodstream. Two or three minutes passed. My racing pulse gradually slowed down. The tremors in my hands subsided into a dull, manageable ache. I opened my eyes, staring blankly at the harsh white fluorescent light on the ceiling, letting out a long, shaky breath. My depression was flaring up again. Whatever, I thought, staring at the ceiling. It is what it is. I bent down, gathered the scattered items from the desk, tossed them into the drawer, and slid it shut. Then I booted up my laptop and pulled up my pending files. No matter what the new owner thought of me, the work still needed to get done. I was just another corporate mercenary trading hours for a paycheck. I didn’t have the luxury of being fragile. The weeks that followed played out exactly as I anticipated: an uphill battle through wet cement. The first time I went to present a quarterly strategy to Damian, I prepared every piece of data meticulously. I built a comprehensive slide deck, printed financial reports, and arrived at his office ten minutes early. Damian walked in precisely on the hour. He passed right by me without so much as a glance from the corner of his eye. During my thirty-minute presentation, he never raised his head once. His gaze stayed glued to the screen of his personal laptop. When I finished and asked for his feedback, he gave a flat, indifferent “Noted,” closed his laptop, and walked out of the room. He treated me like ghost. Before long, Damian brought the hammer down on me during a middle-management meeting in front of fifteen department heads. “Certain departments show numbers that look decent on paper,” he said, flicking lazily through my report, his tone dry and dismissive. “But when you compare their actual growth rate against the industry baseline, it’s mediocre at best.” He paused, resting his chin on his hand. “Of course, making numbers look pretty on a page is a skill in itself. Whether it’s real capability… I’ll leave that unsaid.” Every eye in the room shifted to me. That quarter, my department’s growth rate ranked second in the entire company, right behind Sales. My team and I had worked eighty-hour weeks to pull those numbers off. He hadn’t even looked at the methodology before dismissing it as fluff. I gripped my pen until my knuckles turned white, keeping my face completely blank. Later, the company launched a flagship multi-million-dollar project. By all standard operational procedures, the market research and strategic planning should have been spearheaded by my team. Yet when the project task force was announced, my name was nowhere on the roster. Evelyn pulled me into her office privately afterward, her brows knit in frustration. “I brought it up with Damian directly. I told him your team was the best fit for this. He told me… he needed to ‘re-evaluate your core competencies’ and sidelined you for now.” I offered a small, quiet smile. “It’s fine, Evelyn. I understand.” What was there to understand? I understood that he was using his executive power to systematically freeze me out over a personal vendetta. But what could I do? He was the owner; I was an employee. If he fired me outright without cause, I could claim a massive severance package. So instead, he was choosing to bleed me out slowly, suffocating my position until I snapped and walked away. That was his game. And after three months of enduring his slow execution, I finally hit my limit. It wasn’t because of my own pride. It was because of my team. Being kept off core projects meant my team had no high-impact work. No high-impact work meant no performance bonuses. The young managers under me had signed up to work with me so we could hit targets and earn real money, not to sit on the bench and starve because of my past. That afternoon, I knocked on Damian’s office door. He sat behind a massive mahogany desk, wire-rimmed glasses resting on his straight nose, his long fingers turning the page of a document. When I walked in, his expression didn’t shift by a millimeter. He didn’t even adjust his posture. “Mr. Wright, I’m here to present the Q3 performance review for my department.” “Leave it on the desk.” I walked over and placed the leather-bound report on the polished wood. He didn’t touch it, nor did he offer me a seat. I stood; he sat. Silence stretched thin and suffocating between us. After three agonizing minutes, he finally spoke. But it had nothing to do with the report. “Nora,” he said, leaning back against his leather chair, his gaze finally sweeping over me with cold, superior scrutiny. “Have you ever considered that you might simply not be a good fit for this company?” I paused. “Excuse me?” “You have technical competence, I won’t deny that,” he said evenly. “But surviving in a corporate environment requires more than raw talent. Integrity, ethics, professional standards… sometimes those things matter far more than results.” I knew he was still clinging to the ghost of six years ago. “Mr. Wright,” I kept my voice perfectly composed. “Are you implying that I should resign?” He didn’t answer. He just watched me. That look was painfully familiar. It was the exact same expression he wore six years ago—contempt, disgust, and absolute moral superiority. I took a deep, steadying breath. “Mr. Wright, I haven’t committed any professional infractions, so I won’t be resigning voluntarily. My probation period ended months ago, and I hold a valid three-year contract. If you wish to terminate my employment, I expect full severance in accordance with labor laws.” His brows narrowed slightly. “You’re demanding severance?” “Absolutely.” I met his cold gaze head-on. “Under current labor regulations, an unscheduled termination without cause after six months of employment requires a double-severance payout based on my tenure, plus my contractually guaranteed annual performance bonus. In total, that comes to roughly eighteen months of my base salary. If you find those terms acceptable, I can sign the separation agreement today.” Damian stared at me for several long seconds, then let out a cold, sharp sneer. “Fine. I’ll pay it. Just get out of my company. We have no room for people with broken moral compasses.” I nodded calmly. “Understood. Please inform HR and Payroll to process the wire.” I had no desire to linger. I turned to grab the door handle, but his voice halted me from behind. “Nora, try fixing your nature. Otherwise, no man will ever truly want a woman like you.” I paused, turning my head back with a dry, bitter smirk. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Mr. Wright. After all… there’s always someone blind enough.” Like, for instance, the man who had sent me a ridiculously thirsty message just a few nights ago: “Baby, why haven’t you been replying to my texts lately? Are you so busy you forgot about me, or do you not love me anymore?” Followed immediately by another notification—a semi-blurry, dimly lit mirror selfie. The man in the photo wasn’t wearing a jacket. His tailored shirt had the top two buttons undone, the collar falling open to reveal the sharp, sculpted line of his collarbones and the faint, defined ridges of his abs below. It was dangerously alluring. “You used to tell me how much you loved my abs. I just finished up at work and took this for you. Are they more defined than last time? I’m free this weekend—can we finally meet? I want to let you look at them… up close.” If I hadn’t recognized the precise pattern of the custom wood blinds in the background, I might have been thrilled. Unfortunately for him, that photo had been taken right in this very executive office. The familiar mahogany paneling, the distinctive blinds… and that slate-gray silk shirt, which I had personally picked out and ordered for him online weeks ago. The man I was dating online… was Damian Wright. I had discovered the truth at the beginning of the month. At the time, Damian was acting cold and untouchable at work. I had needed his formal approval on an operational budget, so I asked Evelyn to share his personal messaging contact with me. The moment I pulled up his profile, I froze. The display name, the minimalist avatar, the header photo of a quiet coast line… they were identical down to the pixel to the profile of my online boyfriend of four months. I knew the world was full of wild coincidences, so I didn’t believe it at first. I began testing my hypothesis in subtle ways. I would ask my online boyfriend to describe what he was doing, what he was eating, or what shirt he was wearing at that exact moment. During grueling company-wide meetings, while Damian sat at the head of the table looking like an unapproachable tyrant, I would send a sweet, needy text to my online account under the table—and watch him lower his head, his cold lips curving into a soft, secret smile as his thumb flew across his screen. And right after he tore me apart in that middle-management meeting, I sent my online boyfriend a text: “Is there anyone you really hate right now?” He replied almost instantly: “Yes. Someone with a terrible character. I just had to put her in her place.” My stomach had twisted into a tight knot. “Do you think people can change? What if someone made mistakes in the past, but genuinely grew up?” His response came without a second of hesitation: “A leopard doesn’t change its spots. People who do bad things are rotten to the core. They never change.” Those few sentences had felt like cold needles pressing into my skin. That was the moment the final piece clicked into place. Damian Wright was my sweet, devoted online boyfriend. I had never imagined that the tender, attentive man on the other side of the screen—the one who catered to my every mood—was the exact same man who treated me like filth in real life and called me “wretched.” After the initial shock wore off, a dark, absurd wave of resentment began to bloom inside me. What would happen if Damian found out that the woman he whispered sweet nothings to every single night was the very woman he despised? Rage? Shame? Utter humiliation? For a brief moment, I wanted to play the long game. I wanted to make him fall so deeply, hopelessly in love with my online persona that when I finally stripped away the mask, it would shatter his superior little world into pieces. I wanted him to taste what it felt like to be pulled up into the clouds only to be dropped into the mud. But then I took a breath, and the urge faded. When I interfered in Aaron and Fiona’s relationship years ago, I had my own desperate, painful reasons. But at the end of the day, it was still a toxic, destructive spiral. I didn’t want to live my life stuck in that cycle forever. Damian hated me, and he had pushed me out of my job. It was unfair, but it wasn’t worth burning down my own peace to ruin him. Besides… during those months online, his gentleness toward me had been real. His warmth had kept me grounded on nights when my depression tried to swallow me whole. I didn’t want to tarnish that small memory with a ugly game of revenge. Let it go, I told myself. Damian, you should be glad I’m letting you off the hook. Walking out of Damian’s corner office, I pulled out my phone, logged into my secondary account, and typed out a final message: “Let’s skip meeting up this weekend. Honestly, I don’t think our values align after all. We should break up. I hope you find someone who suits you better.” No long explanations, no dramatic reveals. Just a clean, ordinary end to an ordinary internet romance. The moment the status shifted to Sent, I logged out of the burner account, deleted the app, and pushed open the doors to the Human Resources department. It was time to sign my papers. From this point on, Nora Hayes and Damian Wright were even. In reality, and online. HR had clearly received direct orders from Damian. They didn’t hassle me, expediting the offboarding process immediately. On the official record, it was logged as a voluntary resignation on my part, but behind closed doors, every penny of the eighteen-month severance package was calculated according to labor law and wired to my account. I had to admit—as much as Damian despised me, his moral perfectionism prevented him from cheating me out of what I was legally owed. I was required to stay for two final transition days to hand over my projects before the weekend. I accepted the terms quietly. During those two days, Evelyn was livid on my behalf, threatening multiple times to storm into Damian’s office to demand an explanation, but I held her back every time. She was consumed with guilt, feeling that pulling me over to Vanguard had exposed me to this nightmare. “Evelyn, this has nothing to do with you,” I reassured her gently as we packed up my desk files. “It’s personal history. Don’t beat yourself up. Besides, I’ve been working non-stop for years. Taking a break to go home and rest sounds pretty good right now.” She sighed, giving my shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “Fine. But the moment you’re ready to get back into the field, tell me. I’ll keep my eyes open for the right executive opening.” “I will. Thank you for everything.” Over those next forty-eight hours, I kept my head down, organizing handover documents and finalizing client lists. Because of the transition details, I had to step into Damian’s office a few more times. Every time I walked in, the tension in the room was suffocating. He was in an abyssal mood—irritable, dark, his brow permanently furrowed in frustration. His eyes kept darting back to his personal phone resting on the leather blotter. Whenever the screen lit up with a notification, he grabbed it instantly, only for his face to fall into a deeper, hollow shadow when it wasn’t the message he was waiting for. I knew why. Since I had sent that breakup text and uninstalled the app, he had been shouting into a void. He couldn’t reach me, and it was driving him out of his mind. By Friday afternoon, the paperwork was complete. Holding a single cardboard box filled with my personal desk items, I walked out of the glass doors of Vanguard Media for the last time. On the subway ride home, I reinstalled the app and logged into the burner account one last time. Predictably, Damian’s messages had piled up to over a hundred notifications. My eyes drifted to the most recent ones sent an hour ago: “I never felt our values didn’t align. You’ve always been the one person who truly understood me.” “Just tell me why. What did I do wrong? At least give me a reason.” I stared at the glowing text for a long time. The train rattled along the tracks, announcements echoing through the carriage as passengers boarded and departed. Finally, I made a decision. I opened the camera, switched to the front-facing lens, and took a quiet, clear photo of my face. Then I hit send, adding a single message below it: “You always wanted to meet me. This is me.” “And by the way… you were the one who said I had a bottom-tier moral compass and terrible character. So… do you still think our values align?” Without waiting for a reply, I blocked his number, deleted the account, and uninstalled the app for good.
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