I worked seven consecutive days of overtime during the Thanksgiving holidays, and my resentment was thicker than a graveyard fog. On the first day back at the office, the boss’s wife stormed in in her designer stilettos, her eyes bloodshot as she screamed: “Where is the homewrecker?!” “I’m looking for the cheap tramp in this office who seduced my husband and kept him from coming home for Thanksgiving!” Everyone stopped what they were doing and instantly pulled out their phones to record. In my past life, my coworker, Lily, had shakily pointed her finger at me: “I think Chloe was the only one working overtime with Mr. Vance over the break…” I had barely lifted my head, sporting massive dark circles, when a vicious slap struck across my face. The boss’s wife grabbed me by the hair, cursing me out in front of everyone, calling me a shameless slut who used “overtime” as an excuse to sleep with her boss. My boss, Richard, immediately played the loyal husband, claiming I had been obsessing over him and harassing him. He fired me on the spot to prove his innocence. I lost my job, my holiday pay was gone, and I was plastered all over the internet as a homewrecker. On my way home, the boss’s wife, still blinded by rage, intentionally ran me over with her SUV. When my parents came to the city to demand justice for me, they were so sleep-deprived and devastated that they got into a fatal car crash on the highway. Their deaths were horrific. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the exact moment the boss’s wife barged into the office. Before she could even open her mouth, I slammed my hands on my desk and stood up. “Tara, you’re looking for the mistress?!” “God damn it, I want to know who the mistress is too!” 01 Tara was visibly stunned that someone had stolen her opening line. Then, her face darkened instantly. “I knew Richard had a side piece in this office!” She was a tall, imposing woman, standing nearly 5’10”. One slap from her looked like it could knock someone into next week. “He told me he had to work through the holidays, but he was out screwing around!” “Which one of you is it?! I’ll rip that tramp’s face off!” Nobody in the office was working anymore. They were taking pictures, recording videos, and crowding around for the drama. Lily stood in the middle of the crowd, wearing a soft pink cardigan. She bit her lip, looking incredibly hesitant and troubled. “Over the Thanksgiving break?” “I think Chloe was the only one in constant contact with Mr. Vance.” As soon as the words dropped, my coworkers’ expressions shifted. “She’s right, Chloe was tagging Mr. Vance in the work group chat the whole break.” “Mr. Vance also said he was at the office overseeing the project.” “Wow, she really tried to play the victim to cover her tracks…” Tara narrowed her eyes, looking me up and down. Her hand twitched, clearly itching to slap me. “Chloe? It’s you.” “Jumping up to help me find the mistress because you’ve got a guilty conscience?” I pointed a finger at myself. “A guilty conscience?” “Tara, look at me! Look at this absolute disaster of a human being!” I pointed to the dark bags sagging to my cheekbones and yanked at my greasy, unwashed hair. Then, I slapped my hand against the mountain of empty Red Bull and coffee cans stacked on my desk. “Tara, look at me. Over the last seven days, I practically worked myself into an early grave!” “We agreed to oversee the project together, but it turns out your husband was out screwing around and dumped all the actual work on me!” The more I spoke, the more my rage boiled over. I was speaking through clenched teeth. “I want to find that mistress more than you do! She owes me my Thanksgiving break!” The entire office fell dead silent for two seconds. A coworker recording on his phone couldn’t help but whisper, “Holy shit.” Tara was visibly thrown off by my outburst. Her hand, which had been raised to strike, slowly lowered. I gritted my teeth and continued: “Tara, tell me what clues you have. Give them to me, and I will drag her out into the light right now!” Tara nodded slowly. She pulled a crumpled receipt from her designer bag and slammed it onto my desk. “For the seven days of the break, Richard booked a luxury honeymoon suite at the boutique hotel right next to the office.” She shot a venomous glare at all the female employees in the room. “Which one of you cheap tramps was it? Step forward right now!” The moment the words “honeymoon suite” came out. Lily suddenly covered her mouth. She looked at me with panicked, innocent eyes. “Chloe, didn’t you post on Instagram complaining about having to work through the holidays and staying at a hotel near the office?” “I remember… it was that exact same hotel, wasn’t it?” 02 The office practically exploded. “No way, they stayed at the same hotel?!” “No wonder she was the only one working overtime.” “Who would’ve thought Chloe was hooking up with the boss…” More phones were raised, pointing directly at me. Tara took slow, heavy steps toward me. Her heels cracked against the floorboards, each step sounding like a gunshot. “You stayed at the same hotel?” “What a coincidence.” I saw the veins bulging on the back of her hand. The memory of that ear-ringing slap from my past life seemed to burn against my cheek again. “If you can’t explain this right now, you aren’t walking out of this room in one piece!” I stared at the numbers printed on the receipt. And suddenly, I started laughing. I was laughing out of pure, unadulterated fury. “A luxury honeymoon suite for $1,200 a night!” I pointed at the receipt, raising my voice to the ceiling: “I WISH I was staying in a $1,200 suite! Do I look like I deserve that?! Does the pathetic salary your husband pays me cover even a two-night stay?!” “I stayed in a cramped, $80-a-night budget motel down the block!” “And my expense report for it STILL hasn’t been approved!” I held up my phone, waving it around so every single camera could see the booking confirmation. The room number, the total amount, and the room type were crystal clear. The whispering in the room halted. Tara frowned. But Lily’s eyes welled up with tears, her voice trembling: “You can book a cheap room and still sneak into the suite… It’s not like you’re chained to your motel bed.” I smiled. “You’re right. I wasn’t chained to my motel bed.” “In fact, I barely slept there at all.” My coworkers started whispering again. “Wait, is Chloe just straight up confessing?” “I’ve never seen a mistress this bold.” Tara glared at me, her brow furrowing deeper. “What exactly does that mean?” I let out a bitter, exhausted laugh. “Because I was at my desk working on the proposal until 3 AM every single night!” “I booked a room for seven days and barely slept in it for a few hours total! It was a complete waste of money!” “Pull the security footage right now! Let everyone see if I was having a steamy affair, or if I was fighting for my life!” Tears of absolute frustration threatened to spill from my eyes. Tara gave a sharp nod to the IT guy. Kevin from IT, trembling, quickly pulled up the office security cameras. On the massive screen, for seven days straight, the footage showed me slumped at my desk in the dead of night, my posture growing increasingly mangled day by day. One night, I had literally fallen asleep using my keyboard as a pillow. The gossiping coworkers fell entirely silent. Looking at myself on the screen, my nose stung fiercely. In my past life, nobody bothered to look at this footage. Everyone just wanted drama. They just wanted to watch the “mistress” get slapped. This time, I was going to force them to open their eyes. I was going to make them see whether I was having an affair, or being milked dry! I dropped to the floor and threw my arms around Tara’s legs. “Tara—!” I wailed, my cries shaking the very foundation of the building. Tara froze stiff. “What are you doing?!” I poured every ounce of my genuine, unadulterated trauma into my sobbing. “You spent your Thanksgiving as a neglected wife, and I spent mine as a corporate slave! Your husband doesn’t come home, and my boss doesn’t do his job! Why are our lives so miserable?!” “No overtime pay, my expenses haven’t been reimbursed, the proposal was rejected and revised eight times, and the damn mistress’s sins are being pinned on me—I swear to God, I want to kill her!” Tara was completely paralyzed. That massive hand, the one that had sent me flying in my past life, twitched. She awkwardly tried to pull me up. “You… you stand up first…” Lily’s face shifted nervously. “But Chloe, you were on the phone with Mr. Vance until the middle of the night all the time.” “Those couldn’t possibly all be work calls, right?” Hearing this, I was fully locked and loaded. I let go of Tara and stood up. “Come here.” I connected my phone to the office’s Bluetooth speaker. “Let the whole company hear the ‘passionate midnight romance’ between me and Mr. Vance.” I hit play on my call recordings. Richard’s voice blasted through the speaker, dripping with extreme impatience. “Chloe! It’s 3 AM, why isn’t the revised proposal in my inbox?!” “Chloe, why isn’t this done? The client said it doesn’t look premium enough.” “Make the title bigger! Don’t ask me how big, make it so big it smacks them in the face!” “You better stay on top of the vendors, they need to be on-site by 9 AM sharp. You young people complain too much about sleep, getting the project done is all that matters!” The boss’s abrasive, grating voice echoed through the entire bullpen. I listened to the voice that had tortured me countless times, tears gleaming in my eyes. “Listen to this!” “I ask you, what kind of mistress spends her 3 AM booty calls discussing how BIG to make a font size?!” “If I was actually the mistress, at least I’d be getting some perks! What did I get?! A mountain of work and the blame for his affair!” Someone couldn’t hold it in and let out a snort of laughter. The looks they gave me were now filled with profound pity. Lily bit her lip, looking incredibly uneasy. I violently snapped my head toward her. “But speaking of that—how exactly did you know how long I was on the phone with Mr. Vance over the holidays?” Lily’s face turned as white as a sheet of paper. 03 Just at that moment, the elevator doors chimed open. Richard had arrived. He was wearing a perfectly tailored suit, his hair slicked back immaculately. But when he saw Tara standing there looking like a thunderstorm, his collected demeanor vanished. The whole company knew Richard had built his career using his father-in-law’s money. If Tara really wanted to flip the table, she could easily toss him right out of his CEO chair. He practically jogged over, bowing slightly in submission. “Honey, what are you doing here? You didn’t even call ahead, it’s freezing outside…” Tara slammed the hotel receipt directly into his chest. “Why do you think?” Richard glanced at it, his face twitching, but he quickly plastered on a smile. “Honey, it’s a misunderstanding. A massive misunderstanding. Look at all these people watching, let’s go home and talk about it, okay?” “Home?” Tara glared at him, her eyes wide. “You spent seven days in a $1,200-a-night romantic suite for Thanksgiving, but you couldn’t figure out how to go home?” Richard’s smile completely froze. Then, he turned to look at me. I knew that look all too well. In my past life, he had looked at me exactly like that. Like I was a disposable pawn on a chessboard. He let out a heavy sigh, his tone dripping with fake heartbreak. “Chloe, I know we made a mistake, but I’ve turned over a new leaf and ended things between us.” “But you can’t just blow things out of proportion just because I rejected you.” “Now you’ve made my wife misunderstand.” The office fell into absolute silence. I stood rooted to the spot, my fingertips trembling slightly. In my past life, those exact three sentences had destroyed my entire existence. Lily blinked her innocent eyes at me. “Chloe, I never thought you’d actually be with Mr. Vance…” “Making a mistake isn’t terrible, what’s terrible is refusing to admit it.” Richard looked at me and waved his hand. “Come, let’s go to the conference room. We’ll clear this up.” Tara frowned fiercely. “Why go to the conference room? We’re clearing it up right here…” I looked up and shot her a very quick, deliberate wink. She froze, closing her mouth. The conference room door clicked shut. The remorseful expression on Richard’s face vanished instantly, replaced by cold calculation. “Chloe, I know you’re a hard worker.” “If you take the fall right now, I’ll make sure you still have a career here.” I tilted my head, tapping my fingers lightly on my phone in my pocket. “Mr. Vance, I think the overtime damaged my brain. I don’t quite understand.” “Take the fall for what?” Richard gave a slight, arrogant smile. “It’s very simple.” “When we walk out of here, you drop to your knees in front of my wife, cry, and say you were obsessed with me. Say you booked the hotel, you upgraded to the suite, and you even brought the romantic lingerie.” “Tell her you were unrequitedly infatuated with me, and when I rejected you, you caused this scene out of spite.” I let out a cold laugh. “So you want to dump the entire bucket of dirty water on my head?” Richard reached out, trying to patronizingly pat my hand. “Just take a bullet for me this once. I’ll remember the favor.” “Besides, for a girl like you, your ‘reputation’ isn’t really worth much anyway.” I dodged his hand. He smiled helplessly. “Chloe, your parents still live in that small rural town, right?” My fingers clenched into tight fists. “What do you mean by that?” He spread his hands casually. “If word gets back to a small town that their daughter is a home-wrecking mistress, wouldn’t they be humiliated for the rest of their lives?” “If you don’t play smart…” “I can’t guarantee what might happen to them.” A deafening buzz filled my brain. In my past life, I died. My father stood outside this very office building, his hair turning completely white overnight. My mother clutched my death certificate, crying until she passed out. Because she was delirious with grief, she didn’t see the oncoming semi-truck. I ground my back teeth together. “And if I refuse?” Richard stood up straight, offering a deeply smug smile. “Refuse? It won’t do you any good.” “You’ve been screaming about catching the mistress—but can you?” “You don’t even know who she is.” “So if I say it’s you, who’s going to prove otherwise?” The suffocating resentment of seven days of overtime, the hatred from my tragic past death, and the pure disgust I felt for Richard all rushed to my head. Suddenly, the fragmented pieces of my two lives clicked together perfectly in my mind. It all made sense! I abruptly stood up from my chair. “Richard, I am so fucking done with you!” Richard was still smiling. “Chloe, don’t be a stubborn bitch.” I violently spun around and threw the conference room doors wide open. Everyone outside turned their heads to look. I sprinted into the lobby, shoving past dozens of recording smartphones. I threw myself toward Tara and screamed at the top of my lungs: “Tara—! I know who the mistress is!” 04 The moment the words hit the floor, the entire office went dead silent. Even the people secretly whispering clamped their mouths shut. Dozens of phones were pointed directly at me. Lily, standing at the back of the crowd, went pale very quickly, but she desperately tried to maintain her innocent facade. Richard followed me out of the conference room. The smug smile hadn’t completely faded from his face. He looked absolutely certain that I was just thrashing around in my death throes. Tara locked her eyes onto me. “Who is it?” I caught my breath. But I didn’t point a finger immediately. In my past life, I was too anxious. The more I tried to explain, the more it sounded like I was making excuses. This time, I couldn’t just throw out a name without proof. I took a step forward and smiled. “If I just say the name, people might not believe me.” “So let’s let the facts speak for themselves.” Tara frowned. “What facts?” I raised my hand, gesturing to the crowd of onlookers. “Everyone, please think about it.” “Who was the very first person to bring up my holiday overtime?” “Who was so strangely obsessed with the exact hotel I was staying at?” “And who knew exactly how many hours I was on the phone with Mr. Vance in the middle of the night?” I paused, emphasizing every word: “Isn’t somebody’s mask slipping a little too much?” The office was quiet for a few seconds. Then, several pairs of eyes slowly shifted toward Lily. Lily’s eyes instantly turned red. “Chloe, what do you mean by that?” “I just stated what I knew, why are you targeting me?” As she spoke, fat tears rolled down her chin. “I really didn’t mean to hurt you, I was actually worried about you, I was afraid you were making a terrible mistake.” I laughed out loud. “Worried about me?” “I was working so hard I was practically coughing up blood every day. Who has the energy to worry about someone else?” “You knew where I was staying, you knew exactly what time I was making calls, and you knew exactly what I was discussing with Richard.” I took a step closer to her. “My own mother doesn’t pay that much attention to my schedule.” “Lily, are you secretly in love with me, or are you trying to set me up?” Someone in the crowd gasped. Lily bit her lip, tears clinging to her chin, making her look incredibly pitiful. “Chloe, I know you’re scared right now, but you can’t just drag me down with you.” “I’m not like you, I’m not good at twisting words.” “But you can’t just frame me!” What a pristine white lotus. Richard immediately intervened. “Enough, Chloe.” His voice turned cold, playing the authoritative CEO perfectly. “Lily is just a young girl, don’t project your own issues onto her.” I aggressively whipped my head to look at him. “Just a young girl?” “When the entire company was putting me on trial two minutes ago, why didn’t you mention that I’m also a young girl?” “Why does your heart bleed so much the second it comes to Lily?” Tara turned her head to stare at Richard. Richard’s face stiffened for a second. Acting like she had been pushed to her absolute limit, Lily suddenly pulled out her phone. “Chloe, since you’re forcing my hand, I have no choice but to show the evidence.” Crying, she opened her photo gallery. “Tara, I really didn’t want to hurt her.” “But she refuses to confess, and I can’t stand to watch her lie to you.” She held up the phone screen. Several chat screenshots were clearly displayed. The profile picture was my official company ID photo. The contact name was [Chloe]. In the chat, “I” had sent Richard the following messages: [I’m waiting for you at the hotel.] [Tara won’t find out, right?] [I got the room key.] The colleagues who had been silently watching the drama instantly erupted. “Wow, that’s the final nail in the coffin.” “They were literally talking about the room key, how do you explain that?” “Was her crying about overtime earlier just a massive act?” Tara’s breathing grew visibly heavier. Richard sighed, putting on a better performance than Lily. “Chloe, I’ve already ended things with you.” “Why do you insist on dragging everyone else down with you?” I stared at the screenshots. And suddenly, I smiled. My smile grew wider and louder. “Okay.” Lily’s sobbing paused. I turned to Tara. “The screenshots say I got the room key. Let’s check the hotel’s keycard logs.” “The screenshots say I was waiting at the hotel. Let’s pull the hotel’s hallway security footage.” “The screenshots say I sent those messages. Confiscate my phone, confiscate Richard’s phone, and let’s check them right here, right now.” The color drained from both of their faces. They clearly hadn’t expected me to pursue this so relentlessly. I slammed my phone down hard onto a desk. “I’m the one being falsely accused, and I’m perfectly willing to hand over my phone.” “You two are supposedly innocent—what are you afraid of?”
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