Chapter 3

The next two weeks were a quiet, simmering hell. Chloe was silent online, but her hostility found new, more insidious outlets. My favorite pen went missing from my desk, only to be found snapped in half in the breakroom trash can. A crucial file for the new museum project, a project I was leading, was mysteriously corrupted the night before a major presentation. I had a backup, but the incident rattled me, forcing me to work through the night to ensure everything was perfect. I couldn't prove it was Chloe, but I knew.

It was a campaign of a thousand tiny cuts, designed to make me look incompetent and unstable.

David, when I told him, just sighed. "Sarah, you can' t blame everything on Chloe. Maybe you just misplaced the pen. Computers crash sometimes. You' re under a lot of pressure. Don't get paranoid."

His dismissals were worse than the sabotage itself. He was actively choosing to be blind.

The escalation came on a Friday afternoon. I was leaving the office, exhausted and ready for the weekend, when I saw her waiting for me by the building' s main entrance. Chloe wasn't alone. She had two of her friends with her, both of them looking at me with the same sneering expression.

"There she is," Chloe said, her voice loud enough for a group of my colleagues leaving behind me to hear. "The little office slut."

My heart hammered against my ribs. I tried to walk past them, to ignore her, but one of her friends stepped in my way.

"Where do you think you' re going?" she asked.

Chloe held up her phone, the screen already glowing. She was livestreaming.

"Hey, everyone," Chloe said to her phone's camera, her voice sickly sweet. "I'm here with Sarah Miller, the architect who thinks her job is to steal other women's fiancés. We're just having a little chat."

I felt a surge of cold fury. "Get out of my way, Chloe. You' re harassing me."

"Harassing you?" she laughed, a high, ugly sound. "I' m just protecting what's mine. You slithered your way into David' s company, into his life. Did you really think I wouldn't do anything about it?"

She stepped closer, her face inches from mine. "You're nothing. You're an orphan my fiancé's parents took pity on. You have nothing that he didn't give you. That job, that fancy apartment... it' s all because of him. And he belongs to me."

The small crowd of onlookers was growing. People were stopping, pulling out their own phones. I was a spectacle.

"You're pathetic," I said, my voice shaking with rage. "This has nothing to do with David and me. This is about you. You're insecure and cruel."

Her face twisted in fury. Before I could react, she lunged forward. Her friends grabbed my arms, holding me in place. Chloe slapped me hard across the face. The sting was sharp, shocking. My head snapped to the side.

"That's for trying to turn him against me," she spat.

Then she grabbed for my purse. I struggled, but the two women holding me were strong. Chloe ripped the purse from my shoulder, the strap breaking. She dumped its contents onto the dirty sidewalk-my wallet, my keys, my lipstick, a book of design sketches.

"Let' s see what a little homewrecker keeps in her bag," she said, still filming. She kicked my wallet with the toe of her expensive-looking shoe. Coins and cards scattered across the concrete.

Someone in the crowd gasped, but no one moved to help. They just watched, their phones held up like a wall between us. My pain and humiliation were their afternoon entertainment.

Chloe picked up my sketchbook. She flipped through the pages, a cruel smile on her face. These were my private ideas, the raw beginnings of my work.

"Look at this," she said to her audience. "She thinks she's some kind of genius. You know, David told me he' s the one who really comes up with all the good ideas. You just draw them."

It was a lie, a vicious, calculated lie designed to tear down the one thing I had that was truly mine: my talent.

"That's a lie!" I shouted, struggling against the hands that held me. "You' re a monster."

"And you' re a thief," she sneered, her voice dropping to a low, menacing whisper meant only for me. "You want to take his love, you want to take his parents' money. You want to take everything. But you won' t. After we are married, everything that belongs to the Millers will belong to us. You will get nothing."

There it was. The truth, ugly and raw. It was about the inheritance. It was about money and position. I wasn' t just a rival for David' s affection in her twisted mind; I was a threat to her financial future.

"You will never be a part of this family," I said, my voice filled with a loathing that surprised me. "They will see you for what you are."

Her smile vanished. "Shut up."

She slapped me again, harder this time. My lip split, and I tasted the metallic tang of blood. The physical pain was sharp, but the pain of the public humiliation, of the utter helplessness, was a deeper wound. I was being assaulted in broad daylight, in front of my workplace, and no one was stopping it.