Chapter 4

"He's here to support me, you monster," Chloe spat, gesturing vaguely towards Jake, who was now trying to look busy at his desk. "Something you clearly don't understand."

"Support you? Or move into my job?" I asked, my eyes fixed on hers.

Jake looked up, a flicker of panic in his eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just here for Chloe." He sounded weak, unconvincing.

"Stop it, Ethan! You're making a scene," Chloe snapped. "You're just jealous and insecure. Your mind is disgusting, twisting a situation of grief into something ugly."

She took a deep breath, puffing up her chest as if preparing to make a royal decree.

"As a matter of fact, since you can't seem to separate your personal feelings from your professional responsibilities, I'm making a change."

She raised her voice so the nearby employees could hear.

"Jake will be taking over as the lead on the Quantum Innovations project. He has a fresh perspective. Ethan, you will report to him from now on. You can handle the backend support."

A collective gasp went through the nearby cubicles. I was being demoted. Publicly humiliated. Replaced by her ex-boyfriend, a man with zero technical experience in our field.

"You're making him my boss?" I asked, a strange sense of calm washing over me. This was so absurd it was almost funny. "On what grounds? He doesn't know the first thing about our architecture."

"He's a quick learner," Chloe said dismissively. "And unlike you, his head is in the game. He's here to work, not to have a temper tantrum."

Jake, to his credit, at least tried to look humble. "Chloe, maybe this isn't a good idea. I mean, Ethan is the CTO. I don't want to step on any toes." It was a pathetic attempt at playing the good guy, a classic move of wanting the prize without looking like a thief.

"Nonsense," Chloe said, waving his false modesty away. "You deserve this opportunity. Ethan needs to learn a lesson about loyalty. After all he put you through, Jake, this is the least I can do."

She was weaponizing my past actions against me. The "all he put you through" was me asking her not to spend every weekend with her ex-boyfriend. Now, she was framing that as an act of cruelty on my part, for which Jake deserved professional compensation.

"You'll do as I say, Ethan," she said, her voice dropping to a threatening whisper. "Or have you forgotten that I was the one who gave you this career in the first place?"

The final nail in the coffin. She truly believed she had created me, that my skills and hard work were a gift from her. The delusion was complete.