Chapter 1

The air in the conference room was thick with failure. Cold, stale air, the kind that gets trapped after a bad meeting.

I stood beside the head of the table, my hands clenched at my sides. Across from me, Sarah, my wife and the CEO of our company, stared at me. Her expression was hard, her eyes like polished stones.

Next to her, her assistant, Mark, was dabbing at his eyes with a tissue. He was putting on a great show.

"I just don' t understand how this could have happened, Alex," Sarah' s voice cut through the silence. It was sharp, every word a perfectly formed accusation. "This was our biggest potential client. The key to our IPO. And you lost them."

The client meeting was a disaster. The demo had failed spectacularly, freezing on the most critical slide. But it wasn' t my fault. I had checked the system a dozen times. Someone had tampered with it.

"Sarah, the code was fine this morning," I said, my voice low and steady. "I ran diagnostics right before the presentation."

Mark sniffled loudly.

"I saw you, Alex," he whimpered, not looking at me, but at Sarah. "You were... rushing. You looked so stressed. I told you I could help, but you just brushed me aside."

It was a blatant lie. He had offered to get coffee, nothing more. He' d hovered near my workstation, making small talk, distracting me. I see it now. It was all a setup.

"That' s not what happened," I said, looking directly at Sarah. "Mark, you know that' s not true."

Sarah slammed her hand flat on the mahogany table. The sound echoed in the quiet room.

"Enough, Alex! I don' t want to hear excuses."

She stood up, walking around the table until she was right in front of me. She was shorter than me, but right now, she seemed to tower over me with sheer force of will.

"Mark has been nothing but loyal. He' s been working day and night, picking up the slack you' ve left behind."

My stomach churned. The slack? I was the one who built the core of this company from nothing. The nights I spent coding, the weekends I sacrificed, they all meant nothing now.

"For the good of the company," she continued, her voice dropping to a dangerously calm level, "I' m making a change. Mark is the new head of the Tech Department. Effective immediately."

The words hit me harder than a physical blow. I looked past her at Mark, who was now looking at me with a pathetic, triumphant smirk. He had won.

The board members in the room shifted uncomfortably, their faces a mix of pity and corporate indifference. They wouldn't challenge her. She was the CEO, and the IPO was their golden ticket.

"And you, Alex," Sarah said, her voice devoid of any emotion, of any memory of the life we shared, "you' re fired."

The humiliation was a physical weight, pressing down on me. Fired. In front of everyone. By my own wife.

"You can' t be serious," I whispered.

"I am completely serious," she said. "Pack your personal belongings. Security will escort you out."

She turned away, dismissing me as if I were a stranger, an inconvenience. She put a comforting hand on Mark' s shoulder.

"Mark, I know this is a lot to take on, but I have faith in you. We need to get the project back on track immediately."

A few of the board members started to murmur. One of them, a man named Henderson, spoke up.

"Sarah, with all due respect, Alex is the architect of the entire system. How can Mark just... take over?"

Sarah smiled, a cold, confident expression.

"Alex will ensure a smooth transition. He will transfer all project files and proprietary data to Mark before he leaves."

She looked at me then, a clear command in her eyes. It wasn't a request. It was an order. The project was my life' s work. The core of it was built on an algorithm I had developed and patented myself, long before we even started the company.

"There' s one more thing," I said, my voice finding a strength I didn' t know it had.

Everyone looked at me.

"The project, the 'Phoenix' system... it runs on my proprietary algorithm. The one I hold the patent for."

A flicker of annoyance crossed Sarah' s face. She knew about the patent, but she always saw it as a formality, another asset that belonged to us, to the company.

"Don' t be difficult, Alex," she said. "You' ll sign the transfer agreement. It' s what' s best for the company."

"My algorithm is not a company asset," I stated clearly. "It' s licensed to the company, not owned by it. That license is tied to my employment."

Henderson looked alarmed. "Is this true, Sarah? Is our entire platform dependent on technology you don' t own?"

Sarah' s eyes narrowed at me, a silent threat passing between us. She was furious that I had brought this up in public.

"It' s a minor legal detail," she said dismissively to the board. "Alex will cooperate. He understands what' s at stake."

She turned her attention back to her new star employee.

"Mark," she said, her voice softening again. "I know you' ve been saying the user interface is clunky. You' re right. It needs a fresh perspective. But you' re not as familiar with the back-end code."

Mark put on a show of looking overwhelmed.

"I... I' ll do my best, Sarah. It' s just... Alex' s code is so complex. I' m not sure I can get up to speed before the new client demo next month."

It was a lie. He was a decent coder, but he was lazy and manipulative. He wanted me to do the work for him.

"Don' t worry," Sarah said, then looked at me. "Alex will stay for the rest of the day. He' ll walk you through everything you need to know."

The sheer audacity of it left me speechless. She fires me, publicly humiliates me, and then orders me to train my replacement, the weasel who sabotaged me. All while demanding I hand over my life's work.

I looked around the room. At the averted eyes of the board members. At Mark' s fake humility. At Sarah' s unyielding ambition. I was completely alone.

A cold calm settled over me. This wasn't just about a job anymore. This was about years of being taken for granted, of my love being treated as a tool for her success.

I felt something inside me break. Or maybe, something was finally being forged.

"Fine," I said. The word was quiet, but it carried the weight of a final decision.

I walked over to my laptop, which was still connected to the conference room monitor. Sarah thought she was getting my cooperation. She thought I was weak.

She followed me, standing too close.

"I know this is hard, Alex," she said in a low voice, a pathetic attempt at feigned sympathy. "But think of our future. The IPO will make us rich. This is just a temporary setback for you."

Her words were poison. She was still trying to manipulate me, using the future we were supposed to share as a bargaining chip.

I said nothing. My fingers moved over the keyboard, not training Mark, but preparing. I started a secure data wipe of everything on the company servers that wasn' t part of the core, licensed algorithm. My notes, my research, my development logs-all the things that made the system truly special, the things that weren't covered by the license.

Then, I turned back to her. A car was waiting for me outside, but it wasn't the one she had called. It was the one I had arranged. My brother was waiting.

My body felt heavy, exhausted from the years of emotional labor, of propping up her dream while mine were ignored.

"I' ll do what you asked," I said, my voice flat.

She nodded, satisfied. She thought she had won. As she turned to leave, she threw one last comment over her shoulder.

"And Alex? Don' t forget to drop your keys and ID badge at the front desk."

I watched her walk away, her arm around Mark. The perfect picture of a CEO and her loyal subordinate.

I looked at the car key in my hand. It wasn't for our shared car. It was for my old one, the one I kept in storage. I picked up my jacket.

I didn't turn back.