Chapter 3

Evander clearly hadn't taken my warning seriously.

Not only did he fail to return the money, he leveraged his connections on Wall Street to freeze a portion of the stock options under my name, and withheld my final month's salary under the pretext of "incomplete offboarding procedures."

He even had HR send me an email demanding that I attend tonight's industry gala at a rooftop club in Manhattan to complete the handover for the final merger case—or else he would sue me for breach of contract.

He wanted to force me to bow my head.

He wanted me to beg for his forgiveness in front of all of New York's business elite.

At eight o'clock that evening, dressed in a dark red silk blouse, I pushed open the doors to the club.

The ballroom was a sea of glittering gowns and clinking glasses.

Evander stood at the center of a crowd, surrounded by Wall Street heavyweights, a glass of champagne in hand.

Mallory clung to his arm.

The moment I appeared, whispers rippled through the crowd.

"How does she still have the nerve to show up? Wasn't she thrown out by Evander?"

"I heard she's insatiably greedy, took a fortune from the CEO, and now she's still trying to cling on."

"Just a canary who can't survive without her sugar daddy."

Mallory caught sight of me and lightly patted Evander's arm.

"Evander, don't be upset. Veronica's just at the end of her rope, that's why she's acting like this. It's my fault, really—if I hadn't come along, maybe she could've kept living comfortably off you... It's actually kind of pitiful, when you think about it."

Her words drew several clueless society wives to look at me with disdain.

Only then did she pull Evander along, feigning generosity as she walked over, even flashing me a faintly sympathetic smile.

"Veronica, I'm really glad you came."

"I know this must be hard for you, but the company handover is important—otherwise it puts everyone in a difficult position... Just hand over the documents and go home to rest. In your current state, you really shouldn't be in a place with this many people."

"Veronica, if you apologize to Mallory right now, in front of everyone, and admit that you were being unreasonable before, I might consider dropping the breach of contract lawsuit against you. I could even throw in a severance package." Evander looked down at me, a mocking smile playing on his lips.

Staring at his smug, self-righteous face, I suddenly found the whole thing utterly absurd.

I didn't pull out any handover documents. Instead, I reached into my bag and produced a thick stack of audit reports, stamped with the seal of a top accounting firm, and slapped them down on the champagne tower table beside us.

"Since everyone's here, let's settle the accounts properly."

"Everyone out there says I'm a gold-digger, that I clawed my way up using him. So let's take a look at this financial audit report, prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers."

I flipped to the first page, pointing at the figures, my gaze sweeping across every person in the room.

"Over the past five years, as Chief Secretary, I closed seventeen merger and acquisition deals, generating over $200 million in net profit directly for Evander Group."

"And the salary he paid me was twenty percent below the industry average."

I sneered, watching the color drain slightly from Evander's face.

"Now let's look at the personal accounts. Over these five years, every one of his bespoke suits, the maintenance fees for his private yacht, even the breakup payouts he gave to his various ex-girlfriends—all of it was covered by my own salary and bonuses."

"So if we're really doing the math, it's not me who's been leeching off him. It's you, Mr. Sterling, who's been bleeding me dry this entire time!"

The ballroom fell into dead silence.

Everyone stared, stunned, at the red-stamped report on the table.

"Veronica... why are you doing this? I know you're going through a hard time right now, but you can't just fabricate terrifying numbers to slander Evander because you're bitter. Cold, hard reports like these—anyone could pay someone to fake them, couldn't they?"

As she spoke, she even reached up to wipe away tears that weren't actually there.

"If I were really that scheming, do you think he'd have been able to drain the last $500,000 out of my account?"

I stepped closer to Evander.

"Evander, you keep calling me a gold-digger. But the truth is, not only did you exploit five years of my labor for free, you shamelessly misappropriated my mom's life-saving money to please this useless woman who's good for nothing but spending!"