Chapter 2

After taking over the Manhattan Center Art Gallery project, I practically lived at the office.

Sloane had been suspiciously well-behaved lately. Aside from a few passive-aggressive snipes in the breakroom, she hadn't pulled any actual stunts.

I genuinely thought she had finally decided to focus on her work.

However, I severely underestimated just how vicious jealousy could make a person.

On the morning of the big pitch, I printed and hard-bound the final fifty-page proposal. Clutching the heavy stack to my chest, I headed toward the conference room to do a final tech run.

I had barely reached the corner of the hallway when Sloane sprang out from out of nowhere.

"Oh, Maeve! Good luck today!" she shrieked, throwing her arms wide and lunging at me.

The hallway was a tight squeeze, and the heavy stack of documents in my arms anchored me in place. I had nowhere to dodge.

In the split second before she slammed into me, I finally saw what she was gripping in her hand: a hard acrylic clipboard.

Those wide-open arms weren't going in for a hug at all. At the exact moment of physical contact, she swung her arm upward with vicious force.

The hard, sharp plastic edge of the clipboard struck like a blade, smashing directly into my brow bone and the corner of my eye.

An explosive spike of agonizing pain shot straight through my skull.

I screamed. The proposals scattered across the floor as I collapsed into a crouch, violently clutching my eye. Tears streamed out uncontrollably, and my vision instantly blurred into a haze of crimson.

"Maeve, what happened?!" Sloane dropped down, trying to grab my arm. "I just wanted to give you a good luck hug! Oh my god, you're bleeding!"

Hearing the commotion, coworkers rushed over from all directions.

"Don't touch me!" I shoved her hand away, fighting through the blinding pain. Blood seeped through my fingers, dripping onto my pristine white blouse. The sight was gruesome.

"I swear I didn't mean it, I was just so excited..." Sloane wailed to the onlookers, her voice trembling like she was the victim.

Julian burst out of the conference room.

The moment he saw my blood-covered face, his normally stoic expression turned entirely livid. He shoved past Sloane—who was still dabbing at fake tears—with such force that she stumbled backward and hit the wall.

Without so much as a second glance at her, Julian scooped me up into his arms. "I'm taking you to the ER!"

In the emergency room, the doctor examined my eye with grim focus.

"Your brow bone is lacerated; it's going to need three stitches. There is mild abrasion to the cornea, accompanied by a sudden spike in intraocular pressure caused by blunt force trauma. We need to bandage this immediately. Absolutely no bright lights for at least three days, and zero screen time. Otherwise, you're risking permanent vision damage."

My stomach dropped out from under me.

The pitch was at 2:00 PM. The big boss had flown in from corporate specifically to hear this presentation. And right now, I could barely even keep my good eye open.

Julian stood by my hospital bed, trying to comfort me. "I'll go back to the office and beg the Director for an extension."

"It's no use," I whispered. "Richard's schedule is booked out through next month. He's not going to delay a pitch for one employee."

Right as the words left my mouth, my phone buzzed.

It was a message in the company's main group chat.

Sloane had posted a selfie from inside the conference room, the projector screen glowing behind her.

[Sloane: It's absolutely tragic that Maeve had a sudden accident today. But for the honor of our department, I will carry forward our combined efforts and win this project! Pray for Maeve! ��]

Pure rage incinerated the oxygen in my lungs, threatening to burn away whatever sanity I had left.

She did it on purpose.

She knew my proposal was lightyears ahead of hers, so she resorted to this filthy tactic to destroy my chance to pitch. And the utter hypocrisy of her calling it our "combined efforts"—it made me sick.

Two hours later, Julian called from the office.

"Maeve, Sloane took the stage. Forty percent of the core structural concepts she pitched were plagiarized straight out of your rough drafts. She just wrapped them in her own flashy, superficial aesthetics. To save face for the department, the Director just let it happen."

"Did she get it?" I asked, my voice completely hollow.

"Richard was highly intrigued by those structural concepts. The Director announced on the spot that Sloane will act as the interim Project Lead for the gallery." Julian took a deep breath. "Maeve, this is bullshit."

I lay in the hospital bed, the thick gauze over my eye plunging my world into a dead, suffocating darkness. I gripped the bedsheets so hard my knuckles turned bone-white.

I had practically lived at the office. I had bled myself dry for this design. Yet in the end, with one meticulously calculated "hug," Sloane had reduced every last shred of my hard work to absolute nothingness.