Chapter 3
Bastian was ruthlessly cursed out and driven away.
I watched him freeze in place, his face turning an ugly shade of livid before he turned and slammed the door behind him. My heart didn't feel a single ripple of sorrow; instead, I just felt a wave of profound nausea. He was carving off my flesh to plug the hole his precious "bro" made, and in the end, he expected me to be the bigger person and apologize? I must have been blind for the last three years to fall for such a hypocritical, selfish man.
Now, the nail in the coffin was firmly set.
In the company's OA system, my title had been officially revoked, glaringly downgraded from "Creative Lead" to "Standard Coordinator". My bonus pool was locked, my approval authorities wiped clean. I was thoroughly reduced to a pariah bearing the sin of "compliance-breach losses."
As for my resignation, thanks to UK employment law and the company's own drawn-out, rogue protocols, no matter how badly I wanted to wash my hands of these scumbags immediately, I still had to endure this seven-day handover period before I could get my P45.
Fine. Seven days it was.
I’d just sit here and coldly watch how long they could keep up their facade of decency.
As it turned out, the very next day, God decided to step in and teach them a lesson right at this critical juncture.
A massive windfall—no, more accurately, a meteor disguised as a windfall—came crashing down right on the heads of Harbor&Co.
At 10:00 AM, the Senior Vice President of Europe for Vanguard, the company’s biggest top-tier luxury client, suddenly showed up at the office with his team.
Without any warning, they slapped a letter of intent for their annual flagship mega-show onto the table.
And the budget was a suffocating £200 million!
The moment this number was dropped, the entire company plunged into madness.
It’s worth noting that Vanguard's annual framework budget last year was a mere £10 million.
It was me, as the lead executive, who had dragged my team through the mud for four grueling years. I had lost countless hairs maximizing every tiny, insignificant project they gave us, putting out countless emergency fires on their behalf, just to painstakingly build that trust drop by drop.
This year, because Vanguard's internal revenue skyrocketed, the Big Boss signed off on a heavenly budget of £200 million!
This gigantic, dripping piece of meat instantly sent Charlotte into a frenzy of power and greed.
To her, this was a godsend.
Only yesterday, she had banished me to the cold palace with a hollow document; today, a £200 million mega-project fell from the sky. She desperately needed to swallow this massive order to prove to the whole company—and to her powerful, shareholder father—that even without a show-off thorn-in-the-side like Bella, Charlotte could still lead a team to capture top-tier industry resources!
She didn't care that this trust was built on four years of my blood and sweat. She just wanted to pluck the ripe fruit.
In the company’s massive Teams chat, Charlotte's bold, red announcements began flashing frantically.
She typed impassioned paragraphs, reading between the lines, it was a blatant show of force aimed directly at my face:
Charlotte: @Here Listen up, brothers! A £200 million annual mega-order! This is a historic moment for Harbor&Co! This proves that as long as the company abandons certain individuals' 'hero complex' and operates through compliant, standardized teamwork, we can still secure the absolute best resources in the industry! I will personally oversee to this project as the executive director. Whoever is willing to step up as the Lead Planner and pull off this massive heist with me will be eating filet mignon and drinking champagne by the end of the year!
It was beautifully phrased, as if following her meant picking up free gold bars off the street.
However, reality slapped her hard across the face.
Fifteen full minutes passed since the message went out. Aside from a few sycophantic admin staff—who knew absolutely nothing about business logistics—replying with "Boss is so badass!" fireworks emojis, the entire core project team was dead silent.
A group chat of hundreds of people was as quiet as a graveyard.
Nobody took the job. More accurately, nobody dared to take the job.
Was anyone sitting in that office an idiot? Everyone knew damn well that the sweeter Vanguard's money was, the more psychotic and hellish their demands would be!
Behind that £200 million budget lay excruciatingly precise high-society politics, insanely complex cross-border approvals, and nightmare-level physical execution.
In the past, these kinds of orders were held together entirely by me—the one who knew the ropes and was willing to be the safety net. I used my top-tier aesthetic storytelling to persuade the client, and my borderline psychopathic stress tolerance to stitch together supply chains that threatened to snap at any second.
And now? I had just fronted £24,000 of my own money to save a project overnight, only to be forced by Charlotte to swallow the total deficit in the name of "compliance." I pulled a failing project back to a passing grade with my bare hands, only to have my bonus completely obliterated.
With that bloody warning sitting right there in her cubicle preparing to leave, who in their right mind would dare take on a high-risk £200 million order where the slightest slip-up meant being slapped with "full accountability" and bankrupted?
Working yourself to the bone for a princess who only steals credit and plays dead to shift the blame? You might as well dig your own grave.
From 10:00 AM onwards, Charlotte began frantically summoning people into her transparent, private office.
Through the blinds, I sat in my corner and coldly watched as she called in senior planners, art directors, and execution leads one by one. Every single person walked in with a face like a funeral parlor, and a few minutes later, walked right back out shaking their heads like a rattle.
Some claimed they were juggling three projects and couldn't spare a second; others faked illnesses, claiming they'd been having heart palpitations and couldn't handle high pressure. Even the two male directors who usually called her "bro" the loudest didn't even dare make eye contact with her, backing away with forced, apologetic smiles.
And just like that, the confident morning bled away into the twilight of dusk.
As the hours ticked by, and Vanguard’s legal team grew closer to their absolute deadline for the [List of Operational Team and Direct Lead], Charlotte’s face crumbled at a visible speed.
She paced her office like an ant on a hot pan. Her initial arrogance in the group chat deteriorated entirely into furious, broken-down panic.
By 4:00 PM, she even stormed out into the open office area, slamming a folder onto a desk. She pointed right at the noses of the senior planners and screamed that they had "zero drive" and "didn't deserve their high salaries."
Yet, no matter how much she cursed, no matter how much pressure she applied—even when Bastian came out halfway to back her up—faced with a guaranteed, explosive suicide mission, not a single person stepped forward to take the fall for her.
7:00 PM.
Most of the office had already found excuses to slip away from the heavy, comical, low-pressure atmosphere.
I finished backing up four years’ worth of core materials to my personal hard drive and wiped the temporary files off my desktop.
Confirming everything was in order, I calmly closed my laptop, grabbed my bag, and prepared to leave right on time.
The seven-day countdown: one day down, six to go.
Just as I stood up and pushed my chair under the desk, the frantic clack-clack-clack of high heels echoed down the hallway, stopping dead right behind me.
I turned my head.
After agonizing for a full day, her previously flawless makeup was shiny with grease, and a layer of anxious sweat beaded on her forehead. Charlotte was standing by my desk, biting her lower lip so hard it was almost bleeding.
Her traditionally arrogant and smug face was now completely overwritten by extreme humiliation and unwilling struggle.
But the client's countdown was a guillotine hanging over her neck. No matter how much she hated bowing down, she knew that in this entire building, the only person capable of catching this £200 million order was me.
Her chest heaved heavily several times. After an agonizingly long mental struggle, the high-and-mighty heiress finally, painfully lowered her gaze to the very "sinner" she and the CEO had publicly humiliated just yesterday.
"Bella..." She tried her best to maintain a tone of granting a favor, but she clearly lacked the backbone for it. After holding it in for a long time, she awkwardly squeezed out a sentence through gritted teeth, "Do you... have a minute?"
