“You came,” he said.
“Yes. Are you finally going to tell me what’s going on?”
He glanced around.
“First, we need to do something.”
Then he handed his phone to a woman walking nearby.
“Would you mind taking a photo of us?”
I stared at him in confusion.
“A photo?”
“Yes. Just stand next to me and smile.”
At that point, I was becoming uncomfortable.
If someone from the company saw us there, wha
t would they think?
Worse—what if the photo ended up somewhere?
But he stood beside me, placed his hand casually around my back, and we took one picture.
Then he took his phone back, looked at the photo, and said,
“Good.”
“And now?”
His only response was:
“Come to the office tomorrow at nine.”
“But you fired me.”
For the first time, he smiled.
“I know.”
I barely slept that night.
I felt as if I had somehow become part of a bizarre game.
The next morning, the moment I walked into the company building, I could tell something was wrong.
People were staring at me.
Some were whispering.
Karen even walked up to me with a cold smile.
“Well, now it makes sense why he always treated you differently.”
“What are you talking about?”
She simply pointed toward the director’s office.
When I walked closer, my heart dropped.
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There was no explanation beneath it.
Only the date.
My face started burning.
People had already made up all kinds of stories.
Some probably believed there was some kind of secret relationship between us.
And at that exact moment, Mr. Wilson opened the door.
“Emily, come in.”
Inside the office were five members of the company board, the chief financial officer, the company lawyer, and Mark.
I immediately realized this was much more serious than I had thought.
Mr. Wilson closed the door.
“Sit down.”
Then he placed a folder on the table.
“Three months ago, I noticed money disappearing from the company’s accounts.”
Mark went pale.
“At first, we thought it was an accounting error,” Mr. Wilson continued. “But then we realized someone inside the company had been creating fake contracts.”
I still didn’t understand what any of this had to do with me.
He turned toward me.
“Two weeks ago, you accidentally sent me a report that contained three numbers no one else had noticed.”
I remembered.
It had seemed like an ordinary Excel spreadsheet.
“Those three numbers led us to start an internal investigation,” he said. “And yesterday, we needed one final piece of evidence.”
“That’s why you fired me?”
“Yes.”
The room fell silent.
He opened the folder.
“If the person stealing the money believed Emily was no longer working here—and believed she had some kind of personal connection to me—they might panic and assume I had told her something. We wanted to see who would be the first person to try to wipe the system or remove documents.”
My heart was pounding.
“And the photo?”
Mr. Wilson smiled faintly.
“Bait.”
At that moment, the company lawyer turned a laptop toward me.
At 2:17 in the morning, someone had logged into the company system and attempted to delete hundreds of files.
When I saw the username, I froze.
Karen Matthews.
The same Karen who had mocked me that morning.
But that still wasn’t everything.
Mr. Wilson placed another document in front of me.
“Emily, we didn’t actually fire you yesterday.”
“What?”
“We only needed everyone to believe we had.”
He signed the document and turned it toward me.
It was a new job offer.
Head of Internal Controls.
The salary was almost double what I had been earning.
I couldn’t speak.
“Why me?”
He remained quiet for a moment.
“Because for the last five years, a lot of people here have worked hard to impress me. You were the only one who worked as if no one was watching.”
Then he looked toward the photo hanging on his office door.
“And that picture is staying there until the end of the day.”
I laughed.
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“People are thinking terrible things.”
Not because I’m standing beside my former director.
But because that was the day I lost my job…
and the next morning, I discovered that he hadn’t really fired me at all.
He had only removed me long enough to find out who he needed to protect the company from.
He laughed too.
“I know. But at noon, I’m going to tell them the truth.”
When I walked out of his office, the same people were staring at me again.
Only this time, I wasn’t embarrassed.
