4: 4
04
I knelt from morning until noon.
It wasn't until someone downstairs warned that the business partners were arriving, and my mother worried it would hurt the company's image,
that she finally sent people to drag me back inside, half-fainting from the heat.
Partway through forcing the medicine down my throat, she shot me a look of disgust.
"Hurt Zoe again, and the lesson won't stop at this."
"Follow the rules of this family's wolf-pack culture, or you'll have hell to pay."
Then she told me to get out.
After all that, none of the other employees would meet my eyes.
Certain that I'd offended Zoe and fallen out of favor, they moved my desk right next to the trash cans.
They leaned into each other, whispering and sneering.
"Some outsider relative with no blood tie at all, actually thinking she could step in and take over. Fell flat, didn't she."
"Hehe, I hear her ambitions run deep. She wants to fight Miss Henson for favor and be the heir."
"Just what you'd expect from some backwater hole. Her parents probably all dropped dead, or how else would they raise a bitch like this!"
At that, my head snapped up.
I fixed my stare on the man who'd said that last line.
He flinched under my glare and quickly ducked his head, pretending to shuffle through some files.
Watching him, I edged over to my desk, one step at a time.
Looking at the several unfinished projects on it, and the market-trend report that was supposed to go to Zoe, my eyes darkened.
So that was why they'd let me off so easily.
Only because I was still useful.
Too bad. This time I had my own purpose too.
I lifted my hand, red and stinging from the sun, moved the mouse, and opened my email.
Just as I started uploading the files, someone traded a look in secret.
Coffee in hand, he strolled toward me and poured it down over my head.
I came back to myself and shot up out of my chair.
My knee slammed into the corner of the desk, the pain making me tremble.
But he only looked at the ruined files and covered his mouth, laughing.
"Didn't notice there was a person by the trash cans. Tsk, tsk. Now that it's all wet, you'll be redoing it for hours again, won't you."
Fighting through the pain, I recognized him as one of Zoe's little hangers-on.
I'd just gotten up to settle the score.
Then my mother, who had watched the whole thing, walked out and once again took their side without question, cursing me for stirring up trouble.
"What did I teach you? Wolf-pack culture. Be bigger than this. The loser bears the setbacks. That's how it should be."
This time, I didn't agree.
As if I'd heard the biggest joke in the world, I let out a cold laugh.
"Tell a lie enough times, and does it become the truth…"
The so-called avoiding suspicion was just an excuse so Zoe wouldn't be hurt.
The wolf-pack culture she was always going on about was just a way to strip more from me with a clear conscience.
"…Absolutely sickening."
Zoe came running out at once.
"How can you talk about Mom like that?"
My father arrived in time to catch that last line too, and his eyes went bloodshot with rage as he pressed his voice into a threat.
"Ungrateful girl, do you not want the Henson name anymore?"
Right then, the computer chimed with the notice that the file had uploaded successfully.
I snapped in half one of the dozen-odd cheap pens they'd handed out the first time I won a bid, and poured the ink into a water cup.
In front of everyone, I paid them back in kind and dumped the dirty water over Zoe's head.
I smiled. "This is what wolf-pack really looks like."
