[How shameless. Anyone with eyes can see that Alexia likes Caleb. What right does a mere employee have to interfere with the boss's private life?]
Even my work friend tried to talk sense into me.
[She's given the reward to Caleb twice in a row. Anyone can see they're together. Why are you trying to force your way in? Give it up. Alexia was never into you.]
When we got married, Alexia said that to fight the office culture of flattery and favoritism, we needed to keep our marriage a secret and avoid any appearance of favoritism.
But now, an intern like Caleb Foster was using her influence to turn the entire company into his personal fan club. And she did absolutely nothing about it.
Who she truly loved was obvious.
I sighed and texted my friend: [Yeah, I'm giving up. I'm leaving.]
My friend said he was glad to hear it.
Just as we were chatting, Alexia called. I meant to ignore it, but my thumb slipped and hit answer. Her cold, no-nonsense voice came through, "There's a mistake in a contract. Fix it. I need it now."
I looked at the contract she sent. No surprise—it was the one Caleb was responsible for.
She kept saying Caleb was a top-tier talent who would take the company far. But for all his overseas doctoral degree, he'd been here less than three months. He showed up late and left early every single day. Even the simplest tasks were riddled with mistakes. I was the one cleaning up his mess.
Fine, I did the work. But even the commission that should have gone to me—Alexia had it redirected to Caleb under the guise of a "subsidy."
Before, I bought her excuses. I believed her when she said promoting Caleb was good for the company. I told myself a peaceful marriage was more important. So I kept swallowing my pride.
But now that I saw through her real motives, I wasn't going to keep selling myself short.
"If he's such a talent, let him fix his own mistakes. Don't ask me. I'm busy."
Alexia was unhappy with my response. Her voice turned sharp.
"Caleb already apologized. What more do you want?"
I laughed coldly. "Was that an apology? Have you even read the comments?"
Caleb was clearly taking a dig at me. It was so obvious, but she pretended not to see it.
Alexia brushed it off. "I can't control what other people say. Besides, if you hadn't made a scene, I wouldn't have had to force Caleb to apologize, and people wouldn't be speculating. This is all because you're too jealous. What right do you have to get angry at me?"
She didn't care about the gossip because I was the one being mocked and put down.
When Caleb first arrived, people said he only got in through connections. Alexia heard about it and lost it. She personally demoted and docked the pay of every single employee who had spread rumors about Caleb. After that, no one dared say a word against him.
It wasn't that she didn't know how to protect people. I just wasn't worth protecting.
"I've already sent you the contract. If you refuse to fix it and the company loses money, you'll be the villain. Don't drag everyone else down because of your tantrum..."
Seeing that she was about to go on and on scolding me, I hung up without a word.
She was the one who proposed the reward. She was the one who backed out. So how was any of this my fault?
She was clearly favoring Caleb at every turn. I got upset and protested, so she promised to make it up to me with a public date.
But since we were keeping our marriage a secret, she suggested making the dinner an award for top performance. That way, even if coworkers saw us together, they wouldn't get the wrong idea.
We'd been sneaking around for seven years. I was used to it. I honestly thought her idea was pretty good. So I worked my tail off and secured the number-one spot again.
But she gave the reward to Caleb instead.
"Performance ranking isn't the only way to define a great employee. The 'most improved' award counts too. Caleb showed up on time every single day this month and clocked a full attendance record, so I'm giving him this reward as encouragement."
No one was surprised by the outcome. Thinking back to how hard I had worked, my coworkers looked at me like I was some kind of clown.
