I pointed straight at Winona, and her eyes darted before tears spilled down her cheeks in perfect, pitiful streams.
"Supervisor Maxwell, just because Mr. Delgado showed me some appreciation, you had to set up this vicious trap? No wonder you gave me an impossible deadline to print all those documents. You couldn't deliver the software Mr. Delgado needed, and you were afraid the bid would fall through tomorrow, so you wanted me to take the fall! You'd really go this far just to keep your claws in Mr. Delgado?"
The others piled on immediately.
"I heard Mr. Delgado's been fed up with the tech department for a whole year over that bottleneck they can't crack. This woman's slick, dragging Winona down to cover her own failures!"
"So it didn't even matter if the printouts were gibberish. She just needed to dump an impossible task on Winona so she'd have someone to blame!"
"Absolutely vile. No wonder she tried to sleep her way to the top. She knew all along she was incompetent!"
Philip's gaze cut like a blade. He shoved me hard, and I fell into the pile of scattered documents on the floor.
"You really went out of your way to set Winona up, didn't you? I was wondering why you volunteered to handle the technical side and then went radio silent for so long. Turns out you were too busy scheming against her! Apologize to Winona right now, or don't bother showing your face in this company again!"
What he'd conveniently forgotten was that back when the company was just starting out and couldn't afford to hire enough staff, I used to come in on my own time to fill every role imaginable, including printing hundreds of documents in an hour. That had always been the baseline he expected of me.
But when it was Winona, suddenly the same task became deliberate harassment.
A bitter smile twisted my lips. I got to my feet, brushed the scraps of paper off my clothes, unclipped my badge, and dropped it on the floor. Then I gathered my things.
"Save your threats. I quit."
I printed one more document, signed it, and held it out to him.
"Sign this. I'll send you a mailing address."
The moment Philip saw the words Divorce Agreement at the top, he froze. Almost instinctively, his hand shot out and grabbed my arm as I turned to leave.
Everyone else assumed I'd handed him a resignation letter. A few of them actually clapped.
Only Winona noticed him holding onto me. Her expression darkened in an instant, and she rushed over to pry his arm away.
"Mr. Delgado, are you trying to drag Supervisor Maxwell back to apologize to me? If she wants to resign as her way of making amends, I suppose I could accept that..."
That snapped Philip out of it. Image-conscious as always, he latched onto her words with a quick nod.
"Exactly. How could I let a viper like her just walk away?"
He yanked me back and pinned me against the wall, his hands pressing down on my shoulders.
"All I need is to win that bid tomorrow, and I'll be the man who made history in this industry! How dare you try to walk out on me now?"
The ferocity in his eyes, the desperate refusal to let go. I couldn't tell whether he wanted to keep me for the bid or for whatever remained of a love that the years had ground down to nothing.
But I'd long since lost any interest in deciphering his motives. I stared back at him, hollow and spent.
"If you think I'm incompetent, and you resent me for getting in the way of your love life, why stop me from leaving?"
Philip's face went rigid. He glanced over his shoulder at Winona and overcorrected immediately.
"This is about your dereliction of duty and your bullying of a colleague. Don't drag me into it!"
Then he leaned close to my ear, his voice a low, venomous hiss.
"Is this because I've been too busy with work these past few months and things cooled off in the bedroom? You're going to blow up our entire lives over a bouquet of flowers?"
I shook my head, speechless, and shoved him away hard. The cardboard box in my arms tipped, and its contents scattered across the floor.
Winona snatched up the most conspicuous item, a photo album. She flipped it open, and a cold smirk spread across her face.
"No wonder Supervisor Maxwell was in such a rush to leave Delgado Corp. She realized Mr. Delgado was a lost cause, so she moved on to her next target!"
The others glanced at the open pages and joined in with jeering laughter.
"She didn't even get flowers from him today, so she figured that ship had sailed and started lining up the next one. Shameless! Looks like she's been hopping on trains left and right to throw herself at some new man. Absolutely disgusting!"
