Chapter 3

At noon when I returned to the office, everyone in the tech department was missing except me.

I didn't bother wondering what they were doing but plugged in my USB drive and started working on the project.

It wasn't until nearly quitting time that they all shuffled back in, pushing and shoving each other.

Lily walked over to my desk nonchalantly and tapped on it.

"Hazel, you finished what I assigned you, right?"

Before I could answer, she looked at me with exaggerated surprise.

"You didn't spend the whole afternoon doing nothing, did you?"

"What's this on your computer screen? This isn't one of our company's projects at all."

Before I could respond, she reached forward and yanked out my USB drive.

"Doing other work on company time, and who knows which company it's even for."

"I think you're a spy sent by another company."

"If you want your USB drive back and don't want others to know about this, hand over that fifty thousand."

Watching her smooth sequence of actions, I understood.

She had intended to deliberately ignore me, then threaten me under the pretense that I wasn't working during office hours.

She just hadn't expected to stumble upon my project content.

I said coldly, "Return the USB drive to me now, and there's still room to salvage this."

Lily burst into laughter after hearing this, her face full of disdain.

"Now you're threatening me?"

"I'm giving you three days to pay up, or pack your things and leave."

After saying this, without waiting for my reaction, she pressed the shutdown button on my computer.

All the data I hadn't saved yet vanished.

My chest heated with anger.

I stood up and looked directly into her eyes.

"First, I have no obligation to pay that money. Second, you made me lose this afternoon's work data.

If anyone should be compensating anyone, it's you compensating me."

Lily's eyes looked like they were about to shoot fire.

She immediately called HR.

"This intern is completely out of control! Not only does she owe me fifty thousand and refuse to pay, she keeps talking back in front of everyone."

"Fire this intern immediately!"

The person on the other end was silent for a moment, then spoke with some confusion.

"Intern? We haven't had any interns join the company recently."

The call was on speakerphone, and everyone present froze in place.

Someone nearby seemed to suddenly realize something and grabbed Lily in panic.

"She's not that tech expert the company invited, is she..."

Lily's face instantly went pale, her lips trembling slightly.

The person on the other end of the line continued.

"Probably not. If it were that expert, they would've already told me to open the door to that office."

Hearing this, the group slowly relaxed.

"So she's just some useless person who got in through connections. Just delete this Hazel Matthews's information from the system. If there's a problem, it's on me."

"In all my years as supervisor, what I hate most are people who use backdoor connections."

What they didn't know was that to keep me, Mr. Wilson had already entered my information into the system early on.

That was why HR didn't know about it.

Lily looked at me, her expression somewhat twisted.

"This is what happens when you go against me. I'm giving you two choices now.

Either give me the fifty thousand and I can pretend none of this happened.

Or tomorrow I'll make sure you can't even get through the company doors."

As the clock hand pointed to six, I picked up my bag and stood up.

"I won't be giving you that fifty thousand."

"But I'm warning you, don't lose that USB drive, or the consequences will be serious."

After saying that, ignoring her curses, I walked out the door.