“I hid my identity and took a job at my husband’s company. At lunch, I lifted his black thermos and took one sip. His secretary exploded, slapped me across the face, and screamed, ‘How dare you drink my husband’s water?’

Khloe planted her hands on her hips, jabbing that stolen diamond ring inches from my face. She began screaming at the top of her lungs, using the most trashy, uneducated slang imaginable. She called me a filthy, bottom-feeding peasant, asking if I had a death wish for daring to touch the CEO’s personal property. She shrieked at a pitch so high it hurt the ears, screaming to the hundreds of watching employees that it was her husband’s water.

She yelled that a piece of trash like me had absolutely no right to even graze the outside of that thermos.

The entire cafeteria held its breath. Not a single person dared to utter a word in my defense. They looked at me with deep pity, mixed with absolute terror at the unquestionable authority of the CEO’s unofficial wife.

I stood up perfectly straight, slowly raising the back of my hand to wipe the streak of blood from the corner of my mouth. The physical pain didn’t register in my mind at all. On the contrary, this stinging slap was the perfect explosive catalyst I had been waiting for all morning. Khloe’s arrogance and sheer stupidity had reached its absolute zenith. She had just grabbed a shovel and dug her own grave in front of the entire corporate staff.

The crowd instinctively parted like the Red Sea, their eyes darting toward the elevators.

From the main entrance of the cafeteria, Preston was jogging toward us with urgent, wide strides. Having heard the crashing plates and his mistress’s screeching echoing down the hall, he was forced to appear as the head of the company to put out the fire and save face for the executive suite. Initially, Preston’s face wore a scowl, the look of an important executive annoyed by petty subordinate drama during his precious lunch hour. He marched authoritatively through the crowd, straight into the epicenter of the chaos.

But as his irritated gaze swept over the war zone—the shattered plates, the puddle of soup on the floor—and finally landed on the figure of the woman standing perfectly upright, holding her swelling red cheek, his feet slammed on the brakes as if he’d stepped on a landmine.

Every single drop of blood drained from Preston’s handsome face in a fraction of a millisecond. His complexion turned the ashen gray of a fresh corpse. His pupils shrank to pinpricks, glued in sheer, unadulterated horror to my emotionless face. The towering, dignified CEO instantly turned into a petrified stone statue in the middle of the room. His arms, hanging loosely by his sides, began to violently tremble, his fingers curling inward in catastrophic panic.

Khloe, completely blinded by her jealous rage and power trip, failed entirely to notice the horrifying transformation on her lover’s face. Seeing her sugar daddy arrive, she doubled down, playing the flawless role of the victim. She ran over, clung tightly to Preston’s arm, and suggestively rubbed her chest against his shoulder, pointing her manicured finger straight at me.

She continued to scream, demanding that Preston call security to drag this insolent temp out of the building immediately. She wailed and threw a tantrum, claiming I had deliberately humiliated her in front of everyone, that I was a piece of trash who didn’t know her place and had touched the CEO’s personal thermos just to get his attention.

But Preston was completely deaf to his mistress’s instigations. He didn’t answer her. He didn’t offer a single comforting gesture. He looked like a man who had the Grim Reaper’s icy fingers wrapped tightly around his throat. His mouth opened and closed repeatedly like a suffocating fish, but his vocal cords refused to produce a single syllable to salvage the situation.

His eyes, staring at me, were overflowing with absolute apocalyptic terror. He knew exactly who the woman in the cheap white shirt was. The woman his mistress had just slapped in front of him wasn’t some nameless temp. It was Clare Sterling, the woman holding the absolute controlling shares of the conglomerate, the true owner of the CEO chair he was currently keeping warm, and, most importantly, his lawful, dignified wife—the woman he firmly believed was safely at home in Atherton, arranging flowers and waiting for him for dinner.

I dropped my hand from my left cheek, revealing the stark crimson handprint branded into my pale skin. I held my head high, staring directly into the violently shaking depths of Preston’s eyes. The corner of my mouth slowly curled upward, forming a freezing, utterly contemptuous smile. That smile was a signed death warrant for his career, his reputation, and his life.