It looked like a simple Excel spreadsheet.
“Those three figures prompted us to launch an internal investigation,” he said. “And yesterday, we needed one final piece of evidence.”
Economy
“Is that why you fired me?”
“Yes.”
Silence filled the room.
He opened the folder.
“If the person stealing the money believed Emily no longer worked here—and also thought she had some sort of personal relationship with me—they might panic and assume I’d told her something. We wanted to see who would be the first to try deleting information from the system or making documents disappear.”
My heart was pounding.
“And the photo?”
Mr. Wilson smiled faintly.
“It was a decoy.”
At that moment, the company lawyer turned a laptop toward me.
Construction and Maintenance
At 2:17 a.m., someone had logged into the company system and attempted to delete hundreds of files.
When I saw the username, I froze.
Karen Matthews.
The same Karen who had mocked me that morning.
Office Services
But that wasn’t all.
Mr. Wilson placed another document in front of me.
“Emily, we didn’t actually fire you yesterday.”
“What?”
“We just needed everyone to believe we had.”
He signed the document and turned it toward me.
It was a new job offer.
Director of Internal Controls.
The salary was nearly double what I had been earning.
I couldn’t speak.
“Why me?”
