Chapter 5

Chapter 5

That line of data was like a nail, driven straight into my brain.

I stared at the screen for a long time, until my eyes began to ache, before I slowly looked up at Qin Yanchuan.

“Do you have anything else to say?”

The atmosphere in the room froze instantly.

Standing to the side, a flash of relief crossed Xu Baiyan’s eyes, as if he had finally caught a rope that could drag both me and Qin Yanchuan down together.

Qin Yanchuan did not avoid my gaze.

“I do,” he said. “But not here.”

I let out a cold laugh. “What, is President Qin afraid of losing face?”

“I’m afraid that if you slap me right now, you might accidentally hit someone else.”

He actually knew I wanted to hit him.

I laughed out of pure anger and snapped the laptop shut. “Fine. Let’s find a place where I can slap you, then.”

At three in the morning, the entire office floor was empty, save for the emergency lights.

I followed Qin Yanchuan into the small conference room on the top floor. Once the door closed, the world around us fell into total silence.

An old file folder sat on the table, clearly prepared by him in advance.

“Open it,” he said.

I didn’t move. “You talk.”

Qin Yanchuan looked at me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as if he were searching for a way to explain things without making them look even uglier.

“Three years ago, a week before Nebula 1.0 launched, the Board of Directors demanded that the project be credited under the names of the company’s founding team,” he said. “The reason was simple: you lacked seniority. Having a newcomer as the core Project Lead didn’t make for a good story when seeking financing.”

I stared at him, my ears suddenly ringing.

“So you deleted my name?”

“Yes.”

He admitted it so quickly that my chest tightened with a dull ache.

“But I promised you back then that once the project stabilized, I would restore your credit and your equity.”

I burst out laughing.

“Restore it?”

“Qin Yanchuan, do you think a single ‘restore it later’ can just erase these past three years?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” I stepped toward him, forcing him back. “Do you have any idea what it felt like these past three years, sitting at the end of the table in every meeting, listening to people use my own proposals to tell me how to do my job? Do you know what it felt like to be unable to get promoted, unable to get projects, always feeling like I was just laboring for someone else?”

“You know.”

“Because you were the one who signed off on all of it.”

Qin Yanchuan didn’t flinch, letting me hurl every word at his face.

He stood under the light, his face a weary, almost exhausted pale.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been trying to compensate you for the past three years.”

“Compensate?” I was shaking with rage. “Raises, bonuses, and those hypocritical promises to ‘wait until the project is finished’-you call that compensation?”

“Then tell me, how should I make it up to you?”

This was the first time I had ever heard Qin Yanchuan speak in such a tone.

It wasn’t condescending, and he wasn’t barking orders; he truly sounded like he was at the end of his rope.

But I didn’t feel the slightest bit of pity.

“You shouldn’t have deleted it in the first place.” I looked at him. “Because what you deleted was never just a name on a project. It was every opportunity I had to move up during those years.”

Silence stretched through the conference room for a long time.

Finally, Qin Yanchuan pushed the file folder across the table to me.

“Inside are all the internal approval records, name change logs, and equity distribution memos regarding the Nebula Project over the last three years,” he said. “Including the ones I signed.”

My fingers paused.

“You’re giving this to me?”

“I’m not giving it to you,” he said softly. “I’m returning it.”

I opened the folder. The contents were even more chaotic than I had imagined.

There were meeting minutes from the Board of Directors suppressing project ownership, emails from Xu Baiyan interfering with the budget, several retracted applications for supplemental credit, and even an unsubmitted internal equity incentive list at the very end.

The first name on that list was Chen Ruoqi.

Approval Status: Rejected.

Reason for Rejection: Core project results must be attributed to Management for a unified narrative; fragmentation is inappropriate.

I stared at that piece of paper, suddenly struck by the absurdity of it all.

It turned out that during all those years when I thought I was “always one step short,” it wasn’t because I lacked ability.

It was because someone had removed the stairs long ago.

“Why are you only giving this to me now?”

Qin Yanchuan was silent for a moment before saying, “Because it wasn’t until these past two months that I confirmed Xu Baiyan was tampering with more than just credits and budgets.”

“He’s also been using your project to launder accounts.”

I snapped my head up.

“What do you mean?”

“In the past two years, a portion of Nebula’s outsourcing costs, customer subsidies, and channel rebates have gone missing,” Qin Yanchuan explained. “I was halfway through my investigation when you were targeted.”

“So you fired me?”

A trace of embarrassment finally flickered in his eyes.

“I thought if I got you out first, you wouldn’t be dragged into this.”

“Qin Yanchuan, do you think you’re some kind of hero for ‘protecting’ people?”

“Do you know what the scariest thing about people like you is?”

“It’s not that you’re bad. It’s that you always think you have the right to make decisions for others.”

He said nothing.

I slammed the folder back onto the table, my voice cold and hard.

“This isn’t protection. This is a second betrayal.”