The One Who Did Nothing

I was back at the Cavill Enterprises tech showcase. I knew Tristan would storm the stage crying plagiarism, but this time, I did nothing.
Last time, his accusation wiped out ten percent of Cavill's market value instantly. I was the one who stepped up, turned the scandal into a triumph, and boosted the company's reputation.
My reward? My fiancée Isabel framed me with fake evidence and had me imprisoned. The project I’d bled for was handed to Tristan on a silver platter.
I screamed, demanding to know why.
She looked at me with sickeningly sweet guilt. "Tristan came from nothing," she said. "He needs this chance. I’ll marry you when you get out."
I appealed from my cell until I was beaten to death by inmates.
This time, with no hero to save them, I watched as panic swept Isabel’s face. "Leo, do something!" she cried.

1
"Leo, did you hear me?"
I was still frozen, the ghost of suffocation still clawing at my throat. Isabel’s hand clamped down on my arm, her nails digging into my flesh, and the sharp pain finally yanked me back to the present.
The familiar scene of the launch event swam into focus, with Isabel’s frantic expression filling my vision.
"Leo, the data was leaked! We're being accused of plagiarism. You have a solution, right?" she pleaded, her voice a desperate hiss. "You managed this project from the ground up! You have to fix this!"
I ignored the chaos erupting around us and forcefully shook her hand off my arm. "I managed the timeline," I said, my voice cold as ice. "I don't know the first thing about the science. What could I possibly do?"
I let my gaze sweep across the panicked faces in the room. "Besides, only a handful of people had access to the final data. Who, exactly, was in a position to leak it and create this mess?"
Isabel's eyes darted away for a fraction of a second before she locked them back on me, her lower lip trembling. "Who leaked it doesn't matter right now! What matters is surviving this nightmare. The marketing department has been pushing this for three years! We have contracts signed, partnerships on the line! It's all turning to dust!"
She mumbled on, her body trembling uncontrollably. The polished smile she wore for the cameras was now a grotesque, frozen grimace, drawing worried stares from everyone nearby.
I watched her unravel, not with concern, but with a cruel, satisfying thrill.
On stage, Tristan was in his element, radiating passion and conviction as he laid out his "stolen" research. He looked every bit the rising star of the tech world, a stark contrast to the woman who was slowly losing her mind in the front row. Fate, it seemed, had a twisted sense of humor.
In my last life, when Tristan had pulled this same stunt, I was the one who charged the stage. I debated him for nearly an hour, point for point, until I finally produced the original experimental drafts, proving him a fraud. We didn't just avoid disaster; we ended up closing three more major deals that night because of the "drama."
But later, as the crowds cleared, Isabel had looked at me with pure disgust. "Tristan was giving the performance of his life, and you had to jump up there and turn it into a street brawl. Red in the face, shouting… you had no class at all, Leo."
A client had pulled me away before I could process her words, and I’d missed the simmering, intimate look she exchanged with Tristan. By the time my night was over, I found myself being sued by my own company for leaking proprietary data.
Isabel stood against me in court. She produced documents I’d never seen—forged agreements, falsified bank transfers—that sealed my fate.
When my appeals failed, she visited me in private.
"Leo," she'd whispered, her eyes wet with tears, "Tristan came from nothing. He needs this. Technically, I was the one who leaked the data. You'd go to prison for me, wouldn't you?" Her tone was casual, as if asking me to pick up groceries, but her eyes were filled with a terrifyingly convincing devotion. "Don't worry. The moment you get out, we'll get married."
"You can forget it," I’d spat back. "I'm not pleading guilty to anything."
Her expression had hardened instantly. She looked at me like I was an unruly child. Before I knew it, her security team had me bound and dragged away, claiming I was a flight risk attempting to flee the country. Just like that, I was in prison.
And to add insult to injury, she transferred ownership of every project I had ever worked on to Tristan’s name. My entire career, my life’s work, became a footnote in his story. A joke.
I refused to let it end like that. But my fight for justice ended with a shiv in a dark corner of the prison yard. It was only as I bled out that I learned the worst of it: my parents, trying to clear my name, had died in a "car accident."
Rage was the last thing I felt. White-hot, all-consuming rage. I had saved her company, and for a man she had known for less than three months, she had destroyed me and my entire family.
So now, without me to ride to the rescue, I wondered: did she still find Tristan so dazzling?
"Wait!" A shaky voice cut through the noise. "Tristan's accusation of plagiarism is baseless!"
I snapped back to the present. Isabel, her face pale as a sheet, was now on stage, dragging the lead researchers with her.
For a moment, panic flashed in Tristan's eyes, but he quickly replaced it with righteous fury. "Ms. Cavill! Are you going to lie to the very end? Every byte of that data, every single equation, came from my own two hands!" he boomed. "I have the original drafts right here! Your family's money can't buy my genius or my integrity!"
He theatrically slammed a stack of yellowed papers onto the lectern, covered in a frantic scrawl of equations that captivated the audience.
Isabel, speechless with fury, shoved one of her lead scientists forward. "Prove it! Prove to them this project was ours from the start!"
But it was a fool's errand. For efficiency, the project had been siloed. Each team worked on a separate module, completely ignorant of the others' work. They were no match for Tristan, who, armed with my complete dataset, could speak with flawless authority on every single detail. Within ten minutes, her experts were stammering, defeated.
The contrast was damning. A wave of murmurs and snickers rippled through the press corps.
"Cavill Enterprises is a joke. A three-year hype train for a stolen project. How embarrassing."
"They couldn't even hire a decent actor to defend them. Look at him, he can't answer a single question. I'm cringing."
"I heard they leveraged this project to secure massive new contracts. That's all going up in smoke now."
Camera flashes strobed across Tristan's face, fueling his performance. He was the crusader, the righteous victim. Isabel just stood there, trapped in the spotlight, her face shifting between shades of crimson and ghostly white. Her research team had already slunk off the stage, abandoning her completely.
Watching the beautiful disaster unfold, I felt a profound sense of release. Isabel and I had been inseparable since childhood, our engagement a forgone conclusion. I once believed that even if love wasn't there, two decades of history had to count for something. But she had stabbed me in the back without a moment's hesitation.
Her eyes found mine across the room, pleading. I could see the stubborn pride in her posture, the way her body trembled on the verge of collapse. The old Leo would have rushed to her side.
The new me simply gave her a slow, deliberate shake of my head, then stood up and walked out of the conference hall.
On the way home, the news was already breaking, painting Cavill Enterprises as the laughingstock of the tech industry. I watched their stock ticker plummet in real-time on my phone's screen, and without a second thought, I made a call.
"Hello, I need to speak with my asset manager. I want to freeze everything under my name. Yes, all of it. As soon as possible."
Just as I hung up, my phone rang again. It was Isabel. I let out a sigh and answered.
"Leo, honey, where are you?" Her voice was thick with unshed tears. "I need you. You're the only one who can save me now!"
"I'm on my way home," I said, my tone flat, offering zero comfort.
Her sobbing stopped for a beat, replaced by a surge of relief. "Okay! I'll meet you there! Wait for me! Don't you dare go anywhere!"
By the time I'd finished my arrangements and arrived home, Isabel was already waiting on the couch. Sensing this was my chance, I pretended to answer a text, but secretly started a video recording on my phone.
The moment she saw me, her impatient frown vanished, replaced by a dazzling smile. She jumped up, pulled me to the couch, and shoved a document into my hands.
"Honey, sign this," she said, her voice breathy. "You won't let me go down for this, will you?"
The words on top screamed at me in bold letters: CONFESSION AGREEMENT.
I stared at the document in silence. I waited, letting the silence stretch until the smile on Isabel's face began to crack. Then, I picked up the pen and signed my name.
Relief washed over her face, though she quickly replaced it with a mask of worried devotion. "Don't worry, Leo. This time, you're taking the fall for me, but I'll take care of everything. I'll get you the best lawyers. And the moment you get out, we'll get married!" She paused, adding, "And your parents, I'll look after them…"
"Don't," I cut in sharply at the mention of my parents.
She carefully folded the agreement, her expression still a perfect picture of concern. "I promise, this will stay between us. It won't be submitted until the hearing in three days."
Then, her tone shifted. "Leo… Cavill is in a really deep hole right now. I might need to… liquidate some of your assets to cover the losses."
"Do whatever you want." It was all frozen anyway. She could try, but she wouldn't get a dime.
Overjoyed, she lunged forward to hug me, but I sidestepped her embrace. I was done with the charade. "I'm exhausted," I said, faking a yawn. "I'm going to bed."
I turned to leave, but a man's voice called down from the top of the stairs.
"Bella, darling, I've got all my stuff set up!"
I looked up. It was Tristan. He was standing there in one of my silk robes, a smug grin plastered on his face as he looked at Isabel.
Isabel flinched, then quickly composed herself. "Tristan is getting swarmed by the press, Leo. It's not safe for him out there. I told him he could stay here for a while," she explained, her voice a little too high. "Besides, we need his cooperation to navigate the company through this. You understand, right?"
Tristan sauntered down the stairs and wrapped an arm around Isabel's waist, pulling her close. His eyes, fixed on me, were gleaming with open provocation. "Bella, I really don't like the decor in this house. I've already drawn up some new designs. We can start renovating tomorrow."
This house… we bought it with the first real paycheck we ever earned. We had furnished it piece by piece, every item holding a memory. It was supposed to be our sanctuary.
Isabel hesitated, glancing at me before shrugging. "You're right, it's outdated anyway. Whatever you want, Tristan."
The heavy scent of Tristan’s cologne was making me nauseous. I didn't want to watch them anymore. I turned and headed upstairs. But when I pushed open the bedroom door, I froze.
Everything was gone. All of my belongings had vanished. In their place were piles of luxury brand shopping bags and gadgets—all clearly belonging to a younger man. The large, framed engagement photo that hung above our bed was gone, replaced by a cheap, blown-up selfie of Isabel and Tristan. And tossed on the bed were several pieces of lingerie I had definitely never seen before. The air was thick with a cloying, unfamiliar scent.
I lifted my phone and silently recorded everything. Just as I pocketed it, I heard footsteps approaching.
"Leo, honey, your things are in the guest room," Isabel said from the hallway. "You don't need to sleep in the master…"
She trailed off as she saw the state of the room, her eyes widening in feigned surprise, as if she had no idea what Tristan had done. Her gaze flickered to where our engagement photo used to be, a flash of awkwardness crossing her face before she coated it with that same, suffocating affection.
"Leo, this was all Tristan's idea. I just… given that he's now the public face of the project, I thought it was best to…" Her voice dwindled under my dead, silent stare.
I let out a short, humorless laugh and gestured to the lingerie on the bed. "Was this his idea, too?"
Isabel's face went white. "Leo, I swear, I didn't know about this!" she insisted. "I've been running around all day trying to save the company! I just gave him a key! I had no idea he'd do all this! If you don't want him here, I'll tell him to leave right now!"
"Don't bother," I said coldly, my eyes fixed on the fresh, angry-red hickey on the side of her neck.
I went to the guest room. My belongings were dumped in a heap on the floor. Important company files were scattered about, some trampled with muddy footprints.
Isabel followed me, with Tristan trailing lazily behind her. He saw the mess and a flicker of triumph crossed his face before he draped himself over Isabel, the picture of remorse.
"Oh, Bella, I'm so sorry. I'm just terrible at organizing. I didn't mean to make such a mess of Leo's things," he cooed. "But you know, coming from a small town, I've never even seen stuff this fancy before. I honestly didn't know what to do with it."
His words melted her instantly. She hugged him back, stroking his hair. "It's okay, baby. I'll buy you new things. Leo's a good guy. He won't mind, will you, Leo?" The last part was less a question and more a threat.
I looked at the scattered files—all sensitive Cavill Enterprises business—and almost laughed. I walked to the door, and under Isabel’s wary gaze, I shut it in their faces.
I pulled out my phone and checked the video. Perfect. It had captured everything.
I couldn't show my hand just yet. Untangling my family's assets from Cavill Enterprises would take time. And I had to warn my parents, to make sure the tragedy of my past life would never be repeated.
Around two in the morning, a video call came through. It was Isabel.
I enabled screen recording before answering. The first thing I heard was her breathy, exaggerated moans. It was obvious what they were doing.
Then came Tristan's smug voice. "Does it turn you on, Bella? Knowing your fiancé is right next door?"
"He loves me so much," Isabel purred back. "He wouldn't say a thing even if he knew."
"You're a genius, getting him to take the fall for you like that. But… after he gets out of prison, are you really going to marry him? What about me?"
"Hush, baby," she crooned. "I was just saying that to keep him quiet. The moment he's behind bars, I'll be the one calling the shots out here…"
"Hehe, I knew you'd take care of me, Bella."
I had what I needed. I ended the call.
I immediately packaged the evidence and sent it to my parents with a detailed explanation, telling them to prepare for the storm. Once I knew they were on board, I pulled a worn business card from my wallet and dialed the number.
"Ava? It's Leo. I need your help. Can we meet?"

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