Consequences Come Home to Roost

1
After a three-year international assignment, I was back. My first stop? A new position at my fiancée’s company, at her own enthusiastic invitation.
A few days in, her male assistant, Tim, dropped a settlement agreement on my desk.
I frowned. “What’s this?”
He rolled his eyes. “You made the mess. You take responsibility. Simple as that.”
My first thought was that he’d mistaken me for someone else. “I just started,” I explained patiently. “I haven’t even been assigned to a project yet. How could I have messed anything up?”
When I made no move to sign, he slammed the papers down, crossed his arms, and loomed over me. “I said sign it. Cut the crap and stop wasting my time.”
I ignored him and dialed my fiancée, Chloe.
Her voice came through, sharp with impatience. “Tim got into a bit of trouble a couple of days ago. Just cover for him.”
Then came the warning. “And don’t you dare throw a tantrum. He’s the son of our chairwoman. If we don’t keep him happy, we’re both out on the street.”
I looked up at the arrogant peacock standing before me.
Funny. I didn’t remember my mother having another son.
...
I scanned the agreement. It was a full confession, stating that I had leaked core project data, causing catastrophic losses to the company, and that I accepted all legal and financial liability.
They were trying to bury me.
When I’d first returned, Chloe had been so eager for me to join her at Apex Corporation. With our wedding just around the corner, I’d seen it as a final chance to observe her character up close. I’d accepted the offer.
I never imagined she was just hiring me to be Tim’s scapegoat.
On the phone, Chloe must have realized her tone was too harsh, because it suddenly softened into a syrupy plea. “Ethan, darling, I’m just thinking about our future.”
“Tim is the chairwoman’s son,” she reasoned. “He can’t have a stain like this on his record. You’re different. You’re new. It’s expected that you’ll have to take a few hits for the team.”
“Chloe,” I cut in, my voice dangerously calm, “I suggest you think very carefully about what you’re doing.”
I hung up before she could reply.
Suddenly, Tim dumped a cup of ice water over my head. The ice-cold shock of it jolted through me, water sluicing down my hair and neck.
He sneered, his face a mask of contempt. “You, with your degree from some third-rate university overseas. If it weren’t for Chloe, you’d be digging through trash cans for a living. The company asks you to do one small thing, and you drag your feet. Let me tell you something: if you don’t sign this today, and our partners come after us, my mother will hear about it. And when she does, no one will be able to protect you.”
No one had ever dared to treat me with such disrespect. And to hear my Stanford MBA dismissed as a degree from a “third-rate university”…
A hot surge of anger flooded my veins. I grabbed the mug of coffee on my desk, still steaming hot, and without a second’s hesitation, hurled its contents straight into Tim’s face.
“Aaargh!” he shrieked, clutching his burning skin.
The office erupted. Gasps filled the air as my colleagues stared, their whispers instantly buzzing.
“Is that Chloe’s fiancé? The one who just got back? He’s got some nerve!”
“Picking a fight with Tim on his first week? He’s toast. What an idiot.”
“Oh, this is bad. This is really, really bad.”
The sheer audacity of it all… If I didn’t know for a fact that my parents were deeply in love and had never spent more than twenty-four hours apart, I might have actually suspected Tim was my mother’s illegitimate son.
But now that I was looking at him closely, his face scalded and contorted in pain, I felt a strange flicker of recognition.
Tim frantically dabbed at his face with a tissue, his body trembling with rage. “Ethan! Are you insane? Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”
“I know exactly what I’m doing,” I said, my voice like ice. “I’m teaching a lesson to someone who makes mistakes and then tries to run from the consequences.”
“You—! Do you know who I am?” he screeched.
I let out a cold laugh. “I don’t care who you are. To me, you’re nothing.”
Just then, Chloe stormed in. The moment she saw Tim’s pathetic state, her face went pale. She didn’t even glance at me, rushing straight to his side, cupping his face in her hands as she examined him with frantic concern.
“Tim, what happened? Are you okay?”
She cooed at him with a tenderness I’d never once received. Even when I was sick with a fever, all I ever got from her was a terse “drink some water.”
Tears welled in Tim’s eyes as he whined, “Chloe, my face… it hurts so much. I think he was trying to disfigure me…” He then buried his face in her shoulder, hugging her tightly.
Chloe froze for a second, but then a flicker of something… pleasure?… crossed her face. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close.
They looked less like colleagues and more like lovers.
She finally turned to me, her voice a furious shriek. “Ethan! Have you lost your mind? Apologize to Tim right now!”
I didn’t move. I just stared at her. “He threw water on me first, Chloe. Why should I be the one to apologize?”
Her fury intensified. She pointed a trembling finger at me. “You hurt him, and you have the audacity to say that? I must have been blind to ever fall for a vicious monster like you!”
Vicious? A monster?
It was clear then. In her mind, our relationship had become an inconvenience. A roadblock on her path to… whatever this was.
In that moment, I felt a strange mix of relief and regret.
Relief that I had never told her who I really was. When we were together, I’d only said my family was comfortably well-off, letting her believe I was just some generic trust-fund kid. It was that deception that allowed me to see her true colors.
And regret? Regret that, before I left the country, I had recommended her to my mother for the manager position at this very subsidiary. I had vouched for her, telling my mother she was talented and trustworthy.
The memory felt like a slap in the face.
“In that case, Chloe,” I said calmly, “we’re done.”
I stood up to leave, but she grabbed my arm, her eyes blazing. She snatched the settlement agreement from the desk. “Don’t you play these games with me, Ethan. You think I’m scared of you?”
“You assaulted Tim. This isn’t over. And you’re not leaving this building until you sign this document!”
The ice water from earlier must have seeped into my bones. A splitting headache was starting to build behind my eyes. I was too tired to argue anymore. I took the agreement from her hand.
In the signature line at the bottom, I scrawled a name and tossed the paper back at her feet.
Chloe was so stunned by my sudden compliance that she just stood there for a second, blinking. By the time she bent down to pick it up, I was already in the elevator.
“Ethan!” I heard her enraged roar just as the doors began to close. “You signed Tim’s name! Get back here, you bastard!”
The doors slid shut, sealing off her frantic screams.
The family car was already waiting downstairs. I sank into the back seat, exhausted, and leaned my head back. “Home, Marcus,” I told the driver.
Marcus Vance nodded, and the car pulled smoothly away from the curb.
My head was still throbbing. I closed my eyes and, before I knew it, I was asleep.
When I woke up, we weren’t at my house. We were parked in front of a five-star hotel.
Marcus had worked for my family for thirty years. He was more than an employee; I thought of him as an uncle, a man I trusted so completely that I could fall asleep in his car without a second thought.
But now, a cold dread coiled in my stomach.
“Marcus?” I asked, my voice tight. “I said to go home. Why are we here?”
He turned to look at me, and the respectful warmth he always wore was gone, replaced by a chilling malice.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, his voice flat. “But as an elder in this family, I feel it is my duty to teach you that a man must take responsibility for his mistakes.”
Looking at his face, I finally understood why Tim had seemed so familiar.
He was Marcus’s son.
My hand shot toward the phone in my pocket, but Marcus was faster. He lunged, snatching it from my grasp.
“Don’t bother, Young Master.”
I stared at him, my mind racing. “Marcus, does my mother know about this? Do you really think you’ll get away with it?”
He snorted. “The Chairwoman has been focused on overseas expansion for years. She barely sets foot in the country. You think she has time to worry about the petty squabbles of a subsidiary?” His eyes narrowed. “But you… you dared to hurt my son. For that, you will pay.”
He opened the door and yanked me out of the car. I struggled, but Marcus’s strength was shocking. He was like a man made of iron. As he dragged me, I managed to discreetly press the emergency button on my watch.
“What are you going to do?” I demanded, trying to buy time, to figure out a plan.
But he wasn't talking. He hauled me through the hotel lobby and shoved me into a private dining room.
The air was thick with smoke. A bloated, greasy-looking man sat at the head of the table, with Chloe laughing and pouring him a drink at his side.
Marcus bowed obsequiously to the man. “Mr. Cole, I’ve brought him as you requested.”
Tim, his face still red but now plastered with a triumphant smirk, stood up and pointed at me. “Mr. Cole! This is the man who leaked the project data. I brought him here personally to apologize!”
Mr. Cole. The name clicked. He was Richard Cole, the CEO of our biggest competitor, Stryker Industries. A man in his fifties with a reputation for… certain unsavory appetites.
“Haha, well done, Tim. Very thoughtful of you.” Cole put down his glass and looked me up and down, his eyes lingering. “So this is the leaker? Not bad looking.”
He rose and walked toward me. “Young man, do you have any idea how much money your little leak cost my company?”
“When did I leak any data?” I shot back.
Tim held up the settlement agreement. “Still playing dumb? Don’t forget, your signature is right here.”
I glanced at it. It was the same document. But where I had clearly written “Tim Vance,” my name, “Ethan Kim,” was now printed in its place.
“You forged this!”
“Forged?” Chloe scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ethan. You signed it yourself. We have it on camera.”
She was right. The office cameras would have caught the motion of me signing, but they wouldn’t have been able to see the name I’d actually written.
“You see, Mr. Cole?” Tim added, pouring fuel on the fire. “He’s completely unrepentant. He even threw hot coffee on me back at the office. Arrogant prick.”
Cole’s smile was predatory. “Well, young man, when you make a mistake, you have to face the consequences.” His gaze roamed over my body, making my skin crawl. “Mr. Kim is even more handsome in person than in the photos Chloe showed me,” he said, licking his lips.
Chloe immediately chimed in, practically bowing. “Mr. Cole, Ethan is just young and foolish. He made a terrible mistake, but you’re a magnanimous man. Please don’t hold it against him. Why don’t we let him have a few drinks with you tonight, as a personal apology?”
That bitch. She wasn’t just setting me up to take the fall. She was trying to serve me up on a platter to this disgusting old man.
Cole picked up a glass and stepped in front of me. “Listen, pretty boy. Smart people know when to cooperate. You keep me… entertained… tonight, and we can renegotiate the terms of that compensation.”
“In your dreams!” I shoved him away and made a break for the door.
Two massive bodyguards immediately blocked my path.
I turned back to Chloe, my voice raw with fury. “Chloe, are you even human? After three years together, you do this to me?”
She laughed, a cold, ugly sound. “Feelings? Compared to my career, feelings are worthless. Besides, you’re the one who committed corporate espionage. Stop trying to shift the blame.”
“I didn’t do it!”
“The evidence says otherwise. Are you going to keep lying?” She gestured to the bodyguards. “Bring him here.”
I fought with everything I had, but they were too strong, forcing me into a chair.
“Chloe, you have to listen to me!” I yelled, my last desperate card. “Tim lied to you! I’m Seraphina Kim’s son! I’m the real heir! If you do this, my mother will destroy you!”
The room went silent for a beat, then erupted in derisive laughter.
Chloe patted my cheek like I was a misbehaving child. “You’re telling me the Chairwoman is your mother? Please. I see Tim getting picked up in her private car every day. Who else gets that kind of treatment besides her own son?”
She stepped back, her face hardening. “You had your chance to do this the easy way. I guess you prefer the hard way.”
She grabbed my chin, picked up a glass of liquor, and started pouring it down my throat. “Drink!”
The cold liquid flooded my mouth. I thrashed my head, the alcohol spilling down my chin and soaking my shirt, but she didn’t stop. She grabbed another glass, and another. My mind grew foggy, my stomach churning violently.
“Enough!” I screamed, shoving her away with the last of my strength.
Undeterred, Chloe grabbed the entire bottle. “You won’t drink? Fine. We’ll pour.” She pried my mouth open.
The liquor burned like fire down my throat. The world began to spin.
Across the room, Mr. Cole watched, his eyes gleaming with a sick excitement. “Yes, yes. Much more interesting this way.”
I had no strength left to fight. Chloe pulled a key card from her pocket and handed it to Cole. “Room 1208, Mr. Cole. All prepared for you.”
“Haha, you’re a sharp one, Chloe,” he said, patting her shoulder. “You’ll go far.”
Hands grabbed me under my arms, dragging me toward the door. I tried to scream, to struggle, but the alcohol had turned my limbs to lead.
Despair washed over me like a black tide.
And then—BOOM!
The door to the room splintered inward, kicked off its hinges.
A familiar voice, roaring with a fury I had never heard before, echoed through the room: “Bastards! You touch my son, you’re dead!”

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