My Ex Blacklisted Me, So I Built A Tech Empire To Crush Him

The day before our companys NASDAQ IPO bell-ringing ceremony, I was demoted.

I was with Ethan Vance from the very beginning. I wrote the first line of code in our dusty garage, all the way until the company reached a multi-billion dollar valuation.

Everyone assumed that the position of co-founder and future wife was rightfully mine, Aria Thorne.

But in the end, the woman standing next to Ethan for the press interview was Chloe Sterlinga well-connected airhead who couldn't even read a single line of code.

And I was dismissed with a casual, cold "reassignment notice."

Ethan even humiliated me in front of all the executives, warning me that my ambition was too big and that I didnt know how to play the submissive woman behind a successful man.

"Aria, youre too aggressive. The company only needs me. A woman should behave like a woman."

"Once you learn how to be soft and stop talking about stupid things like 'having both a career and love,' Ill consider making our relationship public."

It turned out that in his heart, I was never a partner who fought alongside him. I was just a pet waiting to be tamed.

Fine. Since that's how you feel, I'm leaving. Just don't regret it.

When I got the transfer notice and went to Ethan's office to confront him, Chloe was peeling a grape and feeding it to his mouth.

Seeing me walk in, she gasped dramatically, dropping the grape onto the carpet.

"Aria, why didn't you knock? You scared me to death."

Ethan looked at me, his face full of annoyance.

"Knocking before entering is basic workplace etiquette. Do I really need to teach you that?"

I ignored his criticism, walked over, and slammed the transfer order onto his desk.

"Explain this, Ethan."

"Why did you strip me of my Chief Technology Officer position and replace me with someone who can't even tell the difference between Java and Javascript?"

Ethan glanced at the document, leaning back in his leather chair with complete indifference.

"This is the boards decision."

"Our IPO roadshow is coming up. We need a spokesperson with a good image. Just look at yourself."

He looked me up and down, his eyes filled with undisguised distaste.

"You wear no makeup, and the dark circles under your eyes are huge. People would think we're going bankrupt if they saw you."

"Chloe is an Ivy League MBA. Shes elegant and has a great image. Shes the perfect face for the company."

I let out a cold, bitter laugh.

"We are a tech company, Ethan, not a beauty pageant."

"The core algorithm was written by my team after working day and night for three months. Do you have any idea how little sleep Ive had in the last hundred days?"

"And now, you want to hand over my life's work to a girl who only knows how to peel grapes?"

Chloe's eyes welled up with tears. She grabbed Ethan's sleeve and shook it gently.

"Ethan, babe, I told you I couldn't do it."

"Aria is a tech genius. She definitely looks down on someone like me who only does management."

"Maybe I should just leave. I don't want you two fighting because of me. It breaks my heart."

Ethan immediately held Chloe's hand, patting it comfortingly.

"Who said you have to leave? The one who should leave is the person who doesnt know the rules."

He turned to look at me, all warmth gone from his eyes.

"Aria, youre too aggressive."

"Chloe might not understand coding, but she knows how to make me relax. She knows how to support me."

"Unlike you. Every time we meet, you talk about bugs or server capacity. Its incredibly boring."

"Starting today, you are transferred to the Administration Department. Go to a spa, get your face done, and focus on preparing for pregnancy. That should be your priority."

"As for the Tech Department, they will report directly to Chloe from now on."

Employees walking by peered through the glass walls, whispering.

I, the tech director who once held absolute power in this company, was now being watched like a joke.

I took a deep breath and pointed at Chloe.

"What if I refuse?"

Ethan stood up and walked over to me.

"Aria, stop throwing a tantrum."

"Without my capital venture, the code you write is just useless text."

"Just be good and listen to me. The title of Mrs. Vance will always be yours."

"There's a celebration gala tonight. Go home, change into something decent, and dont embarrass me."

With that, he pulled a black card from his wallet and shoved it into my blazer pocket.

"Go buy a designer bag. Cheer up."

The gesture was exactly like throwing a bone to an upset pet.

Looking at the man who had once promised to split the world with me, I felt a deep, chilling sense of disgust.

At eight o'clock that night, the company's IPO celebration gala was held at the most expensive hotel in the city.

I didn't want to go, but Ethan sent me a warning on Snapchat.

"Some major investors specifically asked to see you tonight. If you dont show up, the headlines tomorrow will say you were fired in disgrace."

"Also, if you dare to skip this, your parents' VIP suite at the private clinic will be cleared out tonight. I don't think you want to see them sleeping in a public hospital hallway, do you?"

He always knew exactly how to squeeze my neck.

I pushed open the heavy doors of the grand ballroom.

Ethan stood in the center of the crowd, looking sharp in a custom tuxedo.

And next to him stood Chloe, wearing a black designer gown that matched my color, with a diamond necklace sparkling around her neck.

It was a piece from the latest season, worth a fortune.

In contrast, my faded, old dress looked cheap and ridiculous.

Someone spotted me and teased:

"Hey Ethan, your girl is here."

Ethan looked back at me, his brows instantly knitting into a tight knot.

"Why are you wearing that old rag? Didn't I give you the card?"

I walked over, keeping my head high.

"In the early days of our startup, you taught us to save money, Ethan. I thought I should practice what you preached."

Ethan choked on his words, glared at me, and turned back to drink with the investors.

"Back in the day, Ethan started from nothing. What a visionary!"

"Yes, Ethan's decision-making is top-tier in the industry."

Ethan boasted about his brilliance, talking endlessly about business models and market layouts. But he didn't mention a single word about the nights we spent coding until our eyes bled.

It was as if the success of this tech company had been achieved solely by his mouth.

Chloe, treated as the "greatest contributor," was surrounded by the crowd. Everyone praised her for being young, beautiful, and capable of leading a department.

I sat alone in a corner, looking at the expensive food, having absolutely no appetite.

Five years ago, Ethan and I were crammed into a tiny, damp basement.

On his birthday, we had only ten dollars left in our pockets.

We bought a cup of instant ramen and shared it.

Ethan gave me all the meat, swearing he would never let me suffer again.

Now, the instant ramen had turned into expensive lobsters, but the person he fed them to was someone else.

Chloe held a wine glass and walked over to me, swaying her hips.

"Aria, let me toast to you first."

"Thank you for your past contributions. You can safely leave the Tech Department to me now."

She smiled like an angel, but her hand "accidentally" slipped.

More than half a glass of red wine splashed onto my chest and skirt.

The cold liquid ran down my skin, leaving me in absolute humiliation.

"Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!"

Chloe screamed in panic, dropping her glass onto the floor, where it shattered.

Hearing the noise, Ethan rushed over immediately.

He grabbed Chloe's hand, checking it frantically.

"Did the glass cut you? Are you okay?"

Chloe shook her head, her eyes red.

"I'm fine... I just ruined Aria's dress..."

Ethan let out a sigh of relief. When he turned to look at me, his face was filled with impatience.

"Why are you so clumsy, Aria?"

"Chloe came to toast you out of respect. Even if you didn't want to accept it, you didn't have to scare her."

The ballroom fell silent. Everyone's eyes were locked onto the three of us.

Some looked with pity, some with amusement, and most were just enjoying the drama.

Someone mocked quietly, "Looks like the hierarchy between the old and the new is pretty clear."

To show off his authority in front of his business partners, Ethan pointed at the wine puddle and the broken glass on the floor.

"Aria, clean this up."

"Don't ruin everyone's night."

I looked at him, unable to believe my ears.

"What did you say?"

Ethan raised his voice.

"I said, clean it up. What, do you need me to do it myself?"

"You're in administration now. Keeping things clean is your job, isn't it?"

He wanted me to kneel on the floor and clean up the mess like a maid in front of everyone.

Looking at his cold face, I suddenly smiled.

I bent down and picked up an unopened bottle of red wine from the table.

"Sure. I'll clean it."

The moment the words left my mouth, I swung my arm and smashed the bottle of wine violently right at Ethan's feet.

"CRASH!"

The bottle exploded. The dark red liquid splashed all over Ethan's expensive trousers and custom leather shoes.

The entire room fell into a dead silence.

I patted the dust off my hands, turned around, and walked out.

Behind me, Ethan's furious roar echoed through the hall:

"Aria! Are you out of your mind?!"

"Once you walk out that door, don't expect another dime from me! I'm freezing your card right now!"

I didn't look back. The night breeze outside felt incredibly refreshing.

I went back to the apartment we shared.

I dragged out my dusty suitcase and began to pack.

Every single thing in this place made me sick.

Early the next morning, the door unlocked.

Ethan walked in, holding a bag of breakfast.

"You're awake? I bought your favorite pizza. Eat it while it's hot."

He set the food on the table, acting as if the humiliation from last night had never happened.

"I drank too much last night and said some harsh things. Don't take it personally."

He pulled a document from his briefcase and pushed it toward me.

"This is an equity transfer agreement. Just sign over your voting rights, and you can keep your dividends."

"I'll let you return to the company as Vice President, and I'll double your salary."

He looked at me with deep affection, reaching out to grasp my hand.

"Aria, I'm doing this to protect you. The business world is brutal, and the constant backstabbing isn't for you."

"You just need to look pretty. Let me do the hard work of making money. Isn't that great?"

Looking at the document, I almost laughed out loud.

If I gave up my voting rights, I would be completely shut out of the company.

By then, how the company ran and how my shares were diluted would be entirely up to him.

Just then, his phone on the table lit up.

It was an iMessage from "Chloe."

[Ethan, babe, did you handle that old hag yet?]

[As soon as we get her voting rights, we can kick her out completely. The company will be ours.]

So this was his "protection." It was a complete robbery.

He was terrified that my tech shares would threaten his absolute control over the company.

Looking at his hypocritical face, the last shred of my affection for him snapped.

I pulled my hand back, pretending to hesitate.

"This is a big deal. I need to think about it."

Seeing me soften, Ethan immediately smiled.

"Sure, I'll give you three days. I knew you'd be reasonable."

He thought he had tamed me. He patted my shoulder gently.

"I have meetings. I'll come back tonight to have dinner with you."

With that, he took his briefcase and left in a hurry.

He didn't even notice my feverish, red face or my constant coughing.

I went to the hospital alone.

The IV lounge was packed. I had to carry my own IV pole to the restroom, and the blood backflowed into the tube.

Just then, a high-pitched, sweet voice drifted from the next bed.

"Ethan, babe, my hand hurts so much. Blow on it."

I turned my head. Chloe was lying on a VIP bed with a tiny band-aid on her finger.

Ethan was holding her hand like it was a fragile glass doll, blowing gently on it with a worried face.

"There, there, it won't hurt anymore. I'll take you to buy a new Chanel bag later."

Chloe only had a tiny scratch on her finger.

Meanwhile, I had a 102-degree fever, and he was only scheming to steal my shares.

I took out my phone, snapped a photo of them, and sent it to my lawyer.

[Keep this as evidence of a broken engagement. Prepare the lawsuit to split our co-founded assets.]

[Also, contact a headhunter for me. I need a new job.]

Our companys core product, the "Aegis" system, was scheduled to launch today at 2:00 PM.

It was a system my team and I had spent six months building. It was also our killer weapon for the upcoming IPO roadshow.

But I knew that to steal the credit, Chloe had forced the tech team to put her name as the lead creator in the final version deploy.

At 1:00 PM, Ethans calls started flooding my phone like crazy.

The moment I picked up, his furious scream blasted through the speaker.

"Aria! Where the hell are you? Get back to the office right now!"

"The Aegis system has crashed completely! We're losing data rapidly, and the customer service line is exploding with complaints!"

My voice was dead calm. "I resigned. Chloe is the head of the system now."

"She doesn't know shit!"

Ethan blurted out. Realizing his slip, he quickly forced his voice down.

"Aria, stop playing games, I'm begging you."

"This launch is tied to tens of millions in funding. If we mess this up, the company is done."

"Come back and fix it. Ill give you whatever you want."

Half an hour later, I showed up at the company's server room.

Chloe was crying in front of the monitors, surrounded by a group of helpless engineers.

Seeing me, she looked as if she had found a savior, but she couldn't resist shifting the blame.

"Aria, did you leave some backdoor in the code before you left? Why did the system suddenly crash?"

I ignored her, sat down at the console, and let my fingers fly across the keyboard.

I pulled up the logs. Red error codes filled the screen.

"System deadlock," I said coldly.

"Someone changed the underlying concurrency logic without authorization, causing a massive database conflict."

I turned my head and stared at Chloe.

"The log shows this modification was made under your user credentials. Was that you?"

Chloes face turned pale. She stuttered, unable to speak.

Ethan rushed in, grabbing my shoulder.

"I don't care who did it! Just fix it! Now!"

I shook his hand off. "I can fix it, but Im not taking the blame."

"Whoever broke it pays the price."

Ethan froze. Then, he lowered his voice, his tone laced with heavy authority.

"Aria, this is not the time to be stubborn."

"Chloe is the public face of this project. If this is labeled as her mistake, the investors will lose all confidence in our management."

"Fix the bug, and then release a public statement."

"Say you made a mistake during the transition of duties, which caused the crash."

I looked at him, completely dumbfounded.

"You want me to take the fall for Chloe? You want me to ruin my own professional reputation by admitting to a rookie mistake?"

"Do you have any idea what that means for a Chief Technology Officer?"

Ethan interrupted me impatiently.

"Its just a reputation! Youre sacrificing for the company. I'll compensate you."

"If you take the blame, the previous equity transfer is off. I'll give you five million dollars in cash."

"But if you don't..."

He narrowed his eyes, his voice dripping with ice.

"I will sue you for leaking trade secrets. Ill make sure you can never get a job in this industry again."

"You know I have the power and the means to do it."

Looking at this unrecognizable man, the last trace of warmth in my heart died.

"Fine. I'll fix it."

I turned back to the screen, my fingers moving like a blur over the keyboard.

Ten minutes later, the warning lights turned green. The data began to restore.

Ethan let out a sigh of relief, the arrogant confidence returning to his face.

"I knew you'd make the right choice."

"PR has already drafted the statement. You just need to sign it."

He handed me a document. In black and white, it stated that I admitted to causing the crash due to my own negligence.

Chloe stopped crying, hiding behind Ethan, throwing me a smug, triumphant smirk.

I stood up, but I didn't take the paper.

Instead, I grabbed the connection cable on the desk and plugged it into my laptop.

"No need for a statement. Let's let everyone see what really happened."

The next second, the giant projector screen in the server room lit up.

It wasn't the system interface. It was a complete, unalterable log of the system backend.

And along with it, a freshly recovered Snapchat chat history that Chloe had tried to delete.

The screen clearly showed how Chloe, wanting to add her own "signature" to the code to take credit, had modified the parameters and crashed the entire system.

The bright red username "User: Chloe" burned on the screen like a massive slap to Ethans face.

The room erupted into chaos.

The investors and executives stared at the screen in disbelief.

Ethans smile froze, turning into a distorted grimace.

"Aria! What are you doing? Turn it off!"

He rushed forward to pull the power cord.

I was ready. I stepped aside, grabbed the mechanical keyboard from the desk, and smashed it violently into the server rack.

"BANG!"

I grabbed the microphone, my voice echoing through the entire office floor.

"I quit."

"Ethan, Chloe, you two pieces of trash can clean up your own mess!"

With that, I threw my pre-written resignation letter right into Ethans horrified, pale face.