My CEO Boyfriend Kept Me Secret and Gave My Promotion Away novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Badge

At noon the sixth floor was full.

People stood between the desks and along the windows, and a few had brought their lunches and forgot to eat them.

The kitchen table by the elevators was clean.

Somebody had scrubbed it since the promotion, but a faint square of pale frosting still showed in the grain, right where I had set my badge down less than two weeks ago.

I stood beside it.

Kylie came out of the stairwell alone.

She had her badge in her hand, the one with the gold stripe that opened the top floor.

Forty people watched her cross the carpet.

Nobody whispered.

"Thank you for coming," I said.

"You asked."

"I did."

She stopped in front of me with the lanyard wound around her fist.

I had planned this on the drive over, and then I had thrown the plan out, because I didn't want a speech from her or from me.

I only wanted it done in the open, the way it had been done to me.

"Here's what's true," I said, loud enough to carry. "The Director of Client Strategy title was mine to take in March. It wasn't mine because three emails from Porter told HR to keep it from me. It went to Kylie because he picked her."

The floor shifted.

Kylie kept her eyes on me.

"That's not Kylie's crime," I said. "Her crime is the photo."

I took out my phone and opened the company group chat.

"That day somebody posted a picture of me on a curb outside this building, with a caption, and forty people laughed. Kylie, you wrote the caption. I'd like you to post again."

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