Chapter 1: The Purge

The cardboard box under my arm dug into my ribs as I stared at the strip of masking tape with my name on it—still fresh, corners curling. The sharp scent of new paint clung to the office walls, barely masking the tang of burnt coffee from the break room. My hands shook as I tried not to drop the mug I’d just unpacked.

I’d barely taped my name to the door, and already I was packing it all up again. HR’s message was blunt—a cold slap at the end of a bad dream.

HR didn’t even bother to sugarcoat it:

“This was always a temporary arrangement. Mr. Grant asked us to bring you on, so we did.”

The HR rep—a sharp-tongued woman in her forties with acrylic nails clacking against her keyboard—didn’t look up from her laptop. I was just another chair to be wheeled away. My gut burned, humiliation twisting with rage.

Mr. Grant—my former boss. I’d given him over ten years of my life.

Even now, his name brought back a flood of late-night emails, those endless Monday stand-ups, and the hope I’d once felt. I remembered my first week: staying late to tweak a deck for him, thinking it mattered. Turns out, I’d been fooling myself all along.

That he’d set me up just to dodge my severance? That hurt more than the firing. Where I grew up in the Midwest, a handshake was supposed to mean something. Here, loyalty had an expiration date stamped right on it.

But he miscalculated. I’d make sure he paid for this.

The anger brewed, sharp and heavy. I hesitated in the doorway, glancing back at my empty desk—the sticky note with my goals for the quarter still stuck to the monitor. For a second, I remembered the hope I’d felt on day one. But I wasn’t going to let him walk away clean.