The Fraud Who Stole My Billion-Dollar Deal

1: 1

Our department landed a billion-dollar deal, and the company handed out a special bonus: three hundred thousand for every one of us.

But Virginia Shepherd, the coworker who loved playing the saint, turned hers down in front of everyone.

Three months of grinding to close a billion-dollar order is just what employees are supposed to do. If you ask me, we shouldn't take the three hundred thousand. Getting to put a project like this on our rsums is already a gift. We should be thanking the company for the chance!

Every face in the department went dark. Carina James, our supervisor, clenched her back teeth so hard it showed.

Whatever warmth had been in Mr. Pruitt's eyes was gone now, wiped clean.

I stood in my usual corner of the crowd and said nothing.

Then, without warning, Mr. Pruitt picked up the mic and announced,

"Since Virginia insists on refusing the company's bonus, we'll split her three hundred thousand among the rest of you."

The conference room went dead quiet for three seconds, then blew up.

"Split... split Virginia's three hundred thousand?"

Craig Lawrence got there first, his voice cracking on the words.

Carina didn't say anything, but her jaw unclenched, and the corners of her mouth kept twitching up no matter how she tried to fight it.

Standing at the side of the stage, Virginia still held that elegant line in her spine, but her pupils shrank hard.

She'd expected Mr. Pruitt to coax her, to praise her, to do what the old VP always did.

To remember her "noble spirit," to hold her up so the whole company would learn from her example,

so she could go on living cleaner and purer in the glow of everyone's admiration.

But this time, there was nothing.

Mr. Pruitt had come in from the outside not long ago, and he wasn't buying any of it.

Her face stiffened. She picked up a mic and added, uneasy,

"Mr. Pruitt, don't get me wrong. I just think the greatest reward from three months of hard work is how much we've grown. Three hundred thousand gets spent and it's gone, but a project like this on your rsum is capital for life."

That one line, "capital for life,"

pinned everyone else into the position of being crude for taking the money.

I really couldn't stand it anymore, so I offered a helpful reminder.

"Virginia, your father came by the office yesterday. He said your mother's hospital fees are due again. The doctor said it's a hundred thousand, which is no small amount."

A crack split across Virginia's face, but she forced herself to sound composed.

"Flora, thank you for the kind reminder. My family may not have much, but I can't take from the company against my conscience. As for my mother's surgery costs, I can put in extra hours on projects and earn commission. I believe that with my own effort, I'll come up with that hundred thousand."

The conference hall buzzed with murmurs, everyone trading glances.

Some looked impressed, some were just there for the show, and some had seen it all before.

Only Mr. Pruitt kept his head down, saying nothing.

Virginia bit her lip and pressed on, like she'd made up her mind.

"Mr. Pruitt, how about I donate my three hundred thousand to the company, as a team-outing fund for all the employees this year? They work hard too."

She wanted to use the word "donate" to save face, to show her loyalty by saving the company money.

But the moment she said it, Mr. Pruitt's eyes went colder still.

His voice wasn't loud, but every word landed like a nail.

"Team outings come out of a separate budget. Your money goes onto everyone's cards, nowhere else. Finance, split it now."

The words had barely landed before the company's finance staff bent over their computer.

Three seconds later, the phone in my pocket buzzed.

Three hundred sixty thousand. Not a dollar short.

I looked down at the string of numbers and couldn't keep the corners of my mouth down.

My mother had been diagnosed with a thyroid nodule last month, and the doctor recommended she go to Los Angeles for further testing.

I'd never dared to take time off, because time off meant a hit to my performance pay,

and a hit to my performance pay meant I'd never save enough to take her to Los Angeles.

Text alerts went off around the room one after another, like a rolling wave of applause.

Virginia's shoulders sank an inch, but she still forced herself to hold the pose.

"Mr. Pruitt, I really don't care about the bonus. To me, the experience of the project and what it does for my career are worth far more than any paycheck in front of me."

"I just genuinely think this is unfair. On this billion-dollar deal, Flora Dickerson did nothing but odds and ends the whole way through, with no real contribution at all. If she gets rewarded for doing nothing, walking off with three hundred thousand, then word gets out and it's not just a joke for our department. Clients will say the company can't tell good work from bad and hires the wrong people. It'll destroy our professional reputation!"

2: 2

I gripped my phone hard, my chest burning like there was a fire inside it.

From the day this project was greenlit, I hadn't gone to bed before one in the morning once.

On top of pulling all-nighters building the framework and running the numbers,

I'd doubled as the girl who poured the tea and ordered the afternoon coffee.

All because I'd swallowed her nonsense about how I needed to do more groundwork to build experience.

But she didn't know.

If I hadn't pulled strings through my grandfather,

the client on this billion-dollar deal wouldn't have spared us a second glance.

I opened my mouth, wanting to say something.

But Mr. Pruitt spoke first. "Virginia, since when do the decisions of company leadership need your approval?"

Virginia froze, the color draining from her face.

Mr. Pruitt stood, tapping a finger against the table. "And as for your comment about the company misusing its people"

He picked up the microphone, his voice pitched neither high nor low, clear to the entire department.

"Personally, I think Flora has strong professional ability and solid character. She's an excellent fit for Director of the East Coast Region."

"But there's something you said that's right. Experience matters more than money. HR, take note. Virginia's position is not to be changed for the next five years. The company will give her all the time she needs to accumulate enough experience in her current role."

Virginia's head snapped up, her lips trembling.

Even with her head bowed those extra few degrees,

I still caught it at the corner of her eye, the faintest trace of regret.

Anyone with eyes could see it. The whole reason she'd staged this decline-the-bonus performance today

was to get Mr. Pruitt to "beg" her to take the East Coast director's seat.

Every promotion and raise she'd ever gotten had come through that exact routine.

But this time,

she'd not only thrown away her "three-hundred-thousand-dollar shoe," she hadn't lured out the wolf either.

That afternoon.

The whole company knew Virginia had turned down three hundred thousand and lost the East Coast director's seat too.

Yet she carried on as if nothing had happened, still working away "diligently."

On my way out, I passed Virginia's desk. A copy of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations lay open on it.

She looked up when she saw me and smiled.

"Flora, Mr. Pruitt may have said you'd be the East Coast director, but I've managed this region for years, after all. Some of these clients only deal with me. If I suddenly stopped handling them, the client side would"

She didn't finish, but I understood.

The point was that without Virginia, I'd never hold the director's seat steady.

"Don't worry." I pulled out a chair and sat, letting out a small laugh. "Clients trust ability, not a face."

The smile stiffened on her face. I went on.

"If anything, Virginia, I hear your mother's condition isn't looking good, and the hospital's pushing hard for the surgery fee. Do you want us to crowdfund together, bring in the best doctor in the country to operate on your mom?"

The moment I said it, the smile vanished completely from Virginia's face.

A few coworkers still working late spoke up.

"That's right, Virginia. My family's had an elderly relative fall ill too, so I know what a bind you're in. Just listen to Flora and let everyone help."

Virginia stared at me, a tangle of emotions churning in her eyes.

She tucked the loose strands of hair at her forehead behind her ear, lifted her head, gentle and composed, and smiled at everyone.

"Thank you all for the kindness, but I absolutely can't accept that help. There are plenty of people whose parents are in far worse shape than my mom, and their children grit their teeth and carry it alone. There's no reason I should be treated as a special case and get some coddled little exception."

"Really. No one needs to spend money on me. Your paychecks don't fall out of the sky either. I don't want everyone paying a price for nothing on my account, and I don't want to be the kind of person who only holds out her hand and can't stand up to a little hardship."

At that, coworkers took turns praising her, saying she was as kind as she was lovely, always thinking of everyone else.

Virginia was pleased with the reaction and kept up the "high-minded" act.

I pressed down the smile at the corner of my mouth and played right along with what she wanted.

"Virginia, at first I thought you were just too 'shy' to accept the company bonus. Then I heard you didn't even take your boyfriend's sixty-six-thousand-dollar engagement gift, and honestly, that made me admire you from the bottom of my heart."

The moment I finished, the coworkers were stunned all over again.

"Oh my God, a sixty-six-thousand-dollar engagement gift? Virginia really didn't take a single cent of it?"

"But Virginia, if you'd accepted that sixty-six thousand, wouldn't that have covered your mom's surgery right there?"

3: 3

Virginia immediately adopted a lecturing tone.

"It's a new era. We should have abandoned that vulgar relic of engagement gifts long ago. My family has never profited off its daughter, and we'd never use money to hold love hostage or turn marriage into a transaction."

"As for my mother's illness, that's my own burden to carry, and I should carry it alone. I would never guilt my boyfriend into it, never make him pay for my family's troubles and derail his life and his future."

The room broke into applause at the noble speech.

I watched Virginia bask in the flattery, unable to pull herself out of it.

I picked up my bag, turned, and walked out of the company without another glance at her.

The next day was the official start of the billion-dollar project.

Apart from bathroom breaks, Virginia never once left her desk.

Morning, noon, and night, she got by on three plain rolls.

When the others saw it, they sighed in admiration.

"Virginia really is so dedicated. She doesn't even have time to eat, all for the project."

"Isn't that the truth? In all my years here, I've never seen anyone work as hard as Virginia. She treats money like dirt and only cares about sharpening her own skills."

"Do you think Mr. Pruitt's lost his mind? The East Coast Director's chair should go to Virginia. How did Flora, who's only been here six years, luck into such a windfall?"

At that, Virginia's back, slumped a little from hunger, snapped straight in an instant.

She lifted her water cup, washed down a bite of roll, and said thickly around it,

"You really don't need to feel wronged on my behalf. As long as it creates value for the company, I have no complaints, whether it's a core role or grunt work at the bottom, rotating shifts, standing watch. I'll follow whatever they assign me, wholeheartedly."

"I can't help feeling something, though. Mr. Pruitt has always cherished talent, so this time he's probably deliberately grooming a newcomer. He's willing to gamble the East Coast Region's whole performance just to break the rules and put Flora, so junior, so thin on experience, coasting on nothing but her looks, in the Director's chair. That's real favoritism."

The moment she said it, every eye in the room changed.

The murmuring pricked at my ears like needles.

"I knew it. How else would Flora be so capable? Turns out she climbed her way up in bed."

"Too bad the rest of us are old and past our prime. We want to 'give it our all' for the company but just can't manage it anymore!"

I stood in the hallway, fists clenched tight,

then shoved the door open and aimed my phone at the little cluster inside.

"What was that you just said? I didn't catch it. Go on, say it again, straight to the camera!"

The gossiping coworkers whipped their heads around, stunned,

and scrambled to throw up their hands and hide their faces from the lens.

Virginia set down her roll and looked up at me, the pride in her eyes impossible to hide.

"Flora, we're colleagues. We're supposed to give each other some slack. It was just a harmless little joke. There's no need to cling to it and keep pushing, bearing down on people, tearing apart the team's good atmosphere."

"A joke?" I turned the camera on Virginia and said, word by word,

"Virginia, the section of that billion-dollar deal that was yours, the last three days when you were home with a fever, who pulled three all-nighters to finish running the data for you?"

The smile at the corner of her mouth froze. She stammered,

"It was... it was Carina."

"Don't. I never touched your data."

Carina called out from several desks away, and Virginia's face went scarlet.

I let out a cold laugh and raised my voice, making sure everyone there could hear.

"It was me. I'm the one who pulled three all-nighters re-running the data and landed the client."

The coworkers who'd just been spreading filth about me alongside Virginia finally came around.

"What? The hardest part of the billion-dollar deal was actually landed by Flora?"

"And Virginia just took the credit for someone else's work like it was hers? And still had the nerve to suggest cutting Flora out of the bonus? That's burning the bridge after you've crossed it!"

"No wonder she said she only wanted to build up experience and didn't care about money. So she just wasn't capable of the job at all! And a person like that thinks she deserves East Coast Director?"

Virginia's face went from green to white, and for a moment no words would come.

She just dropped her head and bit hard into the last half of her roll.

That night, after everyone else had left,

the only light still on in the whole building was over Virginia's desk.

Before, plenty of coworkers would have snapped a photo for the group chat and sighed over how dutiful she was.

But today, not one of them did.

Three days later, the company chat posted the official notice of my promotion to East Coast Director.

Virginia congratulated me with two dark circles under her eyes,

letting slip, as if by accident, that she'd pulled three all-nighters on the project.

The coworkers who'd mocked her before couldn't help feeling a little sorry for her.

"Then again, sure, Director Flora finished the back half of the billion-dollar deal, but Virginia was sick with a fever then. That's understandable, isn't it?"

"Right. She pulled three all-nighters just to get that billion-dollar project off the ground. I heard she went three straight days eating nothing but three plain rolls. She really does drive herself hard."

"What? Three days straight on nothing but rolls? Can Virginia's body even hold up?"

4: 4

I sat at my desk, watching it all with the calm of someone who'd seen it a hundred times, and said nothing.

Virginia, though, rose from her workstation and told the others in a frail little voice,

"Thank you all for caring. Fighting for the company's numbers, bringing in revenueI've never once found it hard. If anything, I feel honored. Honestly, compared to fussing over salary and chasing whatever perks are right in front of you, carrying the load for the team and doing right by the company is the mindset every working professional should have."

I looked at the daily reports, at Virginia's numbers that had sat frozen for three straight days.

Something cold turned over in my chest.

Then I pushed open my door and walked out.

"Virginia, you're so busy. Do you need the company to assign you a few assistants?"

Virginia turned her pale face toward me.

She wanted them badly, of courseyet she still put on the picture of someone giving her last drop of strength.

"Thank you for the thought, Flora, but I can shoulder this much on my own. The company should save its resources for coworkers who really need help breaking through. There's no need to give me special treatment and waste company resources for nothing."

Another round of applause filled the office.

Virginia was still basking in the praise when

thudher body listed to one side and she crumpled to the floor.

The office broke into chaos.

My hand tightened on the arm of my chair for a few seconds, then let go, and I calmly called 911.

Ten minutes later, the paramedics arrived.

After looking her over, one of them said, "Ms. Shepherd, work matters, but you have to watch your rest and your diet too."

They started her on an IV drip.

Virginia took hundreds of photos from every angle,

carefully picked out a set for a photo grid, and posted it online.

In every shot she looked so fragile a gust of wind could have scattered her.

An hour later, a post tagged #CollapsedAfterThreeDaysAndNightsGivingHerAllForTheCompany went viral across the whole internet.

The picture of Virginia still working while hooked to an IV shot straight to trending.

The comment feed was one long pile-on against the company for being heartless and cold-blooded,

against me, the newly installed East Coast Director, for abusing a veteran employee,

and a mindless chorus praising Virginia for pouring herself out for the company without taking so much as a nickel more.

Some anonymous employees who didn't know the truth only made it worse in the comments:

*I actually work here! Word is Virginia landed a billion-dollar deal not long ago, and she didn't just turn down the company's extra three-hundred-thousand-dollar bonusshe turned down the East Coast Director position too. All so she could build experience on the ground floor and help the new hires.*

*Oh my god! And here I thought she only refused it for show! Turns out she really is that devoted!*

*Ladies, I've got a bold theory. Is Virginia maybe some executive's relative? Sent down to the ground floor to see how the common folk live!*

*If you ask me, that Flora Dickerson should get out here and kneel and apologize! If she hadn't slept her way up, if she actually had the ability to lead a team, would Virginia have had to work herself this hard during a billion-dollar project?*

*The comment above nailed it! Flora Dickerson, kneel and apologize!*

Half an hour later, a topic tagged #FloraDickersonKneelAndApologize was trending too.

I watched the heat on the topic climb and climb, and the fire in my chest burned hotter and hotter.

Virginia curled the corner of her mouth in satisfaction and, on her lunch break, started a livestream

and made a point of switching off the gift and tip function.

On camera her face was pale and drained of color,

yet she put on the look of a saint and coaxed her viewers,

"Everybody calm down. I trained Flora myself. I know her real ability better than anyone, and this East Coast Director position belongs to no one but her."

"As for that three-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus, I've always held that I shouldn't take it. The company nurtured us with care, gave us a platform to grow and gain experiencewe should be grateful and give back with everything we have. How could we only ever take? Wanting both fame and money is just too greedy."

"I also want to clear something up. I have no executive backing whatsoever. I'm just an ordinary employee from an ordinary family. But I've always kept work and personal matters separate, and I genuinely love what I do. I would never fixate only on the paycheck. That kind of thinking is too small."

"I've said everything that needs saying. I hope you all won't make things hard for Flora, and please don't make things hard for the company either. If you insist on picking at this and stirring up conflict, I honestly won't sleep tonight, and then my work will suffer, the project will fall behind, and the whole team will pay for it."

The moment those words were out, the livestream erupted.

All of it praising Virginia's 'noble, self-sacrificing' character.

The viewer count shot straight to a hundred thousand.

Just then, a commotion rose from downstairs in the lobby.

Virginia assumed some viewers had come to the company to demand justice for her,

so she told everyone not to do anything rash while she headed for the elevator with her phone,

and made a point of swinging the livestream camera toward the front doors.

But the moment the elevator doors opened,

the sight in front of her froze her on the spot.

Her aged father, Landon Shepherd, stood hunched in the company lobby, a coffin set beside him.

Behind him, on a blood-red banner, the words stabbed at everyone until they could barely keep their eyes open:

Undutiful daughter Virginia Shepherd chased a good name and traded her mother's life for it.