Chapter 2

My uncle burst out laughing at my words, but then, realizing the situation, he swore, "Your company is bullying you?! I told you long ago to come back to our company and enjoy being the client, but you wouldn't listen, insisting on doing that grueling, thankless tech work for a vendor. Regretting it now? Come back and help me manage this whole operation."

"I regret it, but it's not time to leave yet."

Cutting only my salary, suddenly removing me from my team leader position, and giving my entire bonus to Brittany – it all pointed to one truth: they wanted to force me to quit without paying a single cent of severance.

In recent years, the real estate market has been tough, dragging the construction industry down with it. The design sector has been struggling more each day.

I've seen it countless times at design firms over the years: unscrupulous management's go-to method for layoffs. Instead of paying the standard severance package, they'd cut salaries or only pay minimum wage, while drastically increasing workload to grueling, burnout-inducing hours, essentially forcing you to quit. That way, the company wouldn't owe you a dime, because *you* couldn't handle it and left.

Our company had forced out many core talents this way.

I hadn't been treated like this before, perhaps because they still needed me for projects, or maybe my turn just hadn't come yet.

Our company was a well-known architectural firm in the industry. But with business shrinking to only post-service for old projects and new business failing to grow, the company began to push its operational pressures down to the production staff.

They called it "everyone is a business owner," and back then, as a team leader, I was burdened with millions in contract pressure.

My mom saw how exhausted I was from constantly running around, so she directly arranged for my uncle to entrust our company with the design project for LL Group's new international five-star hotel chain—our family business. The total design fee alone was ten million.

So, the biggest client for my current company was actually my family's business.

According to the contract, this was the first year of our collaboration, so the full payment wasn't due by year-end. In fact, given unofficial industry practice, payment delays of several years are quite common.

But my uncle, worried I wouldn't get my year-end bonus and would be upset, specifically instructed his finance department to pay our company half of the design fees in advance.

I've always been low-key, just focusing on design and site visits. They had no idea about my connection to our client.

After confirming that the client would make the payment tomorrow, they were so afraid that I, as the project lead, would get the lion's share of the bonus that they rushed to remove me from my position.

Too bad for them. This time, the person they tried to get rid of was the company's financial lifeblood.

Even if they wanted to lay me off, I would have accepted a legal severance package. But using such dirty tactics against an employee who’d worked for eight years? No way was I going to stand for it.

I decided to fully check out, and enjoy watching them celebrate their year-end bonuses.