“Rewrite it. I want it on my desk by morning,” Tamara’s voice, my boss, clanged like a gun bolt.
She tossed a folder with the report onto my desk. The corner of its expensive leather jabbed into the stack of my neatly arranged papers.
“Tamara Igorevna, but we submitted this project last week. It was already approved.”
She smirked. The kind of smirk you give when looking at something distastefully amusing—like mold on bread.
“It was approved. Now it’s not. The client found mistakes. And you know what I think, Anya?” She leaned in close, and I caught the cloying scent of her perfume.
“You’ve grown inattentive. Gotten comfortable.”
I stayed silent. Arguing would only pour gasoline on the fire. I’d seen that report. There were no mistakes.
But I had also seen the email from the client—an email Tamara had conveniently not shown me.
I saw it last night, at 3:15 a.m., while the entire corporate system slept. I didn’t.
“Cat got your tongue?” she kept going. “You’ve gotten slow. A real old mouse. Gray, invisible. All you do is rustle papers in a corner.”
Her words didn’t hurt. They were just… information. New data for the system. I looked at her calmly.
“I’ll handle it, Tamara Igorevna.”
She wasn’t expecting that. Tears? Excuses? Pleas? My calm threw her off balance.
“Good. A mouse should know its place.”
She spun around and marched off to her glass aquarium-office, heels clicking like gunshots.
The whole department pretended not to hear, staring into their monitors. A swamp of cowardice and hypocrisy.
I opened the folder. The work was flawless. My work.
But on the last page—where the summary calculations were—a crude, clumsy edit had been made in someone else’s handwriting. An edit that turned success into failure.
I stared at those crooked numbers. No resentment. Just cold, clear analysis.
That night, as the city lights shimmered outside, I was in my element.
My modest home laptop was just a terminal—a gateway into another world. A world with no ranks, no titles—only skill.
I didn’t redo the report. I worked on my personal project, codenamed “Insurance.”
On a protected cloud drive, in a blandly named folder called “Recipes,” I stored everything I had on Tamara.
Not just dirt. It was the anatomy of her lies and fears.
Deleted emails to suppliers with barely veiled references to kickbacks.
Audio recordings of her laughing with the CFO about “optimizing” bonuses by cutting them from employees too meek to fight back.
Screenshots of messages where she commissioned thesis papers for her dim-witted son.
And the crown jewel: a complete log of her chats with a top executive from our main competitor, to whom she’d been leaking sensitive tender information.
She called me a mouse. Fine. Mice live in the walls. They hear everything. And they chew through the foundations.
That night, I added a new file to the “Insurance” folder: a scan of the report with her edit, and the original client email full of praise. The contrast was damning.
In the morning, I placed the “revised” report on her desk. I had simply removed her edit and restored the correct numbers. Let her send that to the client. It’d be fun.
Tamara flipped through it like a victor.
“See? You can do good work. Just needed the right motivation.”
She didn’t notice the trap.
Her belief in her own impunity—and in my obedience—had blinded her.
“Since you were so quick with this,” she said without looking up, “I’ve got something else for you.”
We had inherited a massive database from Hermes after the merger. Thousands of entries. Every item code had to be manually checked against our own. The automation script made too many mistakes.
It was elegant torture. The work of an analyst—but mindless and repetitive.
A week of that, and any specialist would begin to doubt their sanity. A perfect way to make me seem incompetent.
I decided to try once more. To play by the rules.
“Tamara Igorevna, may I have a word?”
She lazily motioned to a chair. I stepped into her office.
“I’d like to discuss the workload. Manually checking the Hermes database will take at least a week and completely halt my core analytics work. Perhaps this task would be better suited for an intern or junior specialist?”
This was my compromise. My olive branch.
Tamara leaned back and slowly removed her glasses.
“Anya, are you saying this task is beneath you?”
Her voice was sweet—almost friendly. Which made it worse.
“Of course not. I’m talking about priorities and efficiency.”
“Efficiency?” she chuckled. **”Maybe you should think about your own efficiency. Others manage. No one else complains. Only you always have problems. Maybe you’re just not cut out for this?”
“I value employees who just do their job—not the ones trying to look smarter than everyone else. Who know their place.
And you, Anya, seem to have forgotten yours.
Now get to work.”**
That was the end. Not of the conversation—but of my efforts to fix things nicely.
I left her office, her triumphant gaze boring into my back.
She didn’t just want to humiliate me. She was afraid.
Afraid of my competence. That’s why she tried to drown me in pointless tasks. To grind me into the ground and shine brighter by contrast.
I sat at my desk. Opened the database. Thousands of rows of meaningless letters and numbers.
All hesitation and respect evaporated. Only cold, ringing clarity remained.
The mouse would no longer rustle in the corner.
The mouse would chew through the support beams.
The finale came Friday.
Midday, Tamara’s phone rang. She grabbed it, her face melting into syrupy charm.
“Yes, Gennady Petrovich, I’m listening.”
He was the client. I paused my mindless data-checking and watched.
Her smile began to droop. Her face turned waxy, melting under a flame.
“How… impressive?” she repeated, a panicked pitch creeping into her voice.
“Yes, of course, I’ll pass on your thanks… to Anna. Yes, she’s a very valuable employee.”
She slammed the receiver down like it was scalding hot. Her eyes scanned the office—until they landed on me.
There was nothing in them but pure, unfiltered hatred.
She understood. Understood I hadn’t obeyed. That I’d sent the correct report. That I’d made her look like a fool.
She stormed out of her office. The department froze. The show had begun.
“In my office. Now.” she barked, pointing.
I calmly closed the database window, stood, and followed.
As soon as the door closed behind me, she pounced.
“How dare you, you little snake?! Are you trying to sabotage me?!”
“I corrected an error,” I replied evenly.
“That wasn’t an error! It was a test! Which you FAILED! You disobeyed a direct order!”
She was pacing like a caged beast. She knew she had lost control—and it was driving her mad.
“You’re fired! On the spot! For insubordination! I’ll make sure no decent company hires you again!”
I said nothing. It was expected. But she wasn’t done.
“I know about your little student brother,” she hissed, stepping close.
“In a fancy university, isn’t he? Must be expensive. What will he do when his sister-mouse ends up broke and jobless? Start sweeping streets?”
And that was it. The low blow. The only thing that truly mattered.
My job wasn’t just a job. It was the price of Alyosha’s future.
Something snapped inside me. Loudly. Finally. The dam broke.
I looked her in the eye. And for the first time, she saw not fear or submission—but something she feared more than anything else: superiority.
“You can’t fire me, Tamara Igorevna,” I said quietly.
“And why not?” she scoffed.
“Because in ten minutes, the CEO and head of security will receive an email. From one of my anonymous accounts. With a link to a cloud folder.”
“Let’s call it: ‘Tamara Igorevna’s Masterpieces.'”
Her face went white. Color drained completely.
“You… wouldn’t dare.”
“It contains everything: the kickback arrangements, the scheme to cut employee bonuses, the degree-for-hire for your son.
And, of course, your full correspondence with our rivals at Atlanta. I think the security team will find that section especially interesting.”
I turned toward the door.
“Sit down!” she shrieked.
I stopped, not turning.
“You’re not in a position to give orders. You have nine minutes to submit your resignation. Or I hit ‘send.’ Time starts now.”
I left, leaving her behind in her glass fishbowl that now resembled a prison cell.
The entire department stared. But now, their eyes held not fear of the boss—but shock… and growing respect.
I sat at my desk. Opened my laptop. And waited.
Nine minutes. The air in the office was thick. No typing. No talking.
Every gaze flicked between two points: Tamara’s closed office door—and me.
I didn’t look at the clock. I stared at the blinking cursor in the email draft.
My finger hovered above the touchpad. I was utterly calm.
This wasn’t revenge.
It was surgery—the removal of a tumor.
Exactly eight minutes later, her door opened.
Tamara emerged, aged ten years. Her expensive suit hung off her like on a coat rack. Her perfect hair disheveled.
But worst was her face—ashen, hollow, eyes empty. She didn’t look at anyone.
She walked across the floor, placed a folded piece of paper on my desk—her resignation.
Then she picked up her coat and walked out. No one said a word.
I took the letter and went to the CEO.
Sergey Vladimirovich, a heavyset man with tired but sharp eyes, was already waiting. He took the letter silently and read it.
“I figured something like this might happen,” he said. “Tamara was… effective. But toxic. What happened, Anna?”
He looked straight at me. He wasn’t asking if it was true. He wanted to know what broke the camel’s back.
And here it was—the moment of truth. I could expose it all. Be a hero.
But real power doesn’t shout. It chooses silence.
“Tamara Igorevna experienced an irreconcilable conflict with corporate ethics,” I said calmly.
“She decided that resigning was in the company’s best interest.”
He studied me for a long moment. And in his eyes, I saw recognition. He didn’t just see a wronged employee.
He saw someone who held all the cards—and didn’t flaunt them.
He saw power.
“Understood,” he nodded.
“Good. Get back to work. You’ll be acting department head for now. Prepare optimization suggestions for Monday… no. Just go. We’ll sort it out next week.”
I returned to my desk. Acting head.
I deleted the draft email. But I didn’t touch the “Insurance” folder.
It remained, like a nuclear briefcase. A guarantee that the old ways wouldn’t return.
I didn’t feel joy. No euphoria.
I felt the weight settle on my shoulders.
I had won.
But victory didn’t make me free. It made me responsible.
I was no longer the gray mouse in the corner.
But I wasn’t a triumphant warrior either.
I had become something else.
Someone who knows: everyone has secrets.
And whoever controls the secrets—controls everything.
And that knowledge… is the heaviest burden of all.