I read the email twice.
Chapter 3
PART 3 - THE WATCH LED ME TO COMPLAINTS MY HUSBAND HAD HELPED BURY
1,515 words
Then a third time.
Not because the words were complicated.
Because they were not.
If she ever comes back to headquarters, I need to know before she enters this floor.
Don’t worry. I’ll handle her.
Six weeks earlier.
Long before the board had publicly announced my return.
Long before Jang Chin Tong had supposedly mistaken me for an intern.
She knew I might come back.
Maybe she had never seen me in person, but she knew enough to be worried.
I looked at Elaine.
“Who else has seen this?”
“Only Legal and me.”
“Why wasn’t it escalated?”
Her expression tightened.
“It was.”
“To whom?”
She didn’t answer.
She didn’t have to.
My husband walked into my office without knocking.
“Elaine, leave us.”
Elaine looked at me instead of him.
That small hesitation told me more about how quickly the power inside the company had shifted than any formal announcement could
have.
“You can go,” I told her. “Please stay available.”
When the door closed, Shiaoza turned on me.
“You’re making this worse.”
I placed the printed email on my desk.
“Did you write that?”
He glanced down.
His expression barely changed.
“Yes.”
“Why was Jang worried I might come back?”
“She knew the board was discussing leadership changes.”
“That isn’t what she wrote.”
“She was worried about disruption.”
I almost smiled.
“Disruption to what?”
He rubbed a hand over his face.
For the first time that morning, he looked tired rather than angry.
“You’ve been gone from headquarters for years. You don’t understand the dynamics here.”
“Then explain them.”
He walked toward the window.
“Tong Tong is difficult.”
“That’s one word.”
“She’s also effective. She controls my calendar, protects sensitive information, handles difficult clients, and keeps half this floor functioning.”
“So you let her threaten employees?”
“I didn’t know everything
she was doing.”
“You approved three retaliatory performance reviews.”
His shoulders stiffened.
“I trusted her assessments.”
“Why?”
He turned.
“Because she was with me every day.”
There it was again.
With me.
Every day.
I pushed the watch receipt across the desk.
“Did you give her the watch because she was effective too?”
He stared at the paper.
Then he sat down.
What followed was not the dramatic confession I might once have imagined.
No tears.
No desperate denial.
Just a tired man finally running out of places to hide.
“It started after the Singapore acquisition,” he said.
Two years earlier.
I remembered that deal.
I had been in New York working on a restructuring project while Shiaoza spent nearly three months traveling back and forth across Asia.
He told me he was exhausted.
He told me Jang had become indispensable.
I had thanked her in my head without ever
meeting her.
“We got too close,” he said.
“How close?”
He looked away.
I waited.
Finally, he said, “There were dinners. Drinks. Messages that crossed a line.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
He swallowed.
“We kissed.”
My chest tightened, but I kept my face still.
“Once?”
His silence stretched too long.
I understood.
He rushed to speak.
“It never became what you think.”
“You have no idea what I think.”
“I never planned to leave you.”
That sentence was supposed to comfort me.
Instead, it clarified everything.
He wanted the stability of our marriage and the excitement of being adored by someone who depended on his approval.
He wanted both.
And because he never planned to choose, he convinced himself he had never truly betrayed either of us.
“Did Jang believe you were going to leave me?”
“No.”
“That was fast.”
“She knew I was married.”
“Did she know who I was?”
“She knew your name and position. She had seen photographs.”
I looked toward the door.
“Then she recognized me this morning.”
His eyes moved to mine.
He realized it at the same time I did.
The plain clothes.
The fake confusion.
The accusation that I wanted to seduce my own husband.
The performance in front of employees.
It had not been a mistake.
It had been a test.
A public humiliation designed to establish the hierarchy before I could establish myself.
Jang had wanted me embarrassed on my first morning.
And she had expected Shiaoza to protect her.
I pressed the intercom.
“Elaine, please ask Secretary Jang to come in.”
Shiaoza stood.
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because she’ll provoke you.”
“No. She’ll answer questions.”
Jang entered two minutes later.
The confidence had returned to her face, but it was thinner now.
She looked at my husband first.
Not me.
That told me enough.
I placed the email in front of her.
“You recognized me.”
She didn’t touch it.
“I recognized your name after people started talking.”
“This email is six weeks old.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“So?”
“You told my husband you needed to know before I came back.”
“I work for him. I needed to know about leadership changes.”
“You called me an intern.”
“You were dressed like one.”
Shiaoza flinched.
Jang did not.
I leaned back.
“Why did you tell employees they couldn’t use the executive elevator?”
“Because executives complained.”
“Which executives?”
She hesitated.
“I don’t remember.”
“Why were employees forced to do personal errands for you?”
“They volunteered.”
“Why did four employees receive negative reviews after complaining about you?”
“Because they were bad employees.”
“Why did my husband approve those reviews?”
Her gaze flicked toward him.
There.
A reflex.
A partnership.
Not necessarily equal, but practiced.
I changed direction.
“Do you have any financial relationship with Meridian Strategy Group?”
For the first time, Jang looked genuinely startled.
Finance had sent the vendor list ten minutes earlier.
Meridian had received nearly $480,000 in consulting fees over fourteen months.
Every invoice had been approved through the president’s office.
The registered owner was Jang’s older brother.
Shiaoza turned toward her.
“What?”
Her face changed.
“You knew Meridian was my family’s company.”
“I knew your brother consulted,” he said. “You told me the ownership had been disclosed.”
“To whom?” I asked.
Neither answered.
Corporate policy required disclosure of immediate-family relationships for any vendor contract above $25,000.
There was no disclosure on file.
Now Jang’s motive became clearer.
This was no longer just about jealousy.
Her access to Shiaoza had become economically valuable.
Control over his calendar meant access to executives.
Access to executives meant influence.
Influence meant contracts, favors, promotions, and protection.
Losing her place beside him did not only threaten her pride.
It threatened an entire system she had built around proximity to power.
She looked at me coldly.
“You’re trying to turn administrative mistakes into crimes because your husband likes me.”
“No.”
I kept my voice level.
“I’m separating the two things you hoped everyone would confuse.”
I pointed to the watch.
“That is personal.”
Then I pointed to the vendor file.
“That is corporate.”
Shiaoza walked toward the desk and picked up the Meridian documents.
His face darkened as he read.
“Tong Tong, you told me Legal cleared this.”
Jang laughed once, bitterly.
“And you signed everything.”
He looked at her.
She looked back.
Something between them broke in that moment.
Not love.
Convenience.
Each had assumed the other would absorb the consequences.
Neither intended to.
By noon, I had ordered an independent review of Meridian’s contracts, suspended Jang’s access to executive systems, and removed Shiaoza’s unilateral authority over vendor approvals pending board review.
He stared at the notice in disbelief.
“You can’t suspend my authority.”
“I can under the governance resolution the board passed when they appointed me.”
His voice dropped.
“You planned this.”
“I planned to run the company.”
“You’re using our marriage to destroy me.”
I stood.
“No. You used our marriage to assume I would protect you.”
That hit him.
He stepped closer.
“You think the board will choose you over me?”
“I think they’ll choose evidence.”
His mouth hardened.
“You don’t know where the votes are.”
He was right about one thing.
Shiaoza had spent years at headquarters cultivating directors, investors, and senior executives.
I had relationships with the board, but he had relationships too.
And just before three that afternoon, I learned how far he was prepared to go.
The board secretary called me.
“Shiaoza has requested an emergency vote challenging your authority to suspend him.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
I looked through the glass wall of my office.
Across the floor, Jang was packing her desk under security supervision.
She looked up.
Our eyes met.
Then she smiled.
Not smugly this time.
Almost triumphantly.
My phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number.
You think the watch is what destroys your marriage?
Ask your husband what he promised me if you ever became CEO.
Attached was a screenshot.
A message from Shiaoza to Jang.
If she takes the top job, stay calm. I have enough votes to remove her before she changes anything.
Tomorrow morning, one of us was going to lose control of the company.
And for the first time, I knew my husband had been preparing for that fight long before I walked into the elevator.
Click the blue “PART 4” below to read the final part: 👉 PART 4 👈
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