Chapter 1: Confessions and Chaos

The new intern walked in like she owned the whole floor, practically broadcasting to anyone in earshot that she was the best Gen Z hire this place had ever seen—and that she was here to shake things up. Her confidence radiated off her, neon-bright and impossible to ignore.

One afternoon, she caught me just outside the conference room, her face unexpectedly sincere. She blurted out her feelings, no warning—like something out of a Netflix show, not actual life. For a split second, she looked right into my eyes, and the rest of the world faded away.

I tried to let her down gently, desperate not to make it any weirder than it already was. But then, right in front of me, she whipped out her phone—it had clearly been recording the whole time. She didn’t skip a beat, whining, “So now that I’ve confessed to the boss, is he, like you all said, gonna get too weird to give me work tomorrow?” Her tone was a mix of pout and challenge, and the phone glinted in her hand like a dare.

My heart stuttered—was this a prank? A test? I could feel sweat prickling at my collar, the whole office suddenly too bright, too silent. I just stared, mouth half-open, completely blank. Still, the next day, I gave her the same workload as everyone else. That’s when she snapped—in front of the whole team, no less. She exploded, shouting that I not only made her work during the day, but dumped late-night assignments on her too—in bed, no less. Her voice rang out across the open office, and suddenly everyone froze, watching.

And then she ranted that it was all for one lousy paycheck. According to her, I was the modern-day Scrooge—stingy, greedy, the worst kind of boss you could imagine. The words hit harder coming from someone who’d barely been here two weeks.

She uploaded the whole scene—her secret recording and her wild accusations—online, and it blew up like a firework on the Fourth of July. The backlash was instant and vicious. My wife saw the viral clip, and the stress sent her into early labor. She lost so much blood, the doctors called it a miracle she survived. Meanwhile, the company’s stock price tanked, and my inbox filled with hate mail until I couldn’t bear to check it anymore. The tidal wave of online harassment finally broke me.

When I opened my eyes, it felt like the universe had hit the reset button. I was right back at the beginning—the day Aubrey Miller first set foot in our company.

1

The low hum of coworkers giving status updates buzzed in my ears, leaving me disoriented. For a split second, I wondered if I’d finally snapped. Hadn’t I already drowned, thrashing in the freezing waters of Lake Erie? My lungs still seemed to burn with the memory.

“Mr. Carter, that’s our report.”

“Mr. Carter?”

My assistant’s voice cut through, yanking me out of the suffocating darkness I remembered too well. I looked around, spotting the giant iced coffee sweating on the conference table. The room smelled faintly of cheap vanilla syrup mixed with the musty tang of old office carpet.

This was it—the day Aubrey Miller first clocked in. I remembered every detail now. As the secretary for the president’s office, she’d been in charge of drinks for the meeting. Instead of the usual black coffee, she’d brought in a massive TikTok-style iced coffee—overflowing with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles.

The conference room was freezing, the AC cranked up to arctic. Someone’s half-eaten donut sat abandoned next to a stack of printouts, and the whiteboard still had last week’s sales targets scrawled in red Expo marker. One by one, people kept sneaking out to the bathroom, and the meeting fell apart in record time. Folks grumbled, clutching their stomachs as they hustled for the door. The whole thing was a disaster, and, naturally, Aubrey took the blame. She came to me, eyes brimming with tears, desperate to explain.

“I just thought... everyone’s obsessed with this coffee online. I figured it’d make the meeting less boring. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to mess things up. It won’t happen again.”

She looked so small and apologetic then, like a high schooler caught skipping class—timid, almost invisible. I’d barely noticed her before. Who would’ve guessed that letting her off with a warning would open the floodgates to so much trouble?

The very next day, she confessed to me, and the shock nearly floored me. I brushed her off as fast as I could, practically sprinting away. I’d barely made it down the hall when I heard her muttering, phone in hand: “I’ve already confessed to the boss. Will he, like you all said, feel too awkward to give me work tomorrow?”

“So overall, this job is still pretty good.”

I just stood there, stunned. Was this really how the new generation operated? It felt like I’d been dropped into a reality TV show, except the stakes were my actual job.

The next day, I handed her the usual stack of paperwork—nothing more, nothing less. But just two weeks later, Aubrey had a meltdown in front of the entire office, flinging wild accusations at me about some inappropriate relationship. Her words echoed off the glass walls: “You keep dumping work on me—emails at midnight, Slack messages blowing up my phone when I’m in bed, spreadsheets on weekends. I can’t escape, not even at home!”

She just kept going, unstoppable, like a runaway train with no brakes. The whole company watched, horrified, as the drama played out in real time, phones already out to record.

That was the domino that tipped everything—the real butterfly effect. My wife saw the mess online, and the stress landed her in the hospital. We lost everything—our child, our future. The company’s stock crashed, and my bank account went with it. All the years I’d poured into this place, gone in a flash.

The internet shredded me. People called me a cheat, a fraud, a cautionary tale for anyone who thought they were safe. My name became a punchline in comment sections, a hashtag trending for all the wrong reasons.

Meanwhile, the person who started it all—Aubrey—kept playing innocent. But she knew exactly what she was doing.