MARK SAID MY PROMOTION WAS A SHOO-IN UNTIL I FOUND THAT EMAIL
My fingers froze on the keyboard when I saw his name pop up in the deleted items folder. It was late, everyone else gone, the office silent except the hum of the server room down the hall. A strange, sick curiosity pulled at me. The screen glowed bright blue.
The subject line was innocuous, but the body… “She thinks she’s got this, but we’ll see. A little nudge in the right direction will fix everything.” My stomach dropped. I could smell the cheap disinfectant from the cleaning crew in the air.
*He* wrote this. *He* was talking about *me*. All those casual comments, the knowing looks – it wasn’t support, it was sabotage hidden in plain sight. The pieces clicked into place with a sickening finality.
My hands trembled, clicking through the chain, seeing CC’d names I never expected. The betrayal cut deeper than I thought possible. The cold floor tiles felt like ice under my shoes. This changed everything. Not just the promotion, but how I saw everyone here, how I saw *him*. The quiet dread was a physical weight in my chest.
A shadow fell over the monitor, and a voice behind me whispered, “What are you reading?”
👇 Full story continued in the comments…A shadow fell over the monitor, and a voice behind me whispered, “What are you reading?”
My blood ran cold. It was Mark. I didn’t need to turn around to know. His voice, usually warm and encouraging, was laced with something I couldn’t immediately place – was it curiosity, or something else? My heart hammered against my ribs. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. The bright blue screen seemed to glow even brighter, illuminating the damning email for anyone to see.
He stepped closer, and I finally turned my head, my neck stiff. His eyes, usually crinkling at the corners when he smiled, were wide with alarm as they landed on the screen. The relaxed posture he’d had moments before vanished. He lunged forward, his hand reaching for the mouse.
“Get away from that,” I choked out, my voice shaking but firm. I grabbed the keyboard, pulling the laptop closer to me, away from his grasp.
“What are you doing?” he hissed, his face pale, the friendly mask completely gone. “That’s company property. You shouldn’t be looking at deleted files.”
“And *you* shouldn’t be sabotaging your colleagues, Mark,” I retorted, finding a surge of icy calm amidst the panic. I pointed at the screen. “You said it was a shoo-in. You looked me in the eye. All the while you were writing this.”
He stammered, “That’s… that’s taken out of context! It’s a joke, an old draft…”
“A joke?” My voice rose, cracking slightly. “A ‘little nudge in the right direction’ to fix *me*? To stop *my* promotion?” My gaze flickered to the CC’d names. “Were Sarah and David in on the joke too?”
Just then, footsteps echoed down the hall. Sarah appeared, her bag over her shoulder, looking surprised to see us both still there. “Everything okay? I just came back for my…”, she trailed off, her eyes scanning our tense postures, Mark’s panicked face, and finally, the glowing screen of my laptop.
Mark whipped around to face her, his hand instinctively moving as if to shield the view. “Nothing, Sarah, just… wrapping up,” he said too quickly, his voice strained.
But it was too late. Sarah’s eyes widened as she processed the scene. She looked from Mark to me, then back to the screen. Recognition, then dawning comprehension, flickered across her face. The air crackled with unspoken accusations.
I closed the laptop lid with a soft click, the sound deafening in the sudden silence. The blue light vanished, but the words were burned into my mind. I stood up, meeting Mark’s desperate, cornered gaze, then turning to look at Sarah, whose expression was a mixture of shock and something unreadable.
“No,” I said, my voice low but steady, directed at both of them, but aimed squarely at Mark. “Everything is not okay. Not anymore.” I picked up my bag, the weight of it grounding me. The promotion felt miles away now, irrelevant compared to the chasm that had just opened up. I walked towards the exit, leaving them standing there in the dim office light, the silence broken only by the distant hum of the servers and the rapid beating of my own heart. I didn’t know what came next, but I knew I wouldn’t be silent about this.