Mocked for a Sugar Daddy, My Real Father Stunned Them

1: 1

The intern confirmation notice had barely hit the company chat when HR posted a screenshot of my name.

"Congrats on making it official, Polly. Welcome to the Operations Department family."

Congratulations flooded the screen. Then one message shoved its way up through the rest.

The whole chat went dead. Eight hundred and ninety-eight people had read it. Zachery Fox had posted it.

"Must be nice having a sugar daddy. Sell yourself and you climb fast."

Half a minute later he deleted it and dropped in a sheepish little emoji.

In my last life, the doubt came at me from every direction.

There was video of me stepping out of a Rolls-Royce with an older man, going in and out of an exclusive private club, and it spread across every platform.

Late one night, on my way home from working overtime, some thugs dragged me into a van.

They abused me until the small hours, and the moment the river closed over my head, I lost consciousness for good.

When I opened my eyes again, I was staring at that same message.

1.

Every hair on my body stood up.

The hand on the mouse started to sweat.

The live read-count on the company chat climbed in a straight line.

The chatter in the cubicles stopped.

Everyone kept hammering away at their keyboards.

The chat sat silent while my mind raced.

I clicked the mouse and, before Zachery could delete it, I screenshotted that message.

Just like last time, the live read-count froze at eight hundred and ninety-eight.

Zachery deleted it and posted a sheepish emoji to cover himself.

I stared for two seconds, then typed fast.

"Sugar daddy? Whose? Sell myself? Sell what, exactly?"

The moment it sent, a coworker glanced up in my direction.

Zachery didn't answer, but I could see he'd opened the message.

"Say something! Don't play dead!"

The bitterness of a past life had made me sharp.

"Don't pull this stunt. If you've got a problem, say it to my face."

This time I tagged Zachery directly.

Half a minute later, the keyboards in the cubicles got louder.

More eyes turned toward me.

"Exactly what it sounds like. Those who know, know."

Zachery's message popped up.

Not a shred of apology. Every word only piled more suspicion on me.

"Polly Swanson, if you don't want people to know, don't do it in the first place. You'd better watch yourself."

That line cemented the suspicion even harder.

"I'd better watch myself? Zachery, spell it out."

"Where's your proof? Who's my sugar daddy? What department, what name?"

After it sent, Zachery went quiet.

"Zachery, don't play dead. If you can't produce proof, this is slander, and I'll report it to the police."

HR, Sylvia Chavez, stepped in with a message.

She tagged me straight away.

"Polly, we're all coworkers here. Let's talk this out nicely, don't get worked up."

I froze.

Zachery had smeared me with a sex rumor in a chat of nearly a thousand people.

And when I asked for an explanation, somehow I was the one getting worked up.

Wendy Mercer, the lead of Group A, chimed in: "Sylvia's right, don't get worked up. Zachery meant well too."

"Meant well? He accused me of having a sugar daddy. How is that meaning well?"

Wendy fired back at once: "He didn't use your name. If you feel guilty, that's on you."

"People with something to hide are always the ones twisting words."

Zachery's message came right after.

"Right. He never named you. So why are you so worked up?"

"If you had nothing to hide, why take it personally?"

"No wonder she was the only one out of this batch of interns to get confirmed so fast."

"So she's got a sugar daddy. Well, that explains it."

Just like last time, the harder I argued in the chat, the more people piled on.

More and more of them cursing me.

In my last life, I watched these coworkers I'd spent every day with attack me in the chat with things they'd made up out of thin air, and I broke completely.

I fell into the trap of trying to prove myself.

Zachery had seized on exactly that.

He'd dangled the bait.

Between my defending myself and the coworkers cursing me, he let the whole thing blow up.

In the end, I didn't just lose the job.

I paid with my life.

Thinking of that, I took a sip of coffee.

I forced myself calm.

The messages kept rolling past.

Quite a few even started messaging me privately.

Asking my rate for a night.

More than a few of them were coworkers.

Once I'd steadied myself, I screen-recorded every line of the chat.

I wrote down the name of every person spreading the rumor.

Then I posted the police report receipt in the chat.

I typed it out one word at a time: "I've got every one of you on record. I've filed a police report. When they come around, I hope you'll be able to explain yourselves."

In an instant, the chat went silent again.

The keyboards in the cubicles stopped too.