At the final presentation for our startup incubator competition, Joss’s childhood friend, Hailey, demanded to be made team leader. She needed the extra academic honors it would grant to secure a full-ride scholarship to the graduate program. For the good of the project, I refused. She wasn’t qualified. In a fit of rage, she dropped out of the competition and let her parents drag her back to their dead-end town in the rust belt to be married off. I took the reins, and our team won first place. We all got offered spots in the MBA program, and our venture became the talk of the business school. Later, I married Joss. When our company went public, we celebrated on a yacht. As I stood by the railing, six months pregnant, Joss shoved me into the churning black water. He just watched as I drowned. I screamed, my lungs filling with saltwater, "Why?" His face was a mask of cold fury. "If you hadn't been so selfish, if you hadn't stolen that leadership spot from her, Hailey would never have been forced into that marriage. She wouldn't have been beaten to death by her husband. This is what you owe her." I opened my eyes again, and I was back. Back on the day it all began. … "Lila, please," a familiar, cloying voice whined. "I'm just a few points short of qualifying for the Dean’s Fellowship. The team leader position in the incubator competition comes with a huge honors bonus. Can you just… let me have it?" The words hit me like a physical blow. I flinched, my eyes darting to the clock on the wall. I was back. I had been reborn into the exact moment Hailey made her demand. In my first life, I had considered the facts. Hailey wasn't a business major. She had no experience. My parents had promised to invest in our project and connect us with industry titans for mentorship. I couldn't risk it. I had to refuse her, telling her it wasn’t a good fit. I tried to soften the blow, explaining that if the team did well, we would all be recognized, maybe even all get fellowships. But she took it as a personal insult. A humiliation. She accused me of looking down on her, dropped out of university, and went home with her parents to be married off. After she left, I used my family's connections to pull in a staggering amount of seed funding and resources. We crushed the competition. Our entire team was offered the Dean's Fellowship, and we became rising stars in the tech startup scene. Three years later, I married Joss. By the time I was pregnant with our first child, Joss had taken over the reins of my family's company, and our own startup had just gone public. He was on top of the world, a celebrated mogul. He suggested a private celebration on a yacht, just the two of us. Then, when my back was turned, he kicked me into the sea. The blood from my womb, from our child, blossomed in the dark water like a horrifying crimson flower. I begged him to save our baby, but he just laughed, a cruel, sharp sound, and hurled a heavy block of stone towards my head. "If you hadn't been so damn selfish and forced Hailey out," he'd snarled, his voice a venomous hiss, "she wouldn't have been married off, pregnant, and beaten to death. You owe her this, Lila." Only in my last moments did I understand. He had hated me, truly hated me, for all those years. "Lila?" Joss’s sharp voice pulled me back to the present. He frowned, grabbing my arm. "Did you hear us? Hailey needs this more than you do. Just give her the spot." I wrenched my arm away, my gaze shifting from his impatient face to Hailey’s perfectly crafted expression of pitiful vulnerability. A cold, bitter laugh escaped my lips. "Let me get this straight," I said, my voice dripping with ice. "When we were forming this team, didn't we all agree? Whoever brings in the funding, whoever contributes the most, gets to be the leader. Now that I've secured the investors, you want to kick me to the curb?" Hailey’s eyes instantly welled with tears. "That's not what I mean, Lila! I just want a chance to stay in school. I'm from a poor family… If I don't get that fellowship, my parents will force me to go home and marry some old man. Please, just have some pity on me." And then, for dramatic effect, she sank to her knees before me. The theatrical gesture immediately drew the attention of everyone in the common room. Classmates started to drift over, their curiosity piqued. Hailey, sensing her audience, began to sob even more pathetically. "Lila, I don't want to go back to that dead-end town and marry some stranger! Please, don't force me to drop out of school!" The onlookers, hearing her desperate plea, turned on me. "Lila, what the hell are you doing? Why are you trying to force her to drop out? That’s unbelievably cruel." "Just because her family doesn't have money doesn't mean you can bully her like this!" "Wow, Lila. I knew your family was well-off, but I didn't think you were the type to throw your weight around. This is disgusting." Joss put a hand on my shoulder, his voice a low, patronizing murmur. "Lila, I know you can be a little… spoiled sometimes, but this is about Hailey's entire future. You can't ruin her life over something so small. It's just a title. What's the big deal? It's not like it means that much to you." His words ignited a firestorm in my chest. It's just a title? When you all used my leadership as an excuse to dump the work on me, saying, "You're the leader, you have to take responsibility," it was more than a title then. All those all-nighters I pulled writing the business plan, where was Hailey? When I had to humiliate myself, begging for meetings with dozens of venture capital firms, drinking until I threw up at networking events to secure our funding, where was Hailey then? And now, with the finish line in sight, when she wants to swoop in and claim the glory, it suddenly becomes "just a title." "I am not forcing her to do anything," I stated, my voice dangerously calm. "And let’s be clear: I secured every dollar of our funding and every partnership we have. On what grounds does she deserve to replace me?" Joss scoffed. "Oh, stop acting like you're the only reason we got funded, Lila. They invested because the team itself is brilliant. Because I'm on the team. Hailey could have done it just as easily. Hell, she probably could have raised even more." Hailey blushed, looking up at Joss with doe-eyed adoration. "Lila, you can't deny the strength of our team just to make yourself look more important. Everyone knows Joss is a financial prodigy. I'm sure the investors were betting on him, anyway." Joss preened, puffing out his chest. "Hailey's right. I was willing to let it slide before, but if you're going to be this selfish and try to ruin her future, I won't stand for it." I met his arrogant gaze and smiled, a slow, chilling curve of my lips. "Fine. She can have it." Joss’s face flooded with satisfaction. "See? That’s the Lila I know. You’re being reasonable. You’ll have plenty of other opportunities, but this is Hailey's only shot." I nodded agreeably. "Well then, good luck with your project." Hailey, sensing I was about to walk away, panicked. "Lila, wait. Even though you're not the leader anymore, you're still part of the team. So… all the work you were doing? You should probably keep doing it." I laughed, a sharp, incredulous sound. "Are you serious, Hailey? As team leader, I was responsible for over seventy percent of the project's workload. You fought tooth and nail to take my place, and now you expect me to keep doing the lion's share of the work? The audacity is staggering." Hailey’s face paled. "That's not what I meant… It's just, the competition is almost over. It's too late to change everything around now." "Oh, I know," I said, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper loud enough for the onlookers to hear. "You know the competition is almost over. That's why you picked this exact moment to swoop in and steal the credit, isn't it?" A ripple of understanding went through the crowd. Their expressions shifted from judgment to dawning realization. Murmurs of "schemer," "user," and "leech" started to circulate. Everyone had seen me running myself ragged for weeks, the first to arrive on campus and the last to leave. Hailey’s eyes filled with tears again, but this time, no one was buying it. Joss, ever her white knight, stepped in front of her, glaring at me. "Stop twisting her words, Lila! Hailey is just trying to do what's best for the team. She's the leader now, which means she's in charge. You'll do what she says. And if you refuse to follow orders, we'll have no choice but to kick you out." My eyes widened in mock horror, and then I burst into enthusiastic applause. "Excellent! Consider me gone. I quit." Joss froze, his face a picture of disbelief. "Lila, don't be impulsive. Hailey is a good person. She won't hold a grudge against you. If you walk away now, you'll regret it." A genuine, carefree smile spread across my face. "Regret it? Oh, I don't think so. I'm out. From this moment on, I have absolutely nothing to do with you or your little project." Without a backward glance, I turned and walked away, leaving their stunned, ugly faces behind me. A startup? Who needs the stress? Why grind my life away starting a business from scratch when I could just go home and inherit a multi-billion-dollar corporation? Sure, Joss was talented. Especially after my family had unknowingly funded his rise, burnishing his reputation until he was a golden boy in the finance department. But right now? He wasn't the legend he would become. His name alone couldn't open doors or command millions. The investment I had secured wasn't for him. It was just pocket money from my uncles, a little something to keep their favorite niece happy while she "played" at being an entrepreneur. That evening, I posted a simple update to my private social media story: "Stepping away from the incubator project. On to new things!" The comments from my family flooded in immediately. One uncle wrote: "Quitting already, sweetie? Don't worry, you can 'start' as many businesses as you want. Your dad and us uncles have plenty of cash for you to play around with. Failure is just part of the game!" Another chimed in: "Wait, you're not doing the startup anymore? Guess I'll pull my investment then." My cousin, Maria, who went to the same university, saw the post and added a comment explaining the whole sordid story of how I was bullied into quitting. The comment section exploded. My uncles, furious, declared they were pulling their funding that very night and threatened to blacklist Joss and his little group from ever getting a dime from anyone they knew. I didn't stop them. The next day, I went to class as usual. With the weight of the competition off my shoulders, I felt lighter, free to focus on my actual studies and prepare for grad school applications. After class, I got a call from my father. He wanted me to draft a proposal for a small partnership deal he was considering. It was a common exercise he gave me, a low-stakes way to learn the ropes of the family business. That afternoon, I took the finished proposal to my father's office at the Grant Corporation headquarters. He read it over, a pleased smile spreading across his face. "Excellent work, Lila. Sharp and concise." As I was leaving the skyscraper, someone bumped squarely into me. I looked up. It was Joss. His eyes fell to the file in my hands, and a smug grin lit up his face. "Lila. I knew you couldn't stay away," he said, his voice oozing with condescension. "You knew we had a meeting at Grant Corp today, didn't you? Did you prepare this new proposal for us?" He reached for the file, but I sidestepped him smoothly. "You're mistaken. This is for me." His brow furrowed. "Stop playing games, Lila. If you're not giving it to us, what are you going to do? Start your own company?" I paused. The thought hadn't even occurred to me. But… he was right. I had done almost all the work. I had the plan, the connections, the drive. Why couldn't I? A slow, dangerous smile spread across my face. "You know what, Joss? That's a great idea. I think I will." And with that, I walked away, ignoring the string of angry, sputtering curses he hurled at my back. Three days later, I officially submitted my own solo project proposal to the incubator program, with all the original funding now redirected to me. As I was leaving campus that afternoon, Joss and Hailey blocked my path.
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