Framed for Embezzlement by the Assistant? Watch Me Bankrupt the Entire Company!

"I suggest we immediately suspend all of Serena's permissions." Bella slammed a stack of bills onto the conference table. The papers slid across the mahogany surface, their sharp edges brushing against the back of my hand, leaving a faint white mark. Ten minutes ago, when the quarterly meeting first began, Eric had habitually pushed the final design proposal in front of me, tapping the table twice, waiting for my final confirmation. Now, that proposal was buried under this pile of bills. Bella clicked the presentation remote. The large screen at the end of the room lit up, displaying several magnified screenshots of expenses and a bold financial warning report. "On the 17th of last month, Central Park Michelin-starred restaurant, twelve thousand dollars." "On the 22nd, Mid-Levels Golf Club, thirty thousand dollars." Bella walked up to the screen, pointing at the numbers with righteous indignation. "Everyone, look at the reports in your hands. For the past five months, under the guise of procurement and business negotiations, Serena has incurred massive hidden expenses every single month. We are just a startup workshop. Our cash flow is about to be dragged down to the breaking point by these expenses!" The conference room was dead silent. The executives sitting across the long table either lowered their heads to look at their phones or stared at their coffee cups, wishing they could bury their heads under the table. Looking at them playing dead, I suddenly found it somewhat amusing. Instead of keeping silent for the sake of the big picture like I used to, I leaned back in my chair and tapped my fingertips lightly on the tabletop. "That twelve thousand dollars on the 17th of last month?" My gaze swept over David, the Vice President sitting across from me, my tone so calm it was chilling. "David, if I remember correctly, you personally opened those two bottles of Romanée-Conti to appease the South African diamond supplier who was threatening to cut off our supply. Tasted pretty good, didn't it?" David's hand, holding a pen, trembled violently, dropping the pen onto the table. His face flushed bright red, cold sweat instantly breaking out on his forehead. He didn't dare utter a word. I had no intention of letting them off the hook. My eyes shifted to the Business Director next to him. "The golf outing on the 22nd was to secure the tax-free quota for the second half of the year. Director, I even swiped my card for your caddie's tip that day. What, collective amnesia today?" The executives turned pale, and the air in the conference room seemed to freeze. Bella, who had been so arrogant just a moment ago, also froze, clearly not expecting me to tear off their masks right on the spot. I looked back at the big screen. Those expense screenshots were deliberately doctored; the edges were cropped cleanly, leaving only the venue and total amount. The client reception list that should have been below was gone, and the payment account information at the very bottom had also vanished. If they had shown the complete pictures, they would have seen that this money never came from the company's corporate account. Every single penny was charged directly to my personal credit card. For the past five months, I had been using my own money to fill the company's holes. "Serena!" Eric finally spoke up. He placed his hands folded on the table, his back straight. Instead of questioning those guilty executives, he looked at me coldly. "Bella pulled several all-nighters to make this report for the sake of the company's financial health. These accounts add up to no small sum. No matter who was present at the time, the fact is that the money was spent." I looked at him. When we started this business five months ago, he couldn't even afford the deposit for the equipment. I changed into cheap clothes, used my own card to pay for rent and entertainment bills, and lied to him that they were discounts from friends, carefully protecting his fragile ego. Now, he was holding the bills I had subsidized out of my own pocket, questioning why I was embezzling. There was no anger on his face from being deceived by the executives; instead, there was a sense of relief, as if he had finally found my weakness. "You owe everyone an explanation." Eric leaned forward. "No one should treat the company like an ATM. You are no exception." "You want an explanation?" I sneered. Seeing Eric back her up, Bella immediately regained her confidence. She tossed a few printed photos onto my side of the table. They were secretly taken photos. In the frame, I was walking into a luxuriously decorated private club. "Everyone works overtime in the workshop every day eating cold takeout, yet you take the money and amuse yourself in places like this!" Bella glared at me, putting on a highly principled facade. "Eric has been losing sleep every night trying to find investors. Do you dare say every penny you spent in these places was for the company?" I glanced at the photo and found it utterly ridiculous. "Amuse myself?" I picked up the photo and looked at Bella like she was an i***t. "That is the threshold of the Top Jewelry Guild. I waited inside for three hours that day just to get a meeting with the manager, begging him to grant the workshop sponsorship eligibility. Without that eligibility, you wouldn't even be able to touch the door of major investors. You call that amusing myself?" Bella took half a step back under my gaze, biting her lip and quibbling, "You say it's for the company, so it's for the company? Who knows what you actually did there! Incomplete bills mean there's a problem!" "These bills are indeed incomplete." I raised my head, looking past Bella, straight into Eric's eyes at the head of the table. If he were to ask "Where are the complete bills?" right now, I would pull up my mobile banking records and slap five months of personal expenditure history right onto this table. But he avoided my eyes. "The company must stop the bleeding first." Eric kept his head down, his voice tight, as if he had made some sort of decision. "Regardless, the financial warning is real." The last trace of my intention to save face for him completely dissipated at this moment. He didn't care where that money came from, or even what the truth was. He was just fed up with being overshadowed by me in the company. He desperately needed a reason to trample me down in public and prove that "he is the boss." "Understood." I nodded, stood up, and casually pushed that stack of incomplete bills back in front of him. "Since you have already decided on the charges, we can skip the process of me proving my innocence." I looked down at Eric condescendingly, no warmth left in my eyes. "Just say it directly. Making such a huge scene today, what do you want to take away from me?"