MY EX'S NEW BOSS

CHAPTER 2: THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL

I didn't go home after graduation.

I couldn't. How do you tell your mother that the man she called "my son-in-law" just drove off with your best friend?

I sat on the cold steps behind the law building until my gown was dirty. People walked past me taking pictures. I watched their happy lives like a ghost.

My phone rang. Peter.

My heart jumped like a fool. He was calling to apologize.

I answered. "Peter?"

"Grace, did you leave your files in my car? Lindiwe says there are printed papers in the back seat."

Papers. My research. My final year thesis — _Legal Protection for Township Entrepreneurs._ I had worked on it for 11 months. My professor said it could become policy one day.

"Don't touch it," I whispered. "Please."

He laughed. Not cruel, just... tired of me. "You have a degree now, Grace. You don't need school papers anymore. Lindiwe said she might need it for a presentation at Smith. It's just papers."

Just papers.

I hung up. And I ran.

I ran to the bus stop, gown still on, degree folder banging against my leg. I took two taxis to Smith Attorneys in Sandton. The building was glass and gold. Everything I wasn't.

Lindiwe was outside, smoking, wearing a blazer that looked exactly like the one I wanted to buy.

She saw me and didn't even flinch.

"You followed us?" she said.

"My research. Peter said you have it."

She blew smoke. "Grace, be serious. You think I got retained because I'm pretty? I got retained because I have STRATEGY. Your thesis? I presented it to the senior partner this morning as MY proposal for their new Pro Bono Township Project. He loved it.

My blood went cold.

"You... you presented MY work as yours?"

"I improved it," she said, flicking ash near my graduation shoes. "You wrote it like a church sermon. All 'God is within her.' I rewrote it like a lawyer. That's why they want me and not you. You have no killer instinct, Grace. That's why Peter left you. That's why no firm will hire you."

I wanted to slap her. I wanted to scream. But years of being the "good girl" kept my hands at my sides.

"God will punish you," was all I managed to say.

She laughed in my face. "God? God just helped me get your man and your job in one day. Where was your God?"

Inside the glass building, I saw him. Peter. He was carrying a box of files for her. Like an assistant. Like a boyfriend who was proud.

He saw me through the glass. Our eyes met.

He quickly looked away.

That was the moment I died. Not when he dumped me. But when he saw me being humiliated and chose to look away.

I walked away from that building barefoot. I had taken off my heels because my feet were bleeding.

I got home at 9 PM. My mother had cooked. She had bought a cake that said "CONGRATULATIONS LAWYER GRACE!"

I couldn't tell her. I went straight to my bedroom and locked the door.

That night I did something I never thought I would do.

I opened my laptop and typed: _How to disappear and start over._

I applied for jobs I didn't want. Waitress. Receptionist. Anything that was not in Durban, where everyone knew me as "the girl who was dumped on graduation day."

At 2:14 AM, an email came in.

Not a job. A rejection. Again. The 188th.

I screamed into my pillow until my throat bled.

Then I opened my graduation folder. I took out that c*m Laude certificate. The one my mother had framed in her mind for years.

And I tore it in half.

My mother knocked. "Grace? Is everything okay?"

I looked at the torn degree on the floor. At the girl in the mirror with a ruined gown and mascara running.

"No, Mama," I whispered. "Nothing is okay. But it will be."

I didn't know how. I just knew I could not stay this girl anymore.

The girl who cries in parking lots. The girl whose best friend steals her man and her work. The girl who is forgotten.

If Peter wanted a woman with character, with strategy, with power...

I would become her.

Three years later, I did.

---

*PRESENT DAY — JOHANNESBURG — 3 YEARS LATER*

The boardroom on the 32nd floor of Mthembu Holdings was silent.

Twenty men in suits were waiting for me.

I walked in, 5 minutes late on purpose. Red bottom heels. Black power suit. Hair straight. No more church-girl curls.

"Sorry, gentlemen. Traffic."

I was no longer Grace the jobless graduate. I was Grace Mokoena, Executive Assistant to the CEO, the youngest deal closer in the company.

The CEO hadn't arrived yet. My boss. Ethan Mthembu.

32 years old. Ruthless. Handsome in a scary way. He never smiled. He never dated. The whole office said he had no heart.

Except with me. For some reason, he listened to me.

My phone buzzed. Reception: _"Miss Mokoena, there is a man from Smith Attorneys here for the Township Project contract. He says it's urgent. His name is Peter Khumalo."_

My hand froze on the boardroom door.

Peter.

After three years of silence. After 1,095 days of becoming a woman he would never recognize.

He was downstairs. Begging to see MY boss. To get MY signature.

I smiled. For the first time in three years, I smiled like Lindiwe.

"Send him up," I told reception. "And tell him to bring his boss. The one who stole my work."

I opened the boardroom door.

And fate walked in right behind me.

Ethan Mthembu, my CEO, looked at my face and said, "Who made you smile like that? I want to fire him."

I looked up at him and said, "You can't. He's about to walk through that door to beg me for his career."

The elevator dinged.

*TO BE CONTINUED.*