The second I stepped through the front door, before I even had a chance to flip on the light, a pair of strong, muscular arms caught me and yanked me straight into an embrace. My whole body sank against a wide, solid chest. That familiar, crisp scent of pine instantly filled my senses.

A low, seductive chuckle rumbled right above my head. “Still playing hard to get, wifey? Be a good girl and take me off your blacklist, hm?”

I dug my elbow sharply into his ribs, shoving the clingy man away. “Hey there, ex-boss. Breaking and entering a female employee’s apartment in the middle of the dead of night is highly unprofessional.”

Li Shenhao rubbed his chest, offering a helpless, lopsided grin. “Now you’re playing the boss-and-employee roleplay? We have a bright red marriage certificate, you know. I’m your legally wedded husband—totally legitimate, fully approved by the state.”

“Come on, babe, stop being mad at me,” he coaxed, raising his hands in unconditional surrender. “Once this whole mess is over, I’m tossing that witch Yutong out on her ear. You know I’ve always respected and protected my female staff.”

My expression softened just a fraction, though I still let out a huff. “I don’t need you to step in; I’ll handle it myself. I’m not some delicate wildflower clinging to someone else for survival. Even without leaning on you, I can take care of myself just fine.”

Seeing that I was still holding a grudge, Shenhao doubled down on his charm, half-dragging, half-cuddling me toward the bedroom. “We’ve already signed the marriage certificate, so when are you finally going to introduce me to my parents-in-law?”

“Tomorrow at the office, I’m going to deal with Fatty Chen and make him pay through the nose. It’s all his fault—showing off in front of me and forcing me to spend the night sleeping on the couch trying to win my wife back.” He gritted his teeth, putting on a fiercely dramatic scowl.

I pulled my hand out of his grip and replied indifferently, “We’ll see tomorrow.” With that, I turned and walked away. His classic bishounen charm wasn’t working on me this time.

To be fair, if I weren’t the CEO’s wife—if I were just an ordinary, powerless female programmer—wouldn’t I have had to swallow that bitter pill of humiliation and discrimination in silence? At the end of the day, lax management was to blame; Shenhao had never cracked down hard enough on this toxic culture before.

If I didn’t use this opportunity to teach Yutong and Manager Chen a lesson they would never forget—the classic “kill the chicken to scare the monkeys”—this company’s rampant cronyism and talent-crushing politics would drag it straight into bankruptcy within six months.

The next day, Shenhao walked into the conference room with dark, bruised panda eyes, radiating a gloomy, murderous aura.

During the meeting, he tore Fatty Chen to shreds, ruthlessly zeroing in on the project’s severe delays and delivering a blunt warning: “If you can’t get it done, hand in your resignation and get out.” It was textbook corporate torture, perfectly justified and executed in broad daylight.

Terrified out of his mind, Fatty Chen tucked his tail between his legs and played the part of a model employee for a few days—right up until the final day when I wrapped up the program deployment and testing.

Watching the system launch successfully with the dashboard glowing a clean, solid green, Fatty Chen looked like he was about to burst into tears of pure joy. He practically begged me to write up a detailed maintenance guideline, which I graciously agreed to do. Once I confirmed that all the new rookies had read and understood the documentation, he waved them out of the office.

The second the door clicked shut, Chen’s expression flipped faster than a pancake. Gone was the timid, groveling posture of the past few days; he straightened his spine, adopting a sharp, condescending sneer.

“Ms. Zhang, you are officially no longer with the company.”

He tapped a finger impatiently on the desk. “I just noticed that you synced the entire source code repository over to Git. Let’s do this: I don’t want to make things difficult for you. Hand over full administrative ownership of that Git repository to me right now.”

“Otherwise, I’ll call the cops and have you arrested for stealing company technology and corporate assets. You won’t be able to talk your way out of that if your life depended on it. Do yourself a favor and hand over that Git access!”

Convinced he had me cornered, Chen puffed out his chest with smug, threatening triumph, trying to bully me into a panic.

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. How many times a day was this fat idiot going to act like a walking clown and crack me up?

As for that Git repository, leaving aside the countless sleepless nights and lost hair I poured into it over the years, the core framework alone—which I had researched and written entirely from scratch, never once published on the open market—had a commercial value running into the millions. The intellectual property rights belonged entirely to me. What kind of shameless delusion made him think he could just open his mouth and demand I hand over what was legally mine?

“In your dreams! Are you out of your mind? Talk about a toad wanting to eat swan meat! I wrote every single line of that source code with my own two hands. Just because you say it belongs to the company doesn’t magically make it yours!”

Chen immediately bristled. “Your code repository contains company projects! I have every right to suspect you’re leaking proprietary technology to undermine the company. Plus, you wrote it during working hours—all labor output belongs to the company!”

Ah, I got it. The fat bastard was drooling over the newly restructured upgrade version I had just finished.

“Are you kidding me right now? Even if it belonged to the company, what does it have to do with a parasite like you? You even had the nerve to demand administrative control of my Git? Did they skip teaching you what the word ‘shame’ means?”

I made my disgust crystal clear. “Don’t talk about ownership transfer—you don’t even qualify to have your account added as a basic viewer, Boss! You’d better hope you reincarnate with a brain in your next life so you can code it yourself!”

I deliberately raised my voice, every single word ringing loud and clear right through the door into the outer office. From behind the partition, a muffled snort of laughter broke out, instantly shattering Chen’s intimidating, aggressive bluff into a pathetic, humiliating joke.