Chapter 1: My Reward
"Is this my reward? The reward for being a good man all my life?" The question echoes in my mind as I breathe gradually despite the sharp pain stabbing through my stomach.
I think as I'm lying on the ground, blood pooling around me from the gaping wound in my abdomen. My consciousness is slipping, and my body refuses to obey me.
It all started years ago. First, the HR department called me to tell me I was fired FIRED! And the reason? They claimed I was sexist.
Sexist, my ass! All I did was offer to help. What kind of idiot spends months on a task like renaming project files?
When I told her I could write a simple script in half an hour to rename the entire project's files according to the new standard, she ran straight to HR and called me sexist!
Just because I think she wasn't doing her job well? Just because I think it's better to make the work go faster so that others can do their job better? What kind of f*ckery is this!?
But that wasn't even the worst part. Oh no, the real shit came afterward. That day... I returned home early, hoping that seeing my wife and daughter's faces would have helped me after such a shitty day. But what did I find instead?
I found my wife, the woman I loved, cheating on me. And my daughter... the daughter I've loved and cherished with all my heart... turns out not to be mine. She's the child of my wife's ex-boyfriend.
I'll never forget it. My wife was my first love in high school. Back then, when I found out she was in a relationship with her ex, I stepped aside like a man, wishing her the best. After all, that man was rich, and I thought he'd take good care of her and be able to provide her what I couldn't.
Years later, when that man tossed her out like garbage, she came crawling back to me. And I forgave her. I forgave her because I still loved her. In the early days of our marriage, things were good. She was kind, supportive, and loving.
We even had a daughter... or so I thought. I never questioned why my daughter didn't resemble me. I assumed she must have inherited traits from her grandparents, whom I'd never met. Oh... what a fool I was.