“Nam Nhu, stop being a child.”
Tri Ngo’s voice was calm.
The room fell silent.
I looked at the glass on the table.
Then at the two bodyguards blocking the door.
Finally, I looked at the man I had loved for seven years.
“I said I can’t drink.”
General Manager Vuong laughed.
“Assistant Hua, it’s only a few glasses.”
Bach Thi Thi whispered:
“Assistant Hua, if you’re really uncomfortable, then forget it…”
Tri Ngo immediately looked at her.
“You don’t need to worry.”
That gentle tone made something inside me finally go quiet.
I took out my phone.
“Move.”
The bodyguards hesitated.
Tri Ngo frowned.
“Nam Nhu.”
I looked directly at him.
“I’m pregnant.”
His fingers froze around the glass.
Everyone became silent.
Bach Thi Thi’s face changed.
Tri Ngo stood immediately.
“What did you say?”
“I said I’m pregnant.”
He stared at me.
“You never told me.”
“You knew.”
His expression stiffened.
Of course he knew.
That was supposedly why he had removed my name from the company.
For the baby.
For my health.
Yet he’d just blocked the door because I refused to drink.
I placed my employee badge on the table.
“From this moment, I’m no longer your special assistant.”
Then I walked toward the exit.
This time, Tri Ngo personally ordered the bodyguards aside.
He followed me into the hallway.
“Nam Nhu!”
I didn’t stop.
He caught my wrist.
“Why didn’t you tell them earlier?”
I laughed.
“Why should I need to announce my pregnancy to a room full of clients before my husband respects the word no?”
His face turned pale.
“I didn’t know you were serious.”
“You never do.”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
There it was again.
The sentence he’d used whenever my pain became inconvenient.
I removed his hand.
“Tomorrow my lawyer will contact you.”
“For what?”
I looked at him.
“The agreement you signed.”
His eyes narrowed.
“What agreement?”
“The divorce agreement.”
For several seconds, Tri Ngo genuinely couldn’t understand.
Then his expression changed.
“You tricked me?”
“No.”
“I put it in front of you.”
“You said sign, so I signed!”
“Yes.”
“You knew I wasn’t reading it.”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened.
“Nam Nhu, enough.”
I smiled faintly.
“You said whatever I wanted, you would agree because I’m your wife.”
I stepped backward.
“Thank you for keeping your word.”
The next morning, I boarded my flight to Kenya.
Alone.
For years, I had kept a photograph of the Great Migration as my phone wallpaper.
Tri Ngo always promised:
“When things calm down.”
“When the company stabilizes.”
“Next year.”
Now there was no next year.
There was only me.
Standing beneath an enormous African sky, I realized how small my old life had become.
I stayed within the travel limits recommended for my pregnancy and spent most of the trip resting, watching the landscape from safe guided areas.
For the first time in years, nobody called me to prepare documents.
Nobody asked me to buy lunch.
Nobody handed me a glass and expected me to sacrifice my health for a business agreement.
My phone contained forty-three missed calls from Tri Ngo.
I answered none.
Then my lawyer called.
“We found a buyer for your twenty-percent stake.”
“Who?”
“Yuan Capital.”
I knew the name.
Tri Ngo’s largest competitor.
I smiled.
“Sell.”
Three days later, Tri Ngo discovered what I’d done.
His message arrived immediately.
NAM NHU, CALL ME.
Then:
YOU CAN’T SELL THOSE SHARES WITHOUT DISCUSSING IT WITH ME.
I forwarded both messages to my lawyer.
The answer was simple.
The shares were mine.
Purchased years earlier when Tri Ngo Design Company was nearly bankrupt.
Back then, he had begged me to invest my savings.
I had sold an apartment inherited from my grandmother.
Twenty percent.
Later, when the company became successful, everyone remembered Tri Ngo as the brilliant founder.
Nobody remembered the woman who had paid salaries during the worst six months.
I hadn’t minded.
I loved him.
That had been my greatest weakness.
And perhaps my greatest lesson.
Without me, the secretary’s office lasted eleven days before problems began.
Bach Thi Thi was charming.
She was also inexperienced.
She missed an amendment in a major contract.
Scheduled two clients for the same private dinner.
Sent confidential presentation materials to the wrong department.
None of those mistakes destroyed the company.
But they revealed something Tri Ngo had ignored for years.
My job had never consisted of carrying coffee and drinking for him.
I had been managing the machinery behind his success.
The colleagues I’d trained began calling me privately.
I told them the same thing.
“Do your jobs properly. Don’t fight anyone for me.”
I didn’t need revenge.
Reality was doing enough.
Two months later, I returned.
My pregnancy was progressing normally.
The divorce process was moving forward.
And Yuan Capital had officially completed the purchase of my shares.
Tri Ngo was waiting outside my lawyer’s office.
His eyes immediately dropped to my belly.
“Nam Nhu.”
I walked past him.
“Five minutes.”
“No.”
“Please.”
That word stopped me.
Tri Ngo rarely said please.
I turned.
He looked exhausted.
“Come home.”
“No.”
“I fired Bach Thi Thi.”
“That has nothing to do with me.”
“She caused too many problems.”
I almost smiled.
“So now that she’s inconvenient, you remember me?”
“No.”
He stepped closer.
“I realized how much you were doing.”
That sentence should have made me happy years ago.
Now it only sounded late.
“You realized how useful I was.”
His face stiffened.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then tell me something.”
I looked directly at him.
“If Thi Thi had been perfect at my job, would you be standing here?”
He couldn’t answer.
That was my answer.
Our divorce became final several months later.
Tri Ngo tried to persuade me repeatedly.
He offered money.
Property.
A new position.
Even the Kenya trip again.
I declined everything that wasn’t legally mine.
I gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
Her surname was Hua.
Tri Ngo was allowed to fulfill his responsibilities as her father under clear boundaries.
But my marriage remained over.
I thought that would be the end of Bach Thi Thi too.
I was wrong.
Six months after my daughter’s birth, my lawyer called.
“Do you remember why Tri Ngo originally approved the personnel reduction?”
“To replace me.”
“That’s what we assumed.”
My lawyer placed a document in front of me.
“It wasn’t.”
I frowned.
The reduction proposal had been submitted before Bach Thi Thi joined the company.
My name had already been marked.
“Who submitted it?”
“The board’s compensation committee.”
That made no sense.
Then I saw the attachment.
Twenty-percent shareholder: Hua Nam Nhu.
Employment termination triggers mandatory internal review of shareholder participation agreement.
My expression changed.
“What participation agreement?”
My lawyer slid another document across the table.
It contained my signature.
Except I had never signed it.
According to the document, if my employment ended under specific conditions, Tri Ngo Design Company received the first right to repurchase my twenty-percent stake at its original investment value.
Not its current market value.
Original value.
A fraction of what Yuan Capital had paid me.
My blood turned cold.
“Tri Ngo forged this?”
“We don’t know.”
There was another signature beneath mine.
Bach Thi Thi.
Witness.
I stared at the date.
Three months before she supposedly started working at the company.
“That isn’t possible.”
“There’s more.”
My lawyer opened a security record.
Bach Thi Thi had entered company headquarters seven times before her official hiring date.
Always after business hours.
Always using executive-level temporary access.
Authorized by someone.
Not Tri Ngo.
The authorization belonged to the vice chairman.
Tri Ngo’s uncle.
Then everything shifted.
My dismissal.
Bach Thi Thi appearing at exactly the right moment.
The pressure to leave quietly.
Even Tri Ngo believing he was replacing me for my own good.
Maybe he hadn’t created the plan.
Maybe his arrogance had simply made him the easiest person to manipulate.
My lawyer looked at me.
“Selling those shares may have protected you.”
“How?”
“If you’d remained a shareholder until the termination became effective, they could have tried to activate this agreement.”
“And because I sold first?”
“The clause became useless.”
I stared at the forged signature.
I had thought leaving Tri Ngo was the biggest decision of my life.
But apparently, while I was fighting to save my marriage, someone else had been trying to remove me from a company I had helped build.
Then my lawyer handed me one final photograph.
It showed Bach Thi Thi entering a restaurant eight months earlier.
The man waiting for her wasn’t Tri Ngo.
It was his uncle.
And on the table between them was a copy of my original share certificate.
Suddenly, the new secretary who had supposedly stolen my husband’s attention didn’t look like my real enemy at all.
She looked like someone who had been hired to make sure I became angry enough to walk away from everything.
