The moment he said, “Don’t worry, your work lives on with us,” I smiled and muted my mic. He thought that sentence ended me. What he didn’t know was that every system behind his shiny launch still answered to my name. I stared at my contract, heart pounding, and whispered, “You just fired the wrong person.” That was the exact second the balance of power flipped.
I knew Leo was going to be a problem the moment he called my command-line interface “adorable,” like it was a rescue kitten instead of the thing holding seventy percent of the company’s revenue together. He walked into the Monday all-hands like a TED Talk had gotten drunk at Equinox—tight shirt, tighter haircut, and a…