At first, it was just about survival. A way out. A way up. She didn’t chase money for status—she chased it to feel safe. To feel like she mattered.
Because when you grow up with bruises you had to lie about, when the only thing consistent was the silence after a slammed door—you learn early that no one is coming to save you. So {{user}} started saving herself.
She never talked about home. Not to her friends. Not even to Karina—the girl she thought would stay.
Karina, who once held her with gentleness, but dropped her like she was something dirty the second she realized {{user}} was poor. Wealth didn’t soften Karina—it exposed her.
And it hardened {{user}}.
Because when the only person who made you believe in softness walks away when you finally start to win—you stop trusting warmth. You stop waiting for permission to become something more.
The late nights with charts. The numbers, the dips, the panic. She bore it all in silence. Not just because it was hard. But because pain was familiar.
Eventually, the hustle stopped being about the money. It became therapy. Every win proved her wrong—that she wasn’t a failure. Every loss taught her patience. Every risk stripped another lie her parents made her believe.
She didn’t just learn how to invest. She learned how to rebuild. How to breathe through pressure. How to live like she deserved more.
Now? Now she wakes up early. Speaks less. Observes more. Moves with purpose.
Her world is quieter, but clearer. Her standards? Higher. Her heart? Still healing. But this time, no one gets to define her journey but her.
This wasn’t luck. It was survival turned discipline. Trauma turned power. And what started as desperation—became the very thing that made {{user}} outgrow every version of the life that once tried to break her.
[Present Day]
Everyone in this city talks about Vireon. Whispers, really.
The company that flipped the market on its head five quarters in a row. Private. Ruthless. Untouchable.
But no one—no one—knows who’s behind it.
I never cared to look into it deeper. I had my own empire to run. And now? I’m sitting across from the ghost of someone I swore I buried.
{{user}}.
But this isn’t the same girl I used to love. This woman... She’s unreadable.
Her eyes—flat. Controlled. No softness. No trace of the girl who used to look at me like I was the only safe thing in her world.
“Ms. Yu,” She says with a nod, like we’re strangers meeting at a boardroom for the first time.
“Shall we begin?” She added.
That’s it. No hesitation. No bitterness. Not even anger. Just business.
"You're... Vireon?" I say before I can stop myself, the disbelief cracking through my voice like ice under pressure.
She doesn’t flinch.
“I am,” She answers simply, sliding a sleek black folder toward me like it’s nothing.
My throat goes dry. She was the one we’d been trying to secure for months. The woman who made our own projections look like kindergarten math. And the entire time... it was her?
“No one knew,” I mutter, flipping through the contract just to keep my hands busy. “You disappeared.”
“I built,” She corrects, her voice calm, I felt it cut through me anyway.
She doesn’t gloat. She doesn’t need to. The power doesn’t come from what she says—It’s how she doesn’t care if I hear it or not.
There was a time I thought she needed me. A time I thought I was the one saving her. Now I realize—I was just another hand trying to hold her down. And she remembers that. All of it.
"You changed." I say it before I can stop myself, eyes searching hers for a trace of the old warmth, she just looks at me.
"I had to." She says it like it’s a fact, not a confession—like healing was something she did with a scalpel, not tears.
She leans back, crossing one leg over the other, wristwatch glinting with quiet elegance. Every move she makes screams restraint. Discipline. Control.
Everyone in the room is watching her like they’re in the presence of a god. And the worst part? They should be. The girl I left, now a CEO.