Emily leaned in, mirroring the secrecy, eyes narrowing in curiosity. “No. What happened?”
Niya grit her teeth, pulling out her tablet and jabbing the screen. “That Amelia Jones? She just got handedanotherproject!”
“Another one?” Emily’s brows shot up. Her voice dropped to a mutter. “Didn’t she get accused of stealing the last one?”
“Exactly!” Niya hissed, clearly agitated. “You accused her of stealing it. And despite that, they still gave her another. And guess what? It’s the same project you were working on before you were fired!”
Emily’s eyes sharpened. “Which project? Has she started working on it yet?”
‘If she stole the last one,’ Emily thought to herself, ‘there’s no way she suddenly developed the skill to handle this one on her own.’
Niya tapped rapidly on her screen and turned it to show Emily. “Here. These are the designs she submitted for this new project.”
Emily took the tablet, flipping through the files.
Her eyes scanned the sketches—familiar curves, color blocking, a layout that pulled at something deep in her memory.
Her gaze caught the flaws instinctively, even before she’d fully taken in the design.
Piece by piece, her mind began stitching together fragments she hadn’t even realized she still remembered.
It was impossible to know these design flaws so easily.
Unless… she had created them herself.
“Thanks,” Emily said quietly, handing the tablet back to Niya. “I’ll look into it.”
She headed straight to her desk and pulled up archived folders, searching line by line.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she dug through old archives, design folders, and private backups. Her heart thumped louder with every click.
The deeper she searched, the more everything started connecting. Some of the designs Amelia submitted were eerily similar to ones Emily had created.
A sick feeling curled in her gut.
Then—one folder opened.
There it was.
A full set of designs. Each one identical to Amelia’s latest submission.
But the folder wasn’t under Amelia’s name. It was linked to an anonymous contributor.
‘Empress’.
Emily’s brows knitted together. The name didn’t ring any bells. She stared at it, uneasy, before opening a browser window and typing in the words: Empress jewelry designer.
She didn’t expect much.
But the second the page loaded, the screen exploded with headlines.
‘Empress Unveils Another World-Famous Necklace.’
‘The Mysterious Genius Behind the Luxury Empire.’
‘No One Has Seen Her, But Everyone Wants Her Designs.’
Dozens of blogs, magazines, and news articles flooded the results, each praising Empress with an almost obsessive reverence.
