Danielle didn't sleep that night.
Partly because she was still fuming, and partly because she refused to lose momentum. The offer she knew was coming had not yet arrived—and she was not the type to chase it.
At 4:38 a.m., it arrived.
Subject: Formal Offer – Horizon Holdings
From: [email protected]
She sat up in bed. Not from excitement. From sheer spiteful curiosity. She opened the email slowly, as though savoring the moment.
"Dos, hmmm second in line kasi siguro kaya Dos" muttered to herself staring at the email address in her screen.
***"Danielle,
We're offering you the position of Head of eCommerce Operations.
Start date: Immediately.
Base Rate: $2,000/month USD. Paid biweekly.
Remote. Access credentials will be sent separately.
Tech setup allowance: $500 one-time.
Monthly internet subsidy: $50
Completion bonus for first 90 days: $500
Quarterly KPI-based performance incentives, to be reviewed after onboarding.
Welcome aboard.
– Axel F.J. Real de Lara"***
Danielle stared at it.
$2,000.
A part of her laughed. A short, sharp exhale of disbelief.
After all that?
After the calls, the assessments, the tests she passed like they were riddles written for her?
After she single-handedly solved their customer retention leak and mapped out a basic CRM structure just from peeking at their backend?
They wanted to offer her $2,000?
She blinked hard, cracked her knuckles, and replied.
***"Axel,
Thank you for the offer.
It's declined.
I'm worth $3,500, and we both know it.
You wouldn't offer me a seat if I wasn't capable of running the whole table.
If you're not ready to invest, I'm not ready to accept.
Respectfully,
– Danielle Reyes"***
She hit send.
No shaking hands. No hesitations. No "I hope this doesn't sound rude" energy.
She meant every syllable.
The reply came three hours later.
No subject line. Just the message:
"Fine. $3,500. Start immediately."
Danielle blinked.
No emoji. No fluff. Just direct lines. Tidy. Commanding.
She read it twice. Then again.
I pushed. And it worked.
She didn't just negotiate her rate—she carved out a space no one thought she had the guts to claim.
Her hands trembled.
She'd read about moments like this in books—the kind where the underdog finally breaks the surface of the water, gasping, clawing toward a sky they didn't believe belonged to them.
But this was different.
This wasn't fiction.
This was a woman in her thirties, in a tiny apartment in Quezon City, surrounded by unpaid electric bills, plastic drawers missing handles, and a daughter who sometimes asked why spaghetti didn't taste like Jollibee's.
And yet, here she was.
"I did it," she whispered to herself.
Not just for the money. Not just for the job.
But because he—that man—would now have to work with her. Daily. Directly. No middlemen.
She'd rattled him. She could tell.
And that kind of power? That was rarer than any salary.
Then another message followed:
"You can and you will, huh?"
She tilted her head and smiled.
You felt that, didn't you? she typed back.
She didn't send it.
Instead, she replied simply:
"I accept."
And attached a screenshot of her signed contract before he even asked.
No fluff either. Let him match her energy.
Within seconds, the "Seen" icon appeared.
Her heart thudded.
Then:
"Welcome aboard, little girl."
No caps. No punctuation. Just those four words.
Little girl.
There it was again.
She smiled.
Most people called her that as a joke—because of her height, her voice, her soft-featured face that still got mistaken for a college student.
But when he said it, it didn't sound like a dismissal.
It sounded like a dare.
By 10:00 a.m., her inbox exploded.
Shopify. Amazon. Klaviyo. Slack. Monday.com. Acumatica. All under the name Dan Reyes.
She appreciated the subtlety.
She closed Ellenore's door with a kiss on her daughter's forehead, sat at the desk wedged between the fridge and the water dispenser, and opened her laptop.
Her chair creaked, but it held.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, eyes scanning dashboards like a commander surveying a battlefield.
First impression?
Chaos.
No naming conventions. No audit trails. Just floating spreadsheets with titles like "july-ish orders?" and "Use this maybe v3 (real)."
Ay, Diyos ko po. I expected misaligned proportions but not a mix of shit and more shit
Slack pings poured in. Polite greetings. A few cold ones. One that said: "Good luck lol."
Caden hmm. I have a feeling this guy will be both my friend and foe.
But none from Axel.
Of course.
So she got to work.
Three hours later, her first company-wide message went out.
From: Dan Reyes
Subject: Immediate Observations + Next Steps
Order discrepancies from Q2 needs reconciliation.
Monday.com needs urgent cleanup.
ERP workflows are conflicting with inventory tracking.
Sales team is duplicating customer outreach efforts.
We need a team huddle within 48 hours. Mandatory.
"This is fixable. But we'll need to move quickly."
– Dan as she breathes in the horrors of the company or so she thought.
Ten minutes later, a Slack DM popped up.
Axel de Lara: You're not subtle, are you?
She took a sip of her 3-in-1 coffee and typed:
Dan Reyes: Not when I'm fixing a mess.
Axel: This mess paid you above market.
Dan: This mess was underpricing me. I simply corrected the math.
Silence.
Until 10:12 a.m., when a Trello card appeared under her name.
[URGENT] – Check email threads with Caden – Vendor Compliance / Alleged False Reporting
Caden! She almost didn't recognize the name.
She clicked the thread.
A swarm of emails, all CC'd to Axel. Frantic back-and-forths. Caden, apparently—trying to pin a misreported shipment loss on a vendor in Poland.
No receipts. No chain of custody. Just keyboard panic.
She pieced it together in ten minutes, verified against the Acumatica logs, and fired a bullet-pointed breakdown to Axel.
"Let me know if you want me to draft the termination letter."
11:01 a.m., reply:
"You enjoy this too much."
"I enjoy justice. And clean records."
Later that afternoon, a new Monday.com task popped up under her name.
Overhaul Customer Journey. Good luck.
She laughed.
He thinks this is banter. Okay. Let's play.
In four hours, she restructured the entire sales funnel. Flagged dead-end email campaigns. Mapped missing touchpoints. Wrapped it all in a two-page PDF titled:
"Your customer journey is a murder mystery. And I, I needed to solve it."
No reply.
But she saw he opened it five minutes later.
And stayed online all night.
By midnight, Danielle's eyes were burning. Her spine ached.
But she couldn't sleep—not yet.
Not while her fingertips still buzzed with that particular tension.
The one before a storm.
It was a game now.
Each message. Each Trello card. Each "seen."
She studied his moves: silent, precise, always a step behind in reply but two steps ahead in implementation.
He wasn't a startup fool or a lazy exec.
He was dangerous.
Not because he was smart.
But because he saw people.
And she was one of the few he couldn't quite figure out yet.
The next morning, another message waited:
"Your vendor letter was clean. We'll use it. I added you to the 'sensitive' folder. Don't touch anything you can't explain in court."
She smiled.
"Noted. I don't touch anything without gloves anyway."
Another ping.
"You do realize you're insufferable, right?"
"And you hired me anyway. That says more about you."
"You're exhausting."
"And yet, I'm still cheaper than a full operations team. You're welcome."
"You remind me of someone."
She paused.
Puta, or should I say de puta! I'm this close to killing everyone who made a deliberate mistake, I mean how do they not know? A decade to perfect operations? It should have been more than enough, the R&D for example made miles in progress but the rest of the operations made miles of decline.
She typed:
"Should I be flattered or worried?"
No reply.
That evening, while stirring Lucky Me noodles over the stove, Ellenore burst into the small kitchen corner of Danielle's workspace.
"Mommy! Someone named Uncle Caden is calling you!" she announced, her small face lighting up with curiosity.
Danielle paused, the wooden spoon suspended mid-stir. Uncle Caden? The name was unfamiliar, but something about it made her tighten her grip on the spoon.
She wiped her hands quickly on a dish towel and hurried over to her laptop. The screen already showed a Slack notification: a huddle had been launched. Axel was there—camera on, but unmoving, silent as a statue.
The third participant, Caden, appeared onscreen. He was younger, with sharp eyes and an eagerness that bordered on desperation. His voice was quick and clipped, trying too hard to maintain professionalism as he explained the vendor situation.
"Look, the shipment loss — it's really a case of contextual misunderstanding. The vendor's reporting wasn't false; it was just..." He waved his hand vaguely, searching for the right words, "...a misinterpretation of the contract terms and logistics on their side."
Danielle's eyes narrowed slightly. She had spent hours going through the data. Every line of code, every log entry, every email. The "misunderstanding" was sloppy at best—a veil stretched too thin over a glaring error.
She clicked open her report and shared her screen. The document unfolded like a scalpel's path.
"Caden," she began, voice even but cold, "here's the timeline of events as logged by Acumatica. Notice the discrepancies in shipment confirmation times, vendor acknowledgments, and payment processing."
Her voice was calm, but the room felt charged as if the very air held its breath.
"Further," she continued, "the inconsistencies in the vendor's claims are not only unsupported but contradicted by system audit trails."
She paused, letting her words settle, then went point by point, walking the team through each data-backed bullet.
Her tone was deliberate and surgical, stripping away excuses with precision.
Caden's face tightened. He attempted to interject, but Danielle's steady gaze stopped him mid-sentence.
Axel remained quiet, his expression unreadable but focused.
When she finished, silence hung for a moment—thick and heavy.
Then, slowly, Axel unmuted.
"Thank you, Danielle. That will be all."
His tone was clipped, businesslike. No warmth. No gratitude for the extra effort.
He turned off his camera without a word, leaving Caden blinking in the awkward quiet.
Danielle clicked the "Leave call" button, the soft click echoing like a judge's gavel.
She shut the laptop with deliberate calm.
Ellenore peeked around the corner, eyes wide and questioning.
Danielle crouched down and smiled softly.
"Sometimes, sweetheart," she said, pulling her daughter close, "adults have to tell the truth even when it makes others uncomfortable."
Ellenore nodded seriously, like she understood.
Danielle reached for her noodles again, the simmering pot now a quiet reminder of the battle she'd just won—silent but decisive.
That night, Danielle opened her window wide, letting the warm, humid Manila air spill into her cramped apartment. The familiar scent of damp concrete and distant jeepney horns drifted in, mingling with the faint aroma of jasmine from a neighbor's potted plants.
She leaned against the window frame, eyes half-closed, and exhaled slowly, releasing the tight coil of tension wrapped around her chest.
It wasn't the offer that mattered.
It was how she'd chosen to respond.
She hadn't asked for $3,500 because she was greedy or desperate. She demanded it because she already was worth it—every late night, every battle fought unseen, every single moment spent clawing her way here.
And now?
Now they had to watch her prove it.
One click at a time. One email, one report, one challenge after another.
Axel de Lara admired her. He hated that he did. That grudging respect buried beneath the clipped replies and terse commands.
But admiration and irritation were siblings, two halves of the same restless coin.
And Danielle Reyes? She had met both head-on—and she wasn't done yet.
Not by a long shot.
She turned away from the window and sat back at her desk, fingers poised above the keyboard, ready to make her next move.
The game was just beginning.