Chapter 3: The Name on the Screen

Monday morning arrived with the kind of gray, oppressive sky that matched my mood perfectly. The weekend had crawled by with agonizing slowness, every hour feeling like a countdown to something I couldn't quite name. I'd caught myself checking my phone obsessively, scrolling through news about the merger, reading employee forums where people speculated about layoffs and restructuring.

But underneath the corporate anxiety, something else was building—a electric anticipation that made my hands shake as I swiped my badge at the office entrance.

The lobby buzzed with nervous energy. Employees clustered around the coffee stations and elevator banks, speaking in hushed tones about the changes. New corporate banners hung from the ceiling, displaying the merged company's logo in sleek, modern fonts that probably cost more than my monthly salary.

"Big day," Chloe said, appearing beside me as I waited for the elevator. She looked as tired as I felt, dark circles under her eyes suggesting she'd slept about as well as I had.

"Yeah. New systems, new processes." I tried to keep my voice level, professional. "Should be interesting to see how it all works."

The elevator arrived, and we squeezed in with a handful of other employees. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mergers were never kind to the rank and file—we all knew that much.

At my desk, I found the expected array of IT setup emails. New login credentials, system access instructions, mandatory training modules. But buried in the routine corporate bureaucracy was the message I'd been waiting for:

"Employee Directory System – Now Live! Access your complete organizational information through the new TechNova portal. Full employee directory, org charts, and communication tools are now available."

My cursor hovered over the link for a long moment. Once I clicked it, there would be no going back. The mystery that had haunted my phone for nearly a decade might finally be solved—or I might discover that my growing suspicion was just paranoid delusion brought on by too many late nights and too much stress.

I clicked.

The new portal loaded with corporate efficiency—clean, modern, everything in its proper place. The organizational chart dominated the center of the screen, a complex web of names, titles, and reporting relationships. I could see my own name there, a small node in the vast corporate machine, connected to my immediate team.

And above us all, listed as "Project Manager - Development Team Seven," was a single entry that made my blood run cold:

Bitsah Verma

For a moment, I couldn't breathe. The name sat there on the screen, innocuous black text on a white background, but it might as well have been written in fire. My vision tunneled, the edges of the monitor going fuzzy as the implications crashed over me like a tidal wave.

Bitsah Verma.

The ghost from my phone. The man whose creditors had been calling me for years. The scammer who'd fled his hometown leaving a trail of broken promises and empty bank accounts.

He wasn't a ghost at all.

He was my boss.

My hands were shaking now, actually trembling as I stared at the screen. All those late nights listening to his victims vent their rage into my voicemail. All those careful notes in my black notebook, cataloguing the damage he'd done. All those blocked numbers, each one representing someone whose life he'd ruined.

And for the past eight months, I'd been working for him.

"Jesus Christ," I whispered, not caring if anyone heard me.

The accent. How had I missed it? That slight North Indian inflection that colored his speech when he got angry. I'd heard the same accent in dozens of those phone calls, people from his hometown trying to track him down. The arrogance, the casual cruelty, the way he seemed to take pleasure in other people's distress—it all made perfect sense now.

I clicked on his profile, hoping for more information. The company directory was frustratingly sparse—just his name, title, and corporate email address. But it was enough. More than enough.

My mind raced backward through months of meetings, trying to see him through this new lens. The expensive suits that never quite fit right—probably bought with money he couldn't afford, maintaining an image of success while dodging creditors. The way he always seemed slightly on edge, looking over his shoulder. The paranoia disguised as management style.

He wasn't just a bad boss. He was a fugitive hiding in plain sight.

"Alex?" Chloe's voice seemed to come from very far away. "You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

I almost laughed at the irony. "Something like that."

She moved closer, lowering her voice. "What is it?"

I glanced around the office, making sure no one else was listening. Bits himself was nowhere to be seen—probably in one of his endless meetings with senior management, positioning himself for whatever changes the merger would bring.

"Can you keep a secret?" I asked.

Chloe nodded, her expression growing serious.

"Look at this." I turned my monitor slightly so she could see the org chart. "Look at his full name."

She leaned in, squinting at the screen. "Bitsah Verma. Okay, so that's his real name. What's the big—" She stopped, her eyes widening as understanding dawned. "Wait. Bitsah? That's not exactly a common name."

"No, it's not."

I could see her putting the pieces together, the same way I had moments before. The slight accent. The barely contained aggression. The expensive lifestyle that didn't quite match his visible income.

"Alex," she said slowly, "what aren't you telling me?"

I made a decision that would change everything. Pulling out my phone, I scrolled to the blocked numbers list—hundreds of entries accumulated over years of phantom calls. I showed her the screen.

"For the past decade," I said quietly, "I've been getting calls meant for someone named Bitsah. Debt collectors, angry customers, people he scammed. I kept track of all of them."

Chloe's face went pale. "You're saying our boss is..."

"A con man. A scammer. Someone who burned through an entire town's worth of victims before disappearing." I could hear the anger creeping into my voice now, years of frustration finally finding a target. "And now he's here, hiding behind a corporate title, making our lives miserable while his past tries to catch up with him."

She stared at the org chart, then at my phone, then back at me. "This is insane. You're sure it's the same person?"

"The name, the accent, the hometown—it all fits. How many Bitsah Vermas could there be?"

"But that means..." She trailed off, the implications sinking in.

"That means he's been running from his debts this whole time. Playing the successful project manager while his creditors tear apart his old life looking for him."

Chloe sank into her chair, looking stunned. "What are you going to do?"

That was the question, wasn't it? For years, I'd been a passive observer of someone else's drama, dutifully blocking numbers and filing away other people's anger. But now the drama had invaded my life directly. Now it was personal.

I thought about this morning's team meeting, where Bits had spent twenty minutes berating Jake for a minor formatting issue in a status report. I thought about Chloe working until midnight to perfect designs that would never be good enough. I thought about all of us walking on eggshells, afraid to speak up, afraid to push back.

And I thought about my notebook, sitting in my desk drawer. One hundred and fifty-three entries. One hundred and fifty-three people who wanted to find Bitsah Verma. One hundred and fifty-three victims who deserved closure.

"I'm going to make some phone calls," I said finally.

Chloe looked alarmed. "Alex, be careful. If he finds out you know—"

"He won't find out. Not yet." I minimized the org chart and pulled up a spreadsheet, making it look like I was working on project documentation. "But after years of answering his phone calls, I think it's time I started making some of my own."

The rest of the day passed in a haze. I went through the motions of work—responding to emails, updating code repositories, attending the usual pointless meetings—but my mind was elsewhere. Every time I looked at Bits, I saw him differently. Not just as the tyrannical boss who made my professional life miserable, but as the architect of so much broader damage.

How many small business owners had trusted him with their savings? How many families had been left scrambling to pay bills after he disappeared with their money? How many elderly people had fallen for his smooth talk and expensive suits?

The anger was building now, a slow burn that had been simmering for months finally finding fuel. All those nights staying late to fix his impossible deadlines. All those mornings dreading his passive-aggressive emails. All those team meetings where he crushed morale with surgical precision.

He'd been hiding from justice for years, but justice had been sitting in my desk drawer the whole time, catalogued in careful handwriting, waiting for the right moment.

As the workday ended and the office emptied out, I sat alone at my desk, staring at the organizational chart still open on my screen. Bitsah Verma, Project Manager, Development Team Seven.

But not for much longer.

I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the first of my three notebooks, running my finger down the list of blocked numbers. So many voices, so much anger, all searching for the same man.

Well, now I knew exactly where to find him.

The hunt was over. The reckoning was about to begin.