Now I know why brands don't want to work with Indian Agencies | i will not promote

So this happened recently and it's got me Thinking a bit. A friend of mine, freelancer with 4+ years experience, got approached by my employer. Wanted to bring him on retainer, monthly, for two of his businesses one being the agency I work at (where I'm the lead designer). Dude grinded hard Made a whole month's worth of content super fast Everything got approved, no complaints Then payday comes and my employer just goes: "Your contribution to the agency was nothing, I'm not paying you for that." Which is straight up not true. He ended up only getting half the payment and quit the next month. Now I'm sitting here thinking... can he pull the same move on me? I'm the one who built and maintains the whole AI-powered content pipeline that lets him serve his clients in the first place I also do all the branding work, most of the time with barely any brief, and still deliver stuff that looks premium and put together It will be really hard for him to replace me because the work I put in will at least take 6 months for someone else to match, both in effort and in the amount of thinking that goes into it. I know this might not be the case with every agency founder out there, but stuff like this really messes with your reputation and the quality of work you get in this industry. Honestly just trying to figure out my next move here. Anyone dealt with something like this before? What would you do?