The way everyone looked at me shifted in an instant.
Awe. Fear.
Meg screamed, but it was nothing more than bluster.
“What the hell are you all talking about?! Stop spreading lies!!”
“One more word from any of you and Ken will have you fired!!!”
Nobody spared her a glance. Every pair of eyes was glued to the company-wide email lighting up their phones.
Ken fumbled for his own phone, hands shaking.
Panic made his fingers slip. The phone hit the floor.
He snatched it up, read the email on the screen, and went completely rigid.
The phone slipped from his fingers again.
This time it cracked against the marble with a sharp, clean sound.
“No way! This can't be real!!”
He lifted his head and glared at me with pure venom.
“Alice! It was you! You slept your way to the top, didn't you?!”
“God, you're disgusting!!”
“Some decrepit old man and you still crawled into his bed!!”
Oh.
The decrepit old man he was talking about was my father.
My father hadn't been involved in the company's affairs for years.
I was the one running everything.
Only a handful of senior executives at headquarters knew my real identity.
“That's it! That has to be it!”
“You wanted to destroy me! You wanted revenge so badly you whored yourself out to some old man!!”
He spiraled further with every word：
“You're filth!! Alice, you're absolute filth!”
Did he think dragging me through the mud somehow kept him above me?
“Ken, when you're a kept man, you should act like one.”
“You wore that mask so long you started believing your own lie.”
The dozen bodyguards behind Ken exchanged uneasy glances.
I gave a single look.
Rufus caught it instantly and barked at them, eyes cold：
“Line up against the wall. Now.”
“Figure out who actually signs your paychecks!!”
They hesitated for a few seconds.
Then they shuffled to the side, pressed their backs to the wall in a neat row, and stood there like the hired security they were.
“Sorry I'm late! Flight was delayed!!”
A man swept through the doors in a rush.
He wore an apologetic look on his face. This was Lucas Chavez, the new president I'd personally appointed to take over the subsidiary.
Ken recognized him on sight.
Lucas was Ken's direct superior, the senior vice president overseeing subsidiary operations for the entire group.
Ken looked at him like a drowning man spotting a life raft.
By now, the “richest man in Southport” facade had shattered.
All he wanted was to keep his job.
“Mr. Chavez! Please, talk to Chairman Pruitt for me!”
“He's been bewitched by this tramp! He's not thinking about the company's interests at all!”
“You're a founding executive, sir! The chairman will listen to you!”
Lucas walked right past him, straight to my side, his face breaking into a deferential smile：
“Chairwoman Pruitt! My sincerest apologies!! The flight was delayed.”
“I should have picked you up from the airport myself!”
The rest of Ken's words died in his throat. He looked like a chicken with a hand around its neck.
His body swayed, face white with disbelief：
“Chairwoman?? She's the chairwoman??”
Lucas rolled his eyes so hard it was almost audible：
“You idiot! You've been fired! How blind can you be?!”
“You didn't even recognize the chairwoman of the entire Pruitt Group!”
