Chapter 2
751 Words
When I chased out the door, there was nothing to see.
Nothing but Jacob's fans crowding the entrance.
They stood gripping light boards and support banners, and when they spotted me, their eyes were full of scrutiny and outright hostility.
"Ms. Roberts, the car can't get through here. Let's go over there."
Alina hurried over and reminded me in a low voice.
I nodded, and with her help, I made my way through the crowd and got into the car.
Leaning back against the seat, two faces floated through my mind.
The Jacob of now, and the Jacob I saw the first time we met.
They didn't seem all that alike anymore.
My phone suddenly vibrated.
It was a text message from Jacob.
Jacob: [I was out of line with what I said today.]
Jacob: [But Claire, I'm no longer the nobody you can summon and dismiss at will.]
Jacob: [There's no need for any unnecessary contact between us.]
My fingers twitched slightly, and the emotions that had welled up the moment I saw that figure came flooding in all at once.
Claire: [Coming back to the villa tonight?]
I acted as if I hadn't seen those words he sent and still asked him the way I always used to.
There was no reply from him.
But I didn't really care anyway.
Suddenly, Alina, in the passenger seat, spoke anxiously. "Ms. Roberts, Jacob's team just unilaterally announced that they are terminating all cooperation with us. They also said..."
Alina glanced at my expression, hesitating whether to continue.
"They also said that you have long used money to coerce him, forcing him to do things he didn't want to do. Now he has finally broken free from your control and gone independent."
Jacob had just won the Best Actor award, and he was riding an enormous wave of public favor. A statement like this, coming from his own mouth, didn't take much imagination to know what kind of storm it would stir up.
Some people online even dug up photos of his struggling early days in the industry, when he was scrambling just to get by.
Then, regardless of the facts, they pinned everything bad on me.
They said I did all that to pressure Jacob, and I deliberately targeted him. Some even took that stretch of time when he went abroad to care for his gravely ill mother and twisted it into a story that I had wanted him to stay and wait on me, threatening to blacklist him if he refused.
Jacob never clarified the rumors. He even went through the comments under those baseless speculations and casually hit "like."
In no time at all, a flood of fans came pouring into my company's official account, demanding justice for Jacob.
"Let the PR department handle this. Go by the facts, don't hold back."
Jacob probably thought that now that he had reached A-list stardom, he didn't need me anymore.
But what he'd forgotten was that for six years, it had always been me cleaning up his scandals and pouring money into him.
It didn't take a genius to figure out who was stirring up drama online.
Jessie also seized the opportunity of this controversy to start a livestream.
I lurked in the stream using Alina's alt account.
It was not that I wanted to stir up more trouble. I just wanted to see if I could record any useful evidence.
In the livestream, sitting right next to Jessie was Jacob, the man all his fans were already feeling so sorry for.
"Hi everyone! Jacob was worried that all of you would be upset, so he wanted to go live to put your minds at ease. Jacob's account is in someone else's hands, so we're streaming from my account instead! Don't worry, everyone. Jacob will definitely sort everything out."
Jacob did not speak a single word the whole time. He only looked at Jessie with a doting gaze.
A: [Jessie, when you were originally cast as the female lead and ended up getting dragged online, that was that boss's doing, right?]
A: [Jessie, was it because that old woman was jealous of you, so she stirred up public opinion to try and take you down?]
"Don't say that, everyone. I don't want Jacob to have to suffer so much because of me. It was all my fault back then. Otherwise, Jacob would never..."
She deliberately left her words hanging, full of hidden subtext, nudging everyone toward their ugliest assumptions about me.
- Writer
