He Jilted Me, I Rejected His Plea

Chapter 3

Warm, sticky blood splattered straight all over my face.

Mackenzie gaped at me, frozen in terror, her trembling coming up to her face as the knife she used clattered on the ground beside my feet.

The entire crowd froze at the sudden, shocking turn of events, then they all started screaming, every last one of them pointing their finger right at me.

"Murder! A murder attempt by a capitalist!"

Edward's face darkened like storm clouds. He slammed a palm into my chest, shoving me hard aside, then scooped Mackenzie into his arms and roared. "Call an ambulance right now!"

I stared coldly at the woman, her face twisted into a smug, satisfied smirk, and my hand at my side clenched involuntarily, tight as a knot.

After they loaded her into the ambulance, Edward stormed back toward me, his expression still furious. "You've scarred her, so are you happy now? Got what you wanted?"

The crowd erupted into chaos again. A fresh wave of vicious abuse rained down on me, and angry people started smashing everything in reach.

Just when the entire scene threatened to spiral completely out of control, I curled my lips into a mocking smirk. "You all say I planned all of this. Why don't we pull the security footage and confront this in front of everyone? If I really attacked Mackenzie, I'd gladly go to prison for it."

The moment the words left my mouth, the furious roar of the crowd died down.

Over on the phone of the guy who'd been streaming the whole thing live, comments started popping up questioning the whole narrative.

A: [No way, right? You guys are just being led by the mob. There's no way this woman is stupid enough to hurt someone right in front of everyone, right?]

B: [You can never tell. It's possible, isn't it?]

C: [I agree, she doesn't seem that dumb. That other woman earlier looked totally unhinged, if you ask me.]

Edward stared daggers right at me, his brows drawn so tight they looked glued together. "You're the CEO of Harold Corporation. You could easily have swapped the footage on purpose, couldn't you?" he accused. "Let me remind you that Mackenzie is my student. If you want to hurt her, you're going to have to go through me first."

He wasn't done yet. He flipped his phone around so the camera faced me, his eyes red as he spat out his accusation for all the world to see. "This woman right here, Gwen Harold, is my fiancée. Over the past months, her petty, childish jealousy has already hurt many people. I'm apologizing on her behalf as her fiancé, but I won't play favorites. I'm here to state clearly that everything she's done to my student Mackenzie is true," he announced. "As for her disruption of research funding and premeditated murder, I will absolutely not defend her in court."

The second he finished speaking, he shut off the live stream without a shred of hesitation.

Then he turned and marched off with his whole group trailing behind him.

One guy who'd been yelling about justice tried to hang back and hurl more insults at me, but he was dragged away by force.

I stood there silent as a statue.

My assistant gulped hard, their whole body taut with nerves. "Miss Harold, right after the stream ended, less than a minute in, Harold Group's stock crashed ten percentage points."

I squeezed down the roiling storm of emotions clawing at my chest. "Contact the PR department. Prep a full public statement immediately."

But even that wasn't fast enough. Our cleanup couldn't outpace the avalanche of lies Edward and Mackenzie had already unleashed.

Marketing accounts went wild, cutting and splicing malicious videos that twisted the scene into me murdering someone and pulling corporate funding.

Every social media account I owned was swarmed and flooded by an army of paid trolls and rabid haters.

Cowardly keyboard warriors even mailed me actual blades. When I walked down the street, strangers spat insults, calling me a 'vampire of academia.'

Every single project Harold Group had locked down, every contract we'd already signed off on, clients were pulling out left and right. The ones who didn't pull out immediately jacked up their compensation demands out of the blue.

Just as the public frenzy hit a fever pitch, my phone rang. It was my brother.

"Gweny, you've stepped way over your head this time. Edward and the entire Smith family have been throwing money around everywhere. They bought off trolls on every major platform and bribed every top lawyer in the city to refuse to take your case.

"They're spreading word that you deliberately sabotaged a key national project. Higher-ups have already sent people to question you. On top of that, those old board members are demanding you apologize to the Smith family, agree to the marriage alliance, and fix the broken capital chain that way."

I drew a slow, deep breath to steady myself, then hung up on him.

Next, I unblocked the number I had blacklisted and called the man behind all this mess, deciding to play along with what he wanted.

"Meet me."