Chapter 155
Charles and his group had taken Sophia away, but people's appetite for gossip couldn't be easily satisfied.
At lunchtime, I took the lunch box Oscar had packed for me in an insulated container and headed to the cafeteria.
Bianca, who was in charge of HR, sat down across from me with her tray. She kept sneaking glances at me throughout the meal, and finally I couldn't help but speak up: "If you've got something to say, just say it. Stop beating around the bush."
Bianca gave me an awkward smile. "Ms. Wilson, please don't think I'm being nosy, but..."
I gave her a dismissive look: "You've already said that, and you still don't think you're being nosy?"
Bianca laughed awkwardly: "It's just that everyone's really curious—how come the chairman of the Brown Group turns out to be your dad? Didn't you grow up in Solstice? Are you an illegitimate... illegitimate daughter?"
I found it amusing: "Didn't you guys look into this?"
Bianca quickly said: "We checked their information. They have a daughter who went missing and still hasn't been found. You wouldn't happen to be... that missing Emma, would you?"
I didn't deny it, just kept eating slowly.
Bianca’s jaw dropped. Her eyes went wide as she stammered, "So... Gregory is your husband?"
"Ex-husband," I corrected patiently.
Bianca probably imagined an entire drama of two women fighting over a man in the shortest time possible: "She stole your husband and got pregnant with your brother's child? With such an obviously two-faced woman, is Gregory blind?"
She sighed: "Mr. Oscar Lopez is so much better than Gregory now."
I smiled: "Better in what way?"
When praising someone, you should be specific.
Bianca looked at me. "First off, he’s clearly handsome. Second, he’s loaded. And finally, Mr. Lopez has great taste."
Her joke made me laugh. "If Oscar heard you praising him like that, he’d probably get a huge ego."
Bianca quickly said: "I'm not just praising him—he really is that excellent. Ms. Wilson, don't be sad. Any problems discovered before marriage should be treated as good news. Look, Mr. Oscar Lopez's appearance is God's compensation to you."
"But—" she dropped her playful smile and looked at me, asking, "The interview scheduled for this afternoon—the reporters suddenly came early, so Ms. Wilson, do you want to..."
I nodded: "You should know what to do, right?"
Bianca gave me a thumbs up. "Got it. I'll have a juicy version of this story ready in an hour."
I kept eating, saying nothing more.
Sure enough, Sophia made the trending topics again.
#Shocking! The Brown Group's Sophia is pregnant from incest with her brother
[This world has gone crazy in ways I don't even recognize. I know all these words, but somehow I don't understand—someone got pregnant and had a baby with her own brother?]
[Isn't this the same person from that trending topic about stealing her sister's man? I think her name is Sophia]
[I heard Sophia is a fake heiress—her mother was a human trafficker who abducted the real heiress over a decade ago. So she's rotten to the core, bad genes and all.]
[Is it possible she originally wanted to use the child to get the Lopez family to help them out, but when the Lopez family went bankrupt, she finally had the kid go find his real father?]
[So she and Jasper aren't blood-related?]
[Even if they're not blood-related, she called him brother for over twenty years and could still sleep with him—just thinking about it is disgusting]
[I used to be jealous of rich families, but now I realize that beneath all that glitz and glamour, who knows how much shady stuff is going on behind closed doors.]
[The kid might not even be Jasper's. Didn't someone expose her for being a hooker before? Who can even tell whose kid it is?]
[People like this are just wasting air by living. Any kid she has probably won't turn out well either.]
Because of all the gossip, it became a hot topic overnight.
I looked at the online discussion with satisfaction, wondering if she regretted having Jasper try everything to get her out. Now that she was being trashed by internet users, was she satisfied?
Sophia? She was just bait. The real game was whether the big fish would bite.
Soon, photos of Sophia in revealing clothes appeared online, entering high-end clubs with different men. The clearest one was a video of her and Benjamin kissing passionately.
[In the second group photo, someone looks familiar. The guy standing in the middle seems to be someone who appears in the news often. Isn't that the deputy mayor of Silverlight City? Damn it, really?]
[I googled it, and it really is Aubrey Hagen. If that's the case, the other people in these photos probably aren't simple either.]
[There's something to these photos. Doesn't the guy in the video also have some background?]
I put down my phone, feeling uplifted as everything proceeded according to plan.
The old rule was simple: don't cross people in power. But sometimes, the right ally just fell into your lap. Knowing how to use that—that was the real trick.
With a deliberately created topic like this, if someone wanted to investigate, they could naturally trace it back to the source. But right now, Sophia was trending, and I wondered if those who appeared alongside her had noticed they were about to face a wave of online backlash.
The first call came from Benjamin, his voice blunt: "Emily, are you trying to go after The Brown Family, or are you trying to go after me? You have half an hour to clean up this mess online."
I laughed carelessly: "I don't understand what Mr. White is talking about."
Benjamin's voice was menacing: "Don't play dumb with me. I was dominating the internet when you were still in diapers. I don't give a damn if it was intentional or not—scrub it all from the web, erase every trace, or don't cry when I come for you."
I acted as if I'd just realized: "You mean the video of you and Sophia kissing? Is that worth getting so worked up about? It's just a scandal—you shouldn't care."
Benjamin's voice turned cold: "Quit the act. You've already touched on some people you can't mess with. If you don't fix this, you won't even know how you died. Don't say I didn't warn you."
I answered vaguely: "Then... let's wait and see."
"Wait for what?" Benjamin asked suspiciously.
I didn't say a word and just hung up. I couldn't exactly tell him I was waiting for other calls. Today was never going to be a quiet day.
Sure enough, five minutes later, I received a mysterious text: [Ms. Wilson, interested in a chat? I'm very interested in what you have.]
Just a text?
I ignored it and kept waiting.
[Hello, I want to buy what you have. Name your price.]
I blocked the message right away. Still, I had to give them credit—they were quick to catch on. Benjamin still didn't get it. He had no idea I was holding back even crazier dirt on him, yet he still had the nerve to threaten me.
Another five minutes passed, and finally a mysterious call came through.