Chapter 191: Unless, David, You Beg Me
Lily Roberts had always suspected that Dennis carried a secretive past.
When she asked Eric about him, there was a pause.
"Is this something I shouldn’t be asking?" she pressed.
Could Dennis's identity really be classified?
"Lily doesn't mean anything by it. You should ask him directly about this. I have a meeting to attend, gotta go."
After Eric hung up, he felt a wave of relief.
Lily wasn't easy to fool.
He quickly called Dennis - he had to give him a heads up to avoid getting caught in the lie later.
That's all he could do as a friend.
He'd already taken the blame for having a sugar baby in college; there wasn't much else he could do.
Lily mulled over Eric’s reaction. It seemed Dennis's previous work might be something shady?
So secretive and mysterious.
She glanced at the trending news. The buzz had died down quite a bit now, probably suppressed by someone.
After all, it had already affected the stock price. David must be having a headache over there.
Lily put down her phone, feeling much better.
Feeling restless, Lily opened her laptop to address lingering AI testing issues.
Just then, a black market alert popped up on Lily's phone.
She logged in and received a private message from an administrator:
[Someone wants to buy the firewall system you wrote a while back. They're offering two million dollars for you to write a new system for their company to prevent hacking.]
Lily replied without hesitation:
[Five million.]
After she sent that, it took a while before they replied:
[The client says okay, but you need to go to their company in person to debug it and prove it can withstand hacker attacks before they'll pay the balance. They'll also pay you one million dollars annually for maintenance, to handle emergency situations at their company.]
Clearly, this company had serious cybersecurity problems.
[Okay, what's the company called?]
[Client insists on confidentiality. You’ll be informed when it’s time to debug.]
So mysterious?
Must have made quite a few enemies.
Lily didn't ask more questions. After all, on the black market, nobody wanted to reveal too much information.
She understood - as long as they paid, that's all that mattered.
Lily took the job. After all, who would complain about having too much money?
She continued writing code for the AI project. After lunch, she went straight to Maple Leaf Corporation.
However, when she arrived at the company floor, she found many bodyguards standing outside.
Who was here?
Lily walked in, and Delbert immediately came over. "Lily, people from the Roberts family are here. Should be your two brothers, and they look pretty aggressive."
Two brothers?
As she approached the office, David Roberts stormed out. "Lily, I wondered how long you could hide. Did you really think that just because someone's protecting you, I couldn't find you?"
Inside, she spotted Michael Roberts. But Eric wasn’t there.
Lily frowned and walked straight into the office, looking at them. "What do you want?"
They’d tracked her to the company.
But now David should know this company belonged to Eric.
She didn't need to worry about David doing anything that could threaten the company.
David said angrily, "Of course I'm here to settle the score with Eric. Don't think I don't know the media exposure has something to do with you two."
David had figured it out - he'd just seen Eric last night and been mocked by him.
Today, the media exposed Sophie and Austin's past affair, causing a huge uproar and making the company's stock price drop significantly.
And with Lily's ambiguous relationship with Eric, David was convinced she was involved.
Lily’s expression turned icy. "Do you have proof?"
"Does this need proof?" David shot back.
Lily's tone was mocking. "But in the past, whenever something involved me, didn't you always like to talk about evidence?" No proof? I was slandering Sophie. But now you’re fine without it?"
Now you want to talk about evidence?
David was enraged by Lily's expression and pointed at her nose, scolding, "Don't give me that. Besides exposing this, my company's firewall keeps getting attacked by hackers, and the system crashes from time to time. Wasn't that you?"
Hacker attacks?
Lily laughed. "Sounds like you have quite a few enemies wanting to kick you while you're down."
"Who else but you would do something like this?" David was very agitated and instinctively tried to hit her again, but meeting Lily's cold gaze, he finally lowered his hand.
He unconsciously touched the arm Lily had hit yesterday - it was still bruised.
Lily watched coldly as David lowered his hand. Fighting fire with fire seemed pretty effective.
At least David didn't dare hit her anymore, knowing he couldn't beat her.
Michael coughed a few times and stood up. "Lily, David's just a bit too anxious. Don't take his words to heart."
Lily was very impatient. "You're not welcome here. Leave now!"
"Lily, you're not giving me an explanation today. I'm not leaving. You hacked my company's system. I don't know if any trade secrets were leaked. You must explain this clearly!" David said firmly.
"You want an explanation?" Lily directly opened Eric's computer, her small face tense, her slender fingers dancing across the keyboard.
Strings of code appeared on the computer screen, and she quickly hacked into the Roberts Group's system.
Michael looked at Lily in surprise, not expecting her to be this capable.
Writing code on the spot and directly hacking into David's company system - this system had cost a fortune, and ordinary people couldn't hack into it at all.
Michael's expression became somewhat complicated. He'd been ignoring Lily too much before.
Lily was actually the most talented genius in the Roberts family, yet she'd always been deliberately overlooked and suppressed by her brothers.
David snorted coldly. "Lily, you'd better fix my company's system right now."
The next second, Geraldo spoke up anxiously, "Mr. Roberts, people from the company called, saying our entire system has crashed, and all security areas have been hacked and lost control."
"What?" Only then did David look at Lily. "Stop it, what did you do?"
He'd thought Lily was fixing the company's system, but she wasn't!
Lily stopped and said coldly, "Didn't you want an explanation?"
"What kind of explanation is this?"
"If I had hacked into your company, how could it be just minor disruptions? If it were me, it would be like this - the current effect. Understand?"
Lily's expression was flat and emotionless, her eyes completely calm, making cold sweat break out on David's back.
David was so angry his head hurt. "You... you... How dare you!"
"Who told you not to believe what I just said? I can only use facts to prove that it really wasn't me who hacked your company's system." Lily's tone was light and airy. David turned to Geraldo and shouted angrily, "Why are you looking at me? Get the tech department to fix it! Will staring at me fix the problem?"
A bunch of idiots!
Lily sat in her chair, watching David, so anxious his lips were chapped, wanting to solve the problem. But it wouldn't be that easy.
Soon, David came before Lily, his hands on the desk, his eyes bloodshot.
He said, "Lily, fix the system for me. This is the mess you created!"
Lily looked up and said softly, "Beg me!"