Chapter 99 The Twist
Upon being interrogated in such a way, Melanie was instantly speechless; she couldn’t come up with a remark to support her statements. Now she had completely played into Vania’s hands and let the latter lead her around by the nose. With no opportunity to take the offensive at all, she had no choice but to stay on the defensive, but it was difficult for her to even defend herself against the questions Vania had thrown at her.
Meanwhile, Josie had been regulating the online comments all this while, but there were signs of tables being turned.
‘Vania is too composed, isn’t she? There’s no way she could fake it.’
‘I thought Melanie’s evidence would prove Vania’s guilt all at once. And yet this is all she’s got?’
‘Now I’m waiting for the twist.’
‘There’s quite plenty of interesting stuff to watch today, isn’t there?’
Most of the netizens had stopped taking sides and were now sitting by and waiting for what was next.
The furrows in Hanson’s brow had eased as he was sitting there. Obviously, he had made his own judgment on what was going on.
Indeed, the document Melanie had gotten from Mr. Wright was the only piece of evidence she had. Left with no choice, she could only brazen it out, saying, “Okay, I’ll text Mr. Wright right now. Once he replies to my text message, it’ll prove that I did get the evidence from him.”
Vania still looked as imperturbable as ever. “Sure, no problem.”
How could she not even be scared by this? A hint of suspicion arose in Melanie’s mind. What makes her look so indifferent to all of this? Did anything go wrong at some point? she thought. However, now that things had developed to this stage, she no longer had time to verify anything. Right now, the only thing she could and had to do was pick up her phone and send a WhatsApp message under the eyes of those at the scene as well as everyone watching the live broadcast on the internet. ‘Are you there, Mr. Wright?’
Everyone held their breath and waited in anticipation. Then…
Nothing happened.
There was no response from the other end. The message sent by Melanie showed a single check mark indicating that it had been sent, but that was all. At first, everyone thought Mr. Wright might be taking his time to reply to Melanie’s message, and they waited patiently. However, as seconds ticked by, murmurs began to arise from the crowd, becoming louder and louder until they filled the whole room.
“What’s going on here? Does she really know Mr. Wright in person?”
“I think this matter isn’t as simple as it seems. This Melanie woman’s probably gonna be left with egg on her face.”
Melanie’s suspicion grew at the sight of the scene. All of a sudden, she had a bad feeling that things weren’t going to turn out the way she wanted. Just then, someone in the room said, “Hey, did you see that? There’s no ‘last seen’ status below the username. And besides, there’s only a single check mark next to her message. Doesn’t that mean she’s been blocked by Mr. Wright?”
The instant he said that, everyone—including Melanie—turned to look at the large screen displaying her WhatsApp chat with Mr. Wright. Indeed, there was no “last seen” status below Mr. Wright’s username, and the message sent by Melanie never showed a second check mark.
Melanie’s pupils dilated in disbelief as she fixed her eyes on the WhatsApp chat window. No way, this shouldn’t be the case. We had a nice chat before this, and he provided me with accurate information. There’s no way he’d block me on WhatsApp for no reason, right? In a panicked attempt to reassure herself, she immediately called Mr. Wright on WhatsApp. However, what she heard was a recorded female voice that said, “Sorry, but the number you have dialed is not in service…”
Her panic was witnessed by everyone. As a result, those who had been whispering to each other about Vania were now talking about her instead, and those rich heiresses who disliked her in the first place began to gloat.
“I thought she was quite something when I saw how confident she looked just now. Talk about going for wool and coming home shorn. What a disgrace!”
The tide of online public opinion started to turn against Melanie, too.
‘I waited until the end, and this is it?’
‘Don’t tell me she’s got nothing to back up her evidence.’
‘But she just swore to it with such vehemence. Perhaps this isn’t the only piece of evidence she has.’
‘The more I look, the more I find Vania charming. Her deportment is simply matchless.’
At this point, Josie, who was sitting at home, started to get anxious. She immediately sent somebody to find out what was going on, but she didn’t receive any reply for a long time. As a result, she was like a cat on hot bricks.
Melanie also felt unsettled, as though she had fallen into a bottomless pit. At this very moment, she had no time to think about whether she had been duped; all she could think in her mind was what to do next. After a moment, she questioned Vania, “In that case, how can you prove that the creative concept for this ad of yours isn’t copied from someone else?”
“Since you can’t prove that I plagiarized someone else’s work, I don’t have to play along with you. Let’s leave it to the judge,” Vania replied.
