Chapter 262 Malicious Rumors
Once Alexander’s question reached her ears, Courtney clenched her fists tightly. As her fingernails sank into her palms, she tried to calm herself down. However, she knew that once she opened her mouth, her trembling voice would betray her.
“I’m relieved.”
Alexander suddenly chuckled.
“Seems like you have always been very vigilant toward outsiders.”
Courtney froze and looked at him without thinking. After seeing the teasing look on his face, she finally heaved a sigh of relief.
She avoided his gaze and spoke in a low voice. “Yeah. Back then, I still didn’t know you well; of course I couldn’t tell you everything.”
“It might rain today. Remember to bring an umbrella along.”
With that, Alexander took an umbrella from the umbrella stand and passed it to her.
“Thank you.”
Courtney lowered her head and pursed her lips. She still felt the lingering fear left behind from their encounter just now.
After walking out of her house, her heart continued to thump non-stop. She had a feeling that if she did not come clean with Alexander, based on his intelligence, he would quickly find out the truth. What might happen by then, she simply could not predict.
The reason Bill suddenly rang Courtney up was because of Sakura Group’s bid.
During the past two days, there was a sudden surge of rumors online about Courtney being the sole legal inheritor of the Hunter Group. They also said that she received a huge amount of inheritance from Lucian and a huge part of it came from the loopholes of the Hunter Group’s finances. Hence, it was equivalent to Lucian using a legal yet unethical method to transfer the inheritance to her.
The Hunter Group was an immense corporation that had thousands of employees. When it suddenly stopped all its operations, many people had to sit around and wait. Because of the auditing process, not a single cent of the wages was paid even after two months.
The blue collar workers were not alone in creating a scene at the building site—even the white collar workers who were in the office could not hold it in anymore. Once the rumor spread, everyone followed the trend and bashed Courtney alone. Fortunately, Citron Apparel had not been affected yet.
In the conference room on the second floor of Citron Apparel, Courtney zoned out as she looked at the maple leaves outside the window. The voices that rang beside her simply blew past her ears like a gust of wind.
“Based on the recent rumors online, we need to discuss with the relevant social media platform to immediately block the content. Otherwise, at this critical time, it might easily affect Sakura Group’s vote for us. We have to take immediate action now.”
As the company had been formed not long ago, the PR manager, Lionel Greenwood seemed to be waiting for a long time for an opportunity for him to shine. Fortunately for him, it had now arrived. He looked quite excited and pumped up at this moment, and he was the first person to discover the malicious rumors about Courtney online.
“What do you think, Miss Hunter?”
After Kai’s voice rang in the conference room, Courtney finally returned to her senses.
“What?” She looked slightly confused.
After all, she had been brooding on the incident that just happened at her house, so she had not been listening to the meeting attentively.
Bill, who was seated to her left, reminded her about their discussion when he saw her blank look.
“Mr. Greenwood’s suggestion was to quickly suppress the rumors before the netizens could look it up, so that it won’t affect the bid of Sakura Group. However, I think that if we use social media platforms to censor related topics, it might cause a rebound and show that we are guilty.”
Bill had spoken just in time, effectively reminding all of them about the incident. But all in all, it merely seemed as though Bill added some of his thoughts into it.
Courtney understood what he meant and focused on the issue right at hand.
“That’s right. We can’t just solve this problem using social media alone; we need standard operating procedures of our own. It’s impossible to block the current tsunami, so we have to think of ways to divert it.”
With that, they brainstormed for the next five minutes. Since Lionel Greenwood was quite young, he was quite quick in offering a suggestion.
“Miss Hunter, how about this—let social media block some vague rumors that seemed likely and leave the most outrageous and ridiculous parts be?”
When he said that, everyone was confused at first. However, they quickly understood what he meant.
Lionel’s plans were to achieve the opposite effect by over-exaggerating the current situation.
Most of the stories that netizens would believe would be average stories that seemed very likely to be true, even though the explanation seemed ridiculous and did not bring upon a huge impact. It would be better if they would just release a huge ‘bomb’ online to catch people’s attention for them to discuss. When the malicious rumors went too far, the average person who could think straight would not believe them anymore.
Lionel’s plan was approved unanimously by everyone in the meeting.
After the meeting ended, Courtney went back to her office. Her newly hired assistant, Natasha, followed behind her to send some documents that required her signature to her office. Then, she also put an invitation card on Courtney’s desk.
“Miss Hunter, we just received it this morning—it’s an invitation from AW Group for the beer-tasting session at the end of the month.”
The light blue invitation card had the characters ‘AW’ printed on it in cursive. If Natasha did not clarify that this was an invitation for a beer-tasting session, Courtney might have mistaken it for a wedding invitation.
“Who sent it?”
“President Lewis’ assistant.”
Upon hearing that, Courtney froze. Casey is pretty free, huh? He even asked his assistant to personally send the invitation card over. Seems like his life has been pretty good.
After she opened the invitation, she saw a few brief words written elegantly with a fountain-pen.
‘The more Shay wants you to come, the more I don’t want you to appear. —Casey’
Courtney laughed out loud.
Perplexed by Courtney’s reaction, Natasha looked confused. “Will you be attending, Miss Hunter?”
“Of course I will.” Courtney closed the card and placed it aside with her eyebrows arched. “Since he has already invited me so earnestly, it would reflect badly on me if I don’t attend.”
Even if I don’t make friends with the elites from our industry, it’s interesting enough to annoy Casey.
Since Citrus Apparel had just been formed, she had to personally close the sales and collaboration with other companies. Apart from the orders from Sakura Group, Courtney also planned to have a discussion with Casey. After all, he had plenty of resources in the business.
After her assistant left, Bill knocked on the door and entered immediately.
“Is there anything else?”
“About the malicious rumors online—don’t you think that it’s too much of a coincidence?”
Bill placed a stack of newly printed designs on Courtney’s table. “Look at this. Oliver just sent it to my email.”
After looking at them, Courtney immediately frowned. “Isn’t this your earlier design? Wait… Isn’t this—?”
“It’s 70% similar to the designs we sent to the Sakura Group. If they made their samples according to the designs, their samples would be pretty much the same as the ones we just sent over.”
“Which company is this?” Courtney took a deep breath with a grave expression on her face. “This is plagiarism.”
“We don’t have any evidence and they seemed to have sent it to the Sakura Group earlier than us. It’s Ivory Apparel,” Bill explained darkly.
Ivory Apparel and Designs was one of the top three clothing stores in Melrose City that specialized in online marketing. This time around, they also joined the bid for Sakura Group. Their most common tactic was to hire talented people from small companies and copy their ideas. Since the small companies could not afford to offend them, they could only stay quiet and suck it up.
“They have their eyes on us this time around?” Courtney frowned.
“You were introduced to Sakura Group by the chief editor of Vivi Magazine. Citrus Apparel is only an unknown small business. Strictly speaking, we are no more than a workshop, yet we have the capabilities to join the bid this time. Hence, they are quite defensive of us.”
