“Your ex-fiancé?” Joan shouted in surprise.
Nancy immediately covered her mouth. “Hush! Caspian’s right inside!”
Joan moved her hand away and continued, “Are you kidding me? Weren’t you and Caspian always together? Why is there suddenly a fiancé?”
“I swear I have nothing to do with that person! I don’t even know his name!” Nancy denied, then anxiously explained, “Look… He’s my fiancé in name, but I don’t know him at all and haven’t even met him once. This marriage proposal was clearly arranged by my parents and born out of some business deals!”
“Wait, wait, wait… I’m kind of confused…” Joan’s mind was in a mess.
Nancy then became even more patient and said, “Let me simplify it. Before I met Caspian, my family had arranged this marriage proposal for me. The man is the son of Alpire Group’s president.”
She paused, then continued, “You can understand it as an arranged marriage too. It’s just that before both of us even met, our parents had already agreed to the marriage. They wanted to sacrifice our marriage and love for the sake of benefits to both families and businesses. In short, we have to marry someone we don’t know at all.”
“I’d always thought I was fortunate because I met Caspian before I met him. So just like that, my family broke off the marriage proposal… Ever since then, my family has never cooperated with Alpire Group again.”
Joan asked, “If that’s the case, isn’t it very clear? You had someone else in your heart, so you rejected the marriage proposal.”
“It is because I rejected the marriage that I later found out that that man minded it a lot and has even threatened to terminate the long-term collaboration between our companies several times… I heard that he’s a very proud person. Come to think about it, a person like him was rejected by someone he’d never met before. Imagine how angry he must have been!”
Nancy was suddenly worried. “This time, when I heard you guys say that this mysterious S was related to Alpire Group, I suspect that it is that person who wants to retaliate on me because of my rejection back then!”
“Huh?” Joan was puzzled. If that mysterious S was really trying to get back at Nancy, why did he have to go through Larry? Also, he had previously secretly taken pictures of herself and Dustin so that Larry would misunderstand and be wary of her.
Is S trying to take down everyone at once? First, it was Larry and me, then, it’s Nancy and Caspian. He’s really crazy.
“Joan, please don’t tell others what I just told you, especially Caspian. I don’t want him to overthink. If he found out about this, he’ll definitely think that I’m cheating on him.”
“What are you guys talking about out here? It’s already been so long,” Caspian said as he walked out of the room while crossing his arms. As soon as Nancy noticed him, she tugged on Joan’s sleeve as a reminder not to talk about whatever they had just discussed. Joan secretly signed an “Okay” back to Nancy.
“Is there a new solution?”
Caspian shrugged helplessly. “Nope. I’ve tried all the solutions and found that there’s no better choice.” He then snapped his fingers in front of Nancy and asked, “Say, do you guys think that this guy could be an expert hacker?”
Nancy flinched in fright, then forced a smile out. “If he’s really a hacker, isn’t it a little of an overkill to use his talents to only hide one IP address? If he wants to acquire those three branches, it’d be better to hack into the branches’ computer systems. Not only will the internal information he obtains be more accurate, but it’d also be the most damaging for the company.”
Joan rubbed her forehead and said, “Nancy, you just said that disclosing other companies’ confidential information is punishable by law. If it’s illegal to disclose such information, then hacking into others’ computers is definitely a more serious crime.”
