Chapter 10
Chapter 10
After Xu Nianchu was taken away, an anonymous exposé suddenly appeared online.
The headline was designed to grab attention:
“Female Director Forces Out Entire Company Because Her Husband’s First Love Gets Hired.”
The article painted me as a control freak, a nepo hire, and a cold-blooded agent of capital. It claimed I had a long history of workplace bullying, that I oppressed my husband within our marriage, and that I couldn’t stand seeing younger women excel.
The attached image was a photo of Xu Nianchu kneeling outside my office door.
The angle was deliberately tricky, just right to crop out the police officers standing behind her.
Zhou Yan called me immediately. “I didn’t post it.”
“I know,” I said.
He let out a breath of relief.
Then I added, “You’re not that smart.”
Silence fell on the other end of the line.
Chen Cheng was frantic. “President Lin, the comments are vicious. Should we release a statement right away?”
I watched as the topic slowly climbed onto the tail end of the trending list.
“Wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For them to say everything they want to say.”
That afternoon, several of Xu Nianchu’s alternate accounts entered the fray.
One claimed I had risen to my position through my in-laws’ connections.
Another said Zhou Yan had been under my psychological control for years.
A third claimed that Xinglan’s dissolution was something I had engineered to seize power, deliberately driving the company to its death.
There was also one that posted a screenshot from my office, taken after Zhou Yan hit me, showing me wiping the corner of my mouth. The caption read: She stayed calm the whole time, like she’d planned it all along.
Looking at that screenshot, I suddenly laughed.
Chen Cheng froze. “President Lin?”
“Post it.”
Half an hour later, Hengwei Asset Management’s official account released a statement.
The first document was Xinglan’s dissolution compensation plan.
The second was Yuansheng Capital’s withdrawal letter. After redacting commercially sensitive information, it left the stated reason intact: “leakage of core project materials.”
The third was the abnormal download records from Xu Nianchu’s account, along with the police report receipt.
The fourth was surveillance footage of Zhou Yan striking me.
In the video, Zhou Yan’s words came through loud and clear: “You’re just an employee. You only got lucky.”
The direction of the comments flipped instantly.
Someone asked: If she’s just an employee, why is she the legal representative of the building?
Someone else said: The whole staff gets N+2 compensation and transfer opportunities within the group-this is what you call driving a company to its death?
Others analyzed the video of Xu Nianchu kneeling frame by frame and discovered that, before she dropped to her knees, she had deliberately glanced at the phone camera.
That evening, Zhou Yan came downstairs to my hotel.
He sent me a message: “Can you take down the video? My mom saw it.”
I replied, “When you hit me, did it ever occur to you that my mom was already gone?”
This time, he didn’t reply again.