Chapter 33: The Play

A few days after the meeting with the project team, I decided to confront Christina personally. I sent her a message yesterday from the number she used when she called me earlier this week and asked her if she has time to meet me today at the coffee shop in front of the Chadwick Group's building.

Fortunately, she gladly agreed to my request without any complaints.

I was honestly expecting some sort of protest from her when I asked her to meet me, but she simply sent a short message agreeing to my invitation and ended the conversation. I guess, after what happened to the rumors that she spread about me, she was just desperate to create another scene to use against me, and my invitation just came at the perfect time.

But I know her character so well, and it was very easy to guess her next move.

After a few minutes of waiting inside the coffee shop for Christina, she finally arrived, and with her presence, no one can exactly miss her. She looked around inside the coffee shop for a moment, and when she saw me, her expression immediately turned sour.

Christina is wearing a black pencil skirt paired with a blue flare sleeved blouse and her usual dangerously high stiletto heels, and when she began walking towards me, some people inside the shop cannot help but openly stare at her.

"Did not expect for you to call me that soon," Christina said as soon as she arrived in front of me.

Today, instead of sitting on a secluded area inside the coffee shop, I chose the table near the glass windows where I could see the Chadwick Building clearly. Also, there were quite a lot of people inside the coffee shop, unlike the time when Christina and I first met the previous week.

"Did you finally decide to run away with your tail between your legs?" Christina sneered as she sat on the seat opposite to me.

I don't know where she's getting her confidence from, but I have the strongest urge to tear that sneer away from her face.

"Is that all you can do? Create stories?" I said with a dejected tone and then sighed overdramatically. "If you want to become an author or a playwright, you could have just said so."

The sneer on Christina's face was replaced with a scowl after my little remark. I know that she knew what I did for the project that Ansel is directly involved with, and with the news about me helping the project team, she cannot continue with her antagonistic ex-wife narrative anymore.

After assisting the project team with finding a solution to their problem, the rumors about me faded soon enough. Rachel and Leah kept me updated about the rumors, and they said that the members of the project team gladly defended me against them.

I was not exactly expecting that everything would happen this fast. I never thought that the members would openly debunk the rumors and even go as far as saying that my divorce with Ansel was the ideal kind of divorce anyone could hope for, which is honestly absurd in every aspect, and when Rachel relayed the news to me, I had to hold my laughter in as I never imagined that the story would turn out to be quite exaggerated.

The two did not mention much of the details, but it seems like, from the villainess ex-wife, I became known as the supportive ex-wife who remains friends with her ex-husband and even assists him with his business from time to time.

And now that the story is not as interesting anymore, the rumors were almost completely forgotten. It seems like people tend to prefer stories with villains on it, and now that the villain from the rumors is gone, the story is not as interesting for them anymore and deemed it not worth talking about.

Either way, it turned out well for me.

But still, I'm pretty sure that not everyone is convinced with the narrative about me being the good-natured ex-wife without any ulterior motives, but the reality is not exactly great, and with reality, one cannot change the mind of every people who believed in the rumors. The only thing one can do is to watch everything unfold or play the game by creating another rumor that could fully destroy the previous one.

"Why did you want to meet?" Christina said, immediately changing the topic. She leaned back on her seat and glared at me with so much hostility that if looks could kill, I would already be six feet under.

"To tell you that you need to stop," I said, staring back at her with an unsmiling expression on my face. "You are just tiring yourself out with your futile actions."

Christina remained silent, her expression unchanging, and without waiting for her reply, I continued, "I came back solely for work, and not for whatever assumptions you have."

"As if I'd believe that." Christina scoffed at what I said and rolled her eyes. The sneer on her face returned, and she said, "Are you getting afraid of what I might do next?"

It's my turn to scoff at her reply.

'No matter how hard a person tries to change, there would still be a small part of that person that will remain unchanged.'

"No," I replied with a sigh. A sympathetic smile formed on my lips before I continued, "I'm just worried for you because you might not be able to take my retaliation."

"I'll tear you down." Christina's sneer turned into anger. "People will latch on to the most interesting stories out there, and honestly, no one cares about the truth," Christina said, and then she slightly leaned towards me, a smirk forming on her face. "Just look at what happened."

I know exactly what she was talking about. With her family background and with her huge following on social media, Christina is practically a celebrity, and for someone like her, her image is everything.

And Christina thinks that everyone has the same beliefs as her.

But in truth, the higher you are, the harder you fall, and you will never know when or what will be your downfall.

Meaning, if I use the same scheme as her, she has more to lose than me, who is below her on the social ladder.

"People will eat up anything that I say," Christina said, copying the false sympathetic smile I did earlier to mock me. "People would choose to believe me than a person like you."

"But look at what happened to your made-up stories," I replied while shrugging my shoulders. "I rendered your plan useless. I thought you became smarter," I paused to sigh dramatically and continued, "but I guess it's really hard to change, especially for someone like you."

Christina dropped her smile and rolled her eyes before saying, "Is that all? Cause if it is, you are just wasting my time."

"Just one more," I said, stopping her from leaving her seat. "Your fiancé just asked me for dinner, and I just want to give you a heads up if you didn't know about it."

Now, Christina turned seething with anger after my little revelation. I was waiting for this moment, to tell her about Ansel's invitation, and see how she would react about it, and seeing her expression right now, I was not disappointed.

The other day, Ansel sent an e-mail inviting me for dinner, and from his message, he clearly expressed that he's asking me for dinner merely to show his appreciation for what I did for the project team, regardless, it was satisfying to see how furious Christina is after I relayed the news to her.

"Ansel hates you," Christina said, her voice rising a bit. "He will never want to meet you."

I wanted to shout at her and say, 'he hates me because of what you and that family did,' after hearing her words, but I tried to control myself and taunted her even further by saying, "Well, it doesn't seem that way when he sent me home after my meeting here last week."

Christina widened her eyes at my words, and before she could interject, I added, "And it also doesn't seem that way when he ate dinner at my place last weekend."

By now, Christina is probably already cursing me inside her head, hoping that I would just disappear once again, but now, I will make sure to stick around to see her downfall.

"You're lying," Christina said through clenched teeth.

'Just a little bit.'

"Well, if that's what you want to think," I said before standing up from my seat. I know that I'm feeding lies to her, but I need her to get riled up as much as possible, and I know that talking about Ansel would work the best. "I heard the restaurant he's taking me has a great selection of wine, and you never know what I might say when I get too drunk."

Christina stood up all of a sudden, making the chair produce a loud noise against the floor, and hissed, "you dare open that mouth or else…"

"Or else what?" I interjected, leaning forward towards her seething figure. When I'm near enough for her to hear me whisper, I said with a low voice, "You'll attempt to kill me once again? You know what, I still don't know how you were able to keep your crime under the wraps."

"You—"

"Oh," I exclaimed, interrupting her. "Thanks to your family, I guess? But, what if Ansel finds out?"

"You don't have any evidence," Christina replied, her voice quite strained. "He will not believe you."

I pulled back away from her and scoffed at her words. With an innocent smile on my face, I said, "But didn't you just tell me that people will latch on to the most interesting story without even caring for the truth?"

'Just a little bit.'

"Imagine the rumors, 'the heiress of the Howard Family attempted to kill someone and got away from it,' wouldn't that be very exciting?"

Almost instantly, Christina grabbed my half-empty cup of brewed coffee and threw its contents towards me.