Chapter 11
That gossip post blew up on the trending list in two hours: [LaneBio CEO Betrayed By His Wife]
It racked up over ten million views.
The comments section was tearing me apart.
[What kind of woman would stab her own husband in the back and sell his tech?]
[She sold out her husband's company for three billion dollars? That's ruthless.]
[Now LaneBio's employees are all gonna lose their jobs, and it's all Susan's fault.]
Crystal really knew how to spin the story.
In all those posts, the key details were cleverly hidden.
No mention of Crystal walking away with one hundred million dollars in bonus money.
No mention of Andrew only paying me a measly 300,000 dollars in royalty payments.
No mention of the hotel expenses or him cheating.
In those posts, I was painted as the scheming wife who cashed in on the company, stole my husband's sweat and tears, and flipped them to a rival for a fat payday.
And Andrew? He was the innocent victim, stabbed in the back by his wife.
I sat in my new office at HarperTech, reading through the comments, one after another.
Elara walked in with a glass of water, her expression grim. "Ms. Nolan, the comments online are brutal. Should we have PR issue a statement?"
"Not yet," I said.
"Not yet? They're calling you..."
"Let's let things simmer for a bit."
"What?"
I opened my laptop and pulled up a folder.
Inside were all the research and development records I'd organized over the past three years.
Lab logs, data records, formulation updates. Each one was timestamped, and every single file proved these results were 100% my own work.
There was also a folder for videos.
Inside were surveillance videos from my time at the LaneBio Group lab.
These videos clearly showed that every time a core experiment was run, I was the only one in the lab.
There was no team.
No collaboration.
From start to finish, I was the only one.
Andrew had no idea I'd kept backups of all this.
He never set foot in the lab.
He didn't even know I'd set the surveillance password.
"Elara," I said.
"Yeah?" she asked.
"Set up an exclusive interview for me. The woman from Financial Daily; the one who kept firing off questions at the press conference today."
"Linda Grant? She's got a huge following. She has over five million fans."
"That's the one."
"What time?"
"Tomorrow afternoon. Tell her I've got exclusive material. The real story behind LaneBio Group's so-called 'team research.'"