Oh! So Rachel and Mr. Leng grew up together. They are youth sweethearts!" The employees exchanged similar expressions of dawning comprehension. They turned to look at Rachel admiringly. For a while, all of them thought Rachel was the best prospect for Mr. Leng's wife, which made Rachel feel quite smug about the whole affair.
Yeah! You can say that." Rachel's lips curled upward into a big smile. Anyone could see how happy she was. They wondered at how God had favored her as it gave her exquisite features and an enchanting figure.
"So, are you Mr. Leng's girlfriend?" one of the employees asked. Gossip was always hot among women when they gathered together. For a moment, the entire office was buzzing. They waited with bated breaths for Rachel's answer.
"Why? Do you think so?" Rachel did not answer directly, but posed another question at them. The fact that she hadn't denied the speculation added fuel to the fire. The women grew more curious.
"Surely you are! Otherwise why would Mr. Leng treat you so differently?" came the answer.
"Yes! You call him by his first name, and with familiarity. We can see you are close to him," called out another voice in the audience.
"Isn't that so? Mr. Leng has never been like that with any other colleague before," someone agreed.
The staff continued to gossip among each other. The rumor had spread like wildfire in the company. For a while, the company's grapevine had been rife with speculation that the new group leader of the Sales Department, Rachel, was Mr. Leng's girlfriend. Everyone was beginning to believe it. So when Janice saw the gossip on the company's website, she was so stunned that her mouth dropped open. Without thinking further for a moment longer, she straightaway rushed to the President's office.
"Mr. Leng, you're in serious trouble. Something has happened." Janice was usually known to keep calm. But today, she burst into the CEO's office without even knocking on the door. Her sudden arrival disturbed Duke, who was hardly fond of interruptions. Duke glared at her. His expression warned her that she'd better have something useful to say, otherwise she'd be done for!
"It is you who are in trouble! What in the world happened? Why are you in such a hurry? Do you have any etiquette or not?" Duke fumed, giving her a disdainful look. He continued working on his documents.
"I am not joking! It is an emergency. I don't care about manners under a crisis situation! You'd better log in to the company's website page right now and see the posts!" Janice exclaimed. '
Hmph. Let's see if you can continue to be calm after reading that post. You will regret shouting at me when you see it!' Janice thought gloatingly.
"Is there something wrong with the company website? Have any hackers invaded it? If so, you should go and talk to the Tech Department, not me! Why did you come here?" Duke spared her no attention as he handled the documents. He was quite confident of the company's firewall system and doubted there was anything wrong with the web platform. He hardly had the time or energy to deal with this drama.
"No! It's about you. You'd better see it quickly! I am serious. There would definitely be serious consequences otherwise," Janice said. If the gossip stayed inside the company, it would not cause many problems. However, Janice was afraid that the moment the rumor spread to the public outside, Mr. Leng would be in huge trouble. After all, he was about to marry Belinda Shangguan in a few days. If his bride-to-be saw the post, she would misunderstand him big time. It could affect their upcoming nuptials. But Mr. Leng was also partly to blame here! Why hadn't he revealed the news of his marriage to his colleagues? Now everyone in the company was taking wild guesses about his relationship at his expense.
"It's about me? What's the problem?" Finally, Duke put down the pen in his hand to open his computer. He logged into the home page of the company website. However, he did not find anything unusual on the screen. He couldn't help but raise his head and glare at Janice. She was making trouble out of nothing!
It's not on the homepage. Click on the daily headlines." Janice winced in fear as she prepared herself for his impending outburst.
Duke rolled his eyes at Janice before looking at the screen again. 'Of course, something strange had to happen. Otherwise she wouldn't get her bonus this month,' Duke thought indignantly. Everyone thought that Edward was vindictive. But Duke was definitely not inferior to him in that respect.
"What on earth! Who wrote these comments? Who posted this on the website?" Just as Janice had expected, Duke roared upon seeing the post. He gawked at the hot discussions under the post.
"How would I know? As soon as I saw it, I rushed here to tell you. I also wanted to ask if this post is authorized. Was it you who asked someone to post this on the website?" Janice asked. She truly wondered if it was a possibility that Duke was the one behind this. This had been posted right after he had come back from last night's dinner party. Rachel had attended it too. If Janice connected the dots, it would seem that something special had happened last night.
"What! Do you think I'm out of my mind? Why would I ask someone to do that? Janice, Hurry up, ask the staff at the Tech Department to delete this page immediately. Also, tell all employees in the company they're forbidden from leaking this out. Then ask Rachel to come and see me," Duke instructed. He was vexed. However, he was able to reign in his anger quickly. He was a successful leader and CEO, and he was well-versed in sudden emergencies. He knew how to calm himself down and issue commands for subsequent damage control.
"Yes, I will do that at once. But... Mr. Leng, is Rachel really your youth sweetheart?" Janice asked. As the saying goes, "Curiosity Kills the Cat." Before leaving to execute the orders, Janice still intended to know how Mr. Leng defended himself.
"Janice, your bonus for this month is gone." Duke gritted his teeth in anger, scaring Janice awfully as she stepped back. She didn't dare to inquire more and dashed out of the office.
Duke watched as she sprinted away, the corner of his mouth curling. His eyes pivoted back to the computer screen. As he browsed down the comments one by one, he grew even more irritated. The blue veins on his forehead almost popped out.
One comment went as, "Rachel is Mr. Leng's secret lover and youth sweetheart!" Duke thought it was laughable! The people who wrote these comments were definitely in the Sales Department. They had such a rich and preposterous imagination! Why didn't they claim he had been living with Rachel for eight hundred years? That would have been more convincing.
Hastily, Janice asked the technical guy to delete the post and other relevant ones. She also issued a notice to the staff ordering them not to leak the rumor out, otherwise they would have consequences to pay. Then she unhurriedly took a trip downstairs to the Sales Department.
"Who is Rachel, please?" asked Janice. As the primary assistant to Mr. Leng, everyone in the company knew Janice. As soon as they heard her query, they all looked toward Rachel.
It's me. Are you looking for me?" Rachel looked at Janice with nervousness in her eyes. She knew Janice was Duke's best assistant. She didn't dare to overstep her.
"Please come with me. Your job needs to be discussed." Janice managed to convince Rachel that she truly had something to discuss regarding her work. As she finished speaking, Janice turned around and left her standing. She had seen Rachel before in the company, but Janice pretended not to have met her. She didn't want the others to speculate over this event and have something new to gossip about. Mr. Leng was in enough deep waters as it was.
"Janice, what do you want to talk about?" Rachel followed Janice and asked her carefully. Right now she tolerated the arrogance of this woman in front of her. But once she became Duke's wife, she would definitely fire her!
"You'll know soon enough," answered Janice. Honestly, Janice didn't like this woman at all. She had always considered Rachel to be badly-behaved. However, she was also curious about whether or not Rachel had been really familiar with Mr. Leng since a long time ago. If so, why hadn't she seen her all these years? Janice felt like this could be the plot of a novel. Rachel was Mr. Leng's ex-girlfriend. When she got to know Mr. Leng was getting married, she was furious about it and came back to ruin the wedding deliberately. Could it be true?
Rachel bit her lower lip, narrowing her eyes at the back of Janice's head. It looked like that she wanted to drill a hole into her skull with her sharp eyes. However, while talking to Janice, Rachel had to be cautious to please her. She believed she had more important things to do. She couldn't fail because of this insignificant assistant. So, she smiled and said,
May I ask what cosmetics you use? Your skin is so clear and soft."
"Sorry, I seldom use cosmetics." Janice smiled breezily. She was neither pleased by her words nor was she irritated. But it became clear she wasn't interested in making friends with Rachel.
"Really? Then you're such a natural beauty!" Although Rachel felt embarrassed at Janice's reaction to her question, she feigned surprise and praised her.
"Thank you for the compliment! You can go into the office now. Mr. Leng is waiting for you inside," Janice said, smiling politely as they reached Duke's office. She stood at such a high position, so what had she not experienced? She wasn't in the habit of paying attention to this kind of compliments. In today's society, if you took the praise seriously, you would fall.