Chapter 3

I went straight from the hospital back to the hotel, heading for the data center in the basement.

The verified account playback could prove the affair and the humiliation, but it couldn't clear me of "shoving a pregnant woman."

I needed the complete backstage footage from the banquet hall.

The hotel's server room ran on an internal network, so surveillance footage couldn't be transmitted out directly—it could only be copied onto a physical hard drive and carried out for review.

That was why I had to come in person.

The technician on duty looked a little troubled when he saw me.

"Miss Fox, Mr. Stephens said he's taking over all the footage."

I set down my ID and my verified account information.

"The account is mine. I'm the authorized person."

"I want to copy the original footage of my own wedding."

He hesitated, then nodded.

The progress bar crept forward bit by bit.

The door was suddenly pushed open.

Bernard stood in the doorway, and his face changed when he saw the computer.

"Marilyn, what are you doing?"

I unplugged the hard drive and turned to go.

He clamped down on my wrist.

"Give it to me."

I sucked in a breath from the pain.

"Let go."

He saw the blood on my hand and panicked for an instant, but he still said,

"Don't blow this up."

I looked up.

"Are you afraid I'll blow it up, or afraid I'll bring out the truth?"

His throat bobbed.

"Kay's pregnancy isn't stable. If you pull that footage now, it'll drive her out of her mind."

"So you want me to keep being the one who shoved a pregnant woman?"

"I'll explain it for you."

"When?"

"After the wedding."

After the wedding, again.

In his mind, everything could wait.

My innocence could wait.

My injury could wait.

Only his project couldn't wait.

He reached out to grab the hard drive.

I gripped it as hard as I could.

Bernard lowered his voice.

"Marilyn, I'm saving Stephens Corp, and I'm saving our future too."

"You can endure one night. It won't kill you."

I looked at my bleeding hand and suddenly laughed.

"So as long as I don't die, none of it counts as anything."

As we struggled, my back slammed into a metal rack, and the edge sliced open my forearm. Blood gushed out at once.

The pain blacked out my vision, but I still didn't let go.

His assistant hurried in.

"Mr. Stephens, Clearwater is pushing for a risk-control statement."

"The video's already spread to the partner group chat. If there's another twist, tomorrow's signing might—"

Bernard closed his eyes.

"I'm sorry."

He pried my fingers apart.

The stitches tore, sharp pain exploded through me, and I dropped to my knees.

He took the hard drive.

I looked up at him.

"You know it proves I didn't push her, don't you?"

His face was dark. He didn't dare look at me—but he took it anyway.

The assistant asked,

"How do we handle it?"

Bernard kept his back to me.

"Clean up the sensitive content."

This wasn't Bernard's first time packaging a project.

He figured that by deleting the hotel's local hard drive and rewriting the backend logs to read "operated by the account holder," all the blame would land on me.

In his eyes, I was his fiancée—and also the most convenient person to take the fall.

Stephens Corp's tech team quickly faked the anomaly records into my verified operation.

In the system logs, I became the person who deleted the footage and transferred the permissions.

Half an hour later, I got a notice from Skyline Live.

"Marilyn Fox, because you are suspected of privately operating the backend of a partner project, deleting live-broadcast footage, and causing serious public-opinion risk, the company has decided to suspend your project-lead privileges pending an internal investigation."

This project was something I'd worked three months to build, and in the end it became the knife Bernard used to shove the blame onto me.

I went to the company for a backup, but the manager wouldn't look at me.

"The footage has been taken over, the original files are being overwritten, and the permissions have already been transferred to Stephens Corp's tech team."

In the family group chat, that edited video was spreading even more wildly.

Someone tagged my dad.

"Mr. Fox, you'd better rein your daughter in. Don't let her disgrace the whole Fox family."

My face changed on the spot.

My dad has a weak heart.

Bernard knew that.

I called my father right away. No one answered.

The nurses' station picked up, and the nurse said urgently,

"Miss Fox, you need to come right away."

"A Mrs. Stephens just came by. She's talking to your father about the wedding."

As I bolted out, Kay sent me a photo.

In the hospital room, my father's face was pale.

Mrs. Stephens was shoving the "bride shoves pregnant woman" video right in front of his eyes.

Kay sent a message:

"Marilyn, do you think your uncle will believe you, or believe what he saw with his own eyes?"