Chapter 33
Yolanda felt that her life might have to be ended in the parking lot today.
She had planned how to be all tears and to create a perfect atmosphere where she could get Aaron to feel sorry for her on Valentine's Day. She did not see this coming all of a sudden.
Was her trial scheduled in advance in the parking lot?
And in front of James?
No, no one could see her collapse, especially that jerk.
Yolanda, you must stay calm!
But here was a situation Yolanda could find no explanation for, as quick-witted as she had been. She couldn't say that she and James became friends just now right off the bat. It would be even more absurd to claim they were strangers because that way, James would use her lie in his favor.
Yolanda was overtaxing her brain quickly. She had seen a lot like this before which helped her build a mindset perfect for dealing with such emergencies.
It only took a second for her to calmly hold Aaron in his arm.
This was the only solution Yolanda could come up with to save herself.
She chose to play a mind game with them.
Her move was simple and casual enough but boldly implied her threat to James.
[Do you see who I am holding? Now try and say you know me before, I dare you.]
Aaron was surprised to accept Yolanda's unexpected act of intimacy and went stunned for seconds. But he said nothing and just glanced at the slender arm that was around his.
The weird silence among the four people was broken by Danis's sudden utterance, "No, we don't."
Danis added quickly, "We just happened to meet here. That was just us asking her whether Mr. Jensen was at the office or not since we were planning a visit.
But Aaron was not easily fooled, "You know her?"
"Of course!" Danis responded naturally, "She came up during the conversation between Mr. Ruiz and me."
Danis heard from Mr. Ruiz earlier that Aaron was with a woman at the scene of the second audition of the actors. He realized that this woman was special to Aaron.
He just couldn't imagine her as James's ex-girlfriend.
And two hours ago, he called her a crazy bitch over the phone with Aaron.
In other words, he called Aaron's woman a bitch.
Danis was so sharp-witted that he realized right away that there were many secrets about them he didn't know. Of course, he would deny that they had known Yolanda, and James had to shut up, too.
He patted James on the back to drop him a hint while changing the topic, "But Mr. Jensen, are you leaving now? If so, James and I will come to visit another day."
Aaron glanced at James, "It's not necessary."
Then he whispered to Yolanda, "Let's go."
Yolanda blinked obediently: "OK~"
The two walked a few steps together, before Yolanda quietly turned around, raised her eyebrows at James who had not recovered, and asked him to shush with a mouth shape.
It seemed to be a silent announcement of the end of their battle.
Damaging and insulting.
Danis stared at Aaron's back as they walked away, and then sighed slowly: "Forget it, I can't help you. You can only pray for yourself."
After that, he drove out of the parking lot by himself.
James stood there, shocked by Yolanda's look at last, and failed to calm himself down for a long time.
The scene of Yolanda holding Aaron kept flashing right before his eyes.
Repeatedly, he went through stages from astonishment to constant denial, to finally having to admit what he saw.
It was still hard for him to accept he had been completely crushed by Yolanda.
Not only did he lose terribly, but it was also until this moment that he realized how ridiculously he had been fooled around.
He was even unable to struggle.
Aaron was too sensitive to ignore Yolanda's unusual behavior.
After they returned to the car and sat down, he asked, "What did you mean just now?"
Yolanda blinked and chose to play the fool, "What do you mean?"
Aaron's eyes fell on his arm.
Yolanda uttered, "Ah", which made her seem to be realizing just now. And the next second, she let go of his arm.
"It's nothing, I just saw that jerk star in the parking lot. I couldn't help but denouncing him which led to a quarrel later. That's when I saw you coming my way and I needed your support. "
Technically, Yolanda wasn't lying.
"Quarrel?" Aaron questioned, "Didn't you stare at his advertisements while praising him for his handsomeness?"
Yolanda could say nothing to that.
Once again, she reminded herself, this man's memory was freakishly good.
"Nothing about him is handsome!" Yolanda started to speak for herself, "I was blind back then. He is just nothing compared to my dear brother. Have you checked the news? I just couldn't help cursing such a jerk. Then he got all intimidating while smearing me.
Yolanda stressed the last two words sadly.
Aaron sure got her.
He turned his head and asked, "Smearing you?"
"That's right." Yolanda blinked weakly and added sincerely: "Fortunately, you came to my rescue. That's why I grabbed your arm subconsciously trying to scare them."
Aaron stared at her without saying anything.
Yolanda wasn't sure what was going on in his mind.
She felt that what she explained was coherent. Even if she would tell the truth on the 14th, she didn't lie about anything today.
Except for concealing the fact that she knew James, everything else was the truth!
After a few more seconds of silence, Aaron withdrew his gaze and turned back slowly.
Rolanda understood that this reaction meant the end of this incident.
She secretly breathed a sigh of relief, but there were some subtle fluctuations in her heart.
After a pause, she cautiously and tentatively asked, "Brother, if someday I am really bullied by others, will you back me up?"
Aaron snorted softly, "Who would dare to bully you?"
She was always full of clever tricks. Let's just hope that she wouldn't be bullying others.
Yolanda went speechless.
She couldn't tell if that was a compliment or criticism.
Forget it. She wouldn't ask again.
They would be better saved for their conversation on Valentine's Day. She should worry about nothing and enjoy every single day until then.
Aaron went on a business trip to Sutton the next day.
Due to the chain effect brought by the hashtags, James's reputation got completely destroyed in no time. And no efforts from his fans trying to defend him on the internet would change anything.
But Yolanda wanted more.
Since Aaron was not in Capital, she went further to ruin James without any limitation.
Yolanda edited the chat with the jerk over the past few days, with all the keywords concerning Aaron and the company carefully covered. After that, she posted it on Twitter again, inviting the world to appreciate how he had been sucking up to her.
God had been on Yolanda's side this time. Although she lost her phone with all the evidence showing how James had been flattering her. She got it anyway with a different identity. And that jerk came to her trap willingly.
Sure enough, that was what characterized James throughout his life.
In the eyes of Yolanda, James seemed like a lost dog, one that was almost beaten to death.
As soon as the chat was uploaded, netizens who had been following his scandal became even more disgusted with the name of James Hilton. So, they boycotted him and demanded that such a dirty jerk quit the entertainment industry.
On the afternoon of the 13th, the day before Aaron's return, Yolanda invited Phoebe to go shopping together.
"Tomorrow he will be back, you know. I am so nervous now. More nervous than I was having the college entrance examination."
The two sisters strolled into the mall with a cup of milk tea each, and Phoebe began to give her instructions, "What are you afraid of? I have already figured it out for you. You see, men have two major weaknesses."
Yolanda immediately pricked up her ears: "What are they?"
"First, women's tears." Yolanda said, "So tomorrow, when you confess, make sure you look sad and pitiful in tears, understand?"
Yolanda thought for a moment, "Understood, I often use this trick. What's the other one?"
They just happened to walk to the door of a fashion store at the moment.
A very beautiful and sexy black suspender feather skirt was displayed in the window.
Phoebe pointed at it and said, "There."
Yolanda followed her eyes and seemed a bit confused, "What do you mean?"
"Seduce him with your beauty, stupid!" Phoebe dragged Yolanda to the skirt and continued, "Did you forget about the black velvet skirt you wore at the last concert? I'm serious. You look so damn hot in black that I was drooling over you as a woman. It would be overwhelming for a normal guy like Mr. Jensen.
"?" Yolanda felt that something was wrong with Phoebe.
"Tomorrow, you just dress in the style you liked in the past, with long hair curled up, and sexy skirts on. Then as soon as you sense any possibility of his anger, just take off your jacket and show him your sexy skirt. That would dampen his anger like a charm right away. I promise."
"Why is that?"
"Because he would get hard and forget about his anger."
Yolanda was stunned speechless.
Sweet Lord, she was surely a veteran.
Yolanda let her bold advice sink in for a while before she found her voice, "Honestly, have you filmed a lot of porn without telling me?"
Phoebe retorted, "This is just common sense, alright? You must discern the priority of a man. Is it getting mad at you? Of course not. Plus, it's Valentine's Day tomorrow, and this festival itself is already very saucy. ​​Just consider it a buff granted to you by God and you should make the most of it."
Yolanda imagined that if she really followed Phoebe's suggestions tomorrow, they wouldn't be talking in a restaurant.
They would end up in Aaron's bedroom.
She silently took a sip of her milk tea and felt a rush of heat all over when she pictured some indescribable images of them.
"Forget it. I asked you out to do shopping with me, not design porn for me. "
Yolanda was about to leave, but Phoebe forcibly dragged her into the store and bought the beautiful black dress for Yolanda before she could stop her.
"This is a war robe I prepare for you. With this, fear nothing and go!"
Yolanda turned speechless again.
"But I'm not shopping for myself today."
"Then for whom?"
Yolanda told Phoebe that the pair of cufflinks accidentally ended up in the hands of Aaron. And then she explained, "Although I have convinced myself that they are destined to be his, I still want to buy him something new as a gift."
Phoebe nodded and agreed, "You are right. It's very necessary."
So, they came to the men's area on the third floor.
"What makes a good gift for an elite like Mr. Jensen? A lighter? Or a pen, a collar...?"
While watching, Phoebe kept giving suggestions. But she heard no response from Yolanda for a while, so she turned around to see that she was standing in front of a brand store.
That was a European brand specializing in handmade leather goods.
Phoebe suddenly realized her intention, "Not bad, getting him a wallet is a nice choice."
However, Yolanda shook her head, "No."
She pointed to the corner of the window, "I want to buy this."
Phoebe looked at the product Yolanda was pointing at and then looked back at her again. She paused and clapped her hands playfully: "You are just awesome. This gift is too sexual. I already picturing it in my mind."
Yolanda didn't bother to explain to her and walked toward the store after saying, "I'm not as dirty as you think."
Phoebe followed behind and sniggered, "So you know what the pictures are in my mind, don't you? Oh, look! You are blushing. No way, you are not the Yolanda I have known."
Chatting and laughing in the store with Phoebe, Yolanda's WhatsApp beeped while they were choosing the style.
Phoebe joked, "Is that your dear brother?"
Yolanda shook her head and pressed the voice message directly for Phoebe.
"Yolanda, damn you. You are just mean. No wonder your family went bankrupt after numerous shameful things you did."
"Yolanda, please forgive me. I know I was wrong, stop fooling me."
"..." Phoebe commented with a serious tone after listening, "How long have these symptoms lasted?"
Yolanda also responded cooperatively, "Two days."
"Didn't you send him to the hospital?"
"It's too late. It is recommended to bury him alive as soon as possible."
LOL.
Both couldn't help laughing.
James had been like this for the past few days, performing a one-man show on WhatsApp. Sometimes he was scolding like crazy, other times he might be wagging his tail and begging Yolanda for forgiveness, like a victim of intermittent schizophrenia and mania.
Phoebe, "Why don't you just delete him? Doesn't he bother you?"
"It's not over yet," Yolanda said calmly, "when he thinks he's safe, I'll hang him up and beat him again. That way, he would be living in fear and cold-shouldered like a rat. Besides,"
Yolanda smiled, "Don't you think it's just the best feeling to enjoy his incompetent and furious reactions?"
Phoebe gave her a thumbs-up, and then reminded Yolanda to check her phone: "Look, is he getting crazy again?"
The sound of information notifications came one after another, and Yolanda lowered her eyes to see.
[When did you get so close to Aaron Jensen?]
[With so many women around Aaron, do you really think that yourself is irreplaceable?]
[Rest assured, he will get tired of you in no time.]
[I am waiting for the day you get dumped.]
[You approached him just to get revenge on me, right? You must have gotten under him many times in the past three months, huh? You really can swallow a lot of humiliation for me.]
His crazy speech was just nothing surprising for Yolanda who usually wouldn't text anything back. Not this time. He insulted Aaron.
She was inexplicably upset by that.
It was OK for him to smear her. But he couldn't do the same to Aaron. Yolanda couldn't stand it.
Yolanda thought for a while, then took out her phone again and clicked on the dialogue window with him,
[I swallowed all the humiliation just for your spectacular crazy furious show, didn't I?]
After typing this sentence, she quickly sent it out and was about to come up with more to irritate him. The next second, she accidentally checked the name of the person she was sending a message to. And she got frozen because she found that it was Aaron.
Yolanda's heart stopped and she couldn't feel her scalp for a moment.
She was unable to think soberly anymore.
Without any time for her to criticize herself for making such a stupid mistake, she was occupied with one thought in mind: Hurry! Now!
Withdraw! It! Now!
Yolanda hurriedly pressed the message for a while and clicked to withdraw, all trembling.
The message she just sent disappeared on the phone right away.
Noticing her suddenly pale face, Phoebe was concerned and asked, "What's wrong?"
Yolanda's voice was still trembling, "Damn, I sent the insulting message back to James but made a mistake. It went to Aaron."
"..."
Yolanda looked at WhatsApp nervously, "Do you think he saw it? What should I do?"
Phoebe took her to sit on the lounge chair in the shopping mall and comforted her, "It's okay, you see, it's three o'clock in the afternoon. According to his schedule of the business trip you said, he can't be dining or resting. As such a busy man, his life must be filled with all kinds of meetings and social events, where he won't constantly check his phone like we do, right?"
Listening to the convincing analysis of her bestie, Yolanda started to calm down.
Two minutes passed, and there was no response from Aaron. That meant he probably hadn't checked his phone.
Even if he did, all he saw was a notification of "a withdrawn message".
After a pause, Yolanda deliberately sent another message to Aaron: [Brother, are you busy?]
They waited for a while and got no reply.
Phoebe became more confident, "See, Mr. Jensen must be busy now."
Yolanda also breathed a sigh of relief, "It really scared me to death just now."
After that, without hesitation, she clicked open the dialogue window with James and immediately blocked the jerk.
This person was just a source of bad luck. He could cause her trouble without even seeing her.
At the same time, in Sutton.
"Mr. Jensen," a staff walked to the lounge, " Mr. Bright from Pyong Studio would like to take a picture with you."
Aaron nodded, "Okay."
The moment he got up, he pressed the button, and the screen went off.
That notification [Yolanda withdrew a message] disappeared in black as if it never existed.
Five minutes ago, just returning from the meeting room to the lounge, he was about to text Yolanda to see what she was doing. To his surprise, the moment he clicked the app he received the weirdest message from her.
But it was withdrawn in less than ten seconds.
It didn't take long for another tentative message to arrive.
As a man familiar with all the tricks in the entertainment industry, he certainly sensed that she was disguising something. But he had his hands full at the moment. Therefore, he decided to ask her in person if she was up to something bad without him by her side since he would be back there tomorrow.
That night, he made a video call with Yolanda to check how she'd been doing with all the documents he asked her to manage, like nothing had happened.
He mentioned nothing about what he saw today.
The next afternoon, Aaron returned from Sutton.
The original arrival time of the plane was three to four o'clock in the afternoon. However, the flight was delayed, and it was already five o'clock in the afternoon when it actually landed.
Luckily, he could still make it to dinner with Yolanda.
Happer asked, "Boss, shall we go directly to the restaurant that Yura said? She has already arrived."
After all, it was the first Valentine's Day for the two of them. Aaron didn't want to show up all untidy and tired. So, he ordered, "Let's go home first. I need to change."
"OK."
Being a little tired and with his eyes light shut, Aaron rubbed his browbones while asking Lenny White in the car, "Anything wrong in the company these two days?"
"Nothing. But there has been something interesting in the industry."
"What?"
Lenny White reported, "James, the guy who almost signed a contract with the company, caused a lot of scandals recently. But that's not the end of the story. The barber shop girl exposed their chat the day before yesterday. You were right about him. He is just rotten. And now basically every company has denied him any opportunity."
Aaron snorted, seemingly not very interested in news about him.
Unexpectedly, Happer suddenly joined their chat, "Right. That's what a jerk like him deserves, getting banned in the entire industry."
Happer had always been an honest and kind man, who barely knew any celebrities. And even he was denouncing James. Lenny laughed, "Happer, you've been interested in his scandal, too?"
"Why would I be interested in that? It's just that this jerk cheated 100,000 yuan out of Elsa. If it wasn't for Yura's efforts to get it back, my wife would be hopeless for the lack of money for surgery now.
Lenny was shocked.
Aaron opened his eyes suddenly, and thought for a moment before asking, "She got the money back for you? "
It was not Happer's intention to tell at first. But he was just so exhilarated to see James end up like this.
"Boss, Yura asked me not to tell you, worrying it might distract you from your important issues. Now that the dust has been settled, I just want to spit it out."
It took Happer two minutes to narrate the whole story--Elsa took the money for the surgery to support that jerk which Yolanda helped to take back later. He concluded angrily,
"Elsa must've been awfully blind and ignorant to adore a male star like him. Afterward, I beat her once before she confessed that she had even given him the WhatsApp number of Yura. I have no idea whether that jerk has harassed Yura or not. Anyway, it can't be easy for Yura to have that money back for us, I suppose. Honestly, boss, Yura is such a nice soul.
Happer's story sounded reasonable and made sense all along.
But if you take it apart sentence by sentence, problems emerged.
Not only Aaron, but even Lenny felt that something was wrong.
He glanced at Aaron in the rearview mirror who was resting his elbow on the center armrest in the back row while looking out of the window. After a while, Aaron suddenly asked Lenny,
"What is the date of James's scandal?"
Not sure why Aaron brought this up suddenly, Lenny immediately took out his mobile phone to search and replied, "The start of his news was on the night of February 7 when he was taken away by the police at the hotel."
Aaron didn't know what he was suspicious of. But after listening to Happer's description, by intuition, he knew something was hidden.
The 7th.
He quickly remembered that Yolanda asked for two days off in a row on the 6th and the 7th.
"Call Elsa, I have something to ask her," Aaron ordered suddenly.
"Huh? Now?"
Lenny already sensed that something was wrong. So, he immediately gestured to Happer, "Hurry."
Happer pulled the car aside, confused, and called his daughter.
"Elsa, the boss wanted to ask you something. Make sure you tell him the truth."
Having said that, he handed the phone to Aaron.
Aaron took it and asked directly, "What did James say when he asked you for Yura's WhatsApp number?"
Elsa was severely criticized by her family for being a groupie and she had never stopped feeling guilty to have given the WhatsApp number of Yura to James in order to please him. Naturally, she assumed that Aaron was calling to reproach her. So, she quickly answered,
"I'm sorry, I lost my mind when being star-struck. Back then, James's assistant asked me to do him a favor because he wanted to befriend Yura on WhatsApp, implying that James would be granted better resources as long as he got closer to Yura.
Aaron hung up the phone.
After a while, as if reminded of something, Aaron opened Twitter to find the previous hot hashtag related to James.
"The two of them had remained to chat for a month after becoming friends on WhatsApp before they agreed to meet. But it turned out that the so-called heiress of a large group was actually a barber shop girl."
Aaron couldn't decide exactly which part of the whole thing was wrong. But his intuition from years of experience in this industry told him that there must be something wrong.
He frowned and closed his eyes while beginning to search for fragments about James in his head.
The first time James came up in his conversation with Yolanda was about the scandal that he slept with his fans.
He helped to gag the media. But Yolanda asked him why he was covering up the jerk.
The second time was when he instructed that the contract with James would be canceled. And that day Yolanda was unreasonably elevated.
The third time was the meeting in the parking lot that day.
Suddenly, memories of Yolanda's weird expression when she found out about the black onyx cuff-link, the crazy ex that would never let go of James Danis according to Todd, and the withdrawn message from Yolanda- [I swallow all the humiliation just for your spectacular crazy furious show, didn't I?] all came rushing back to him.
Thanks to Aaron's super high IQ and EQ, when all the clues were suddenly linked together, a horrible possibility had already formed in his mind.
The sky outside the window suddenly darkened, the wind started to blow, and the dark clouds weighed down which was mirrored by the tension inside the car.
Aaron stayed silent for a long time. He did nothing but stared at cuff-link on his wrists, without anyone knowing what was on his mind.
The car soon stopped at the entrance of the villa. No one dared to ask any questions. Until Aaron got off the car, Happer asked Lenny worriedly:
"Did I say something wrong just now? Why did the boss's face suddenly darken?"
Lenny shook his head while looking at the suddenly deteriorating weather outside the window and muttered, "A real storm is coming this time."
After Aaron got home, he went straight to the study instead of his bedroom to change his clothes.
When all the clues pointed to an absurd possibility, the only thing Aaron wanted to do was to immediately confirm the authenticity of this possibility.
Although he hoped that he was worried over nothing and just being too suspicious, still, he would never avoid anything.
Even if the truth might turn out to be cruelly unacceptable to him, he would calmly, even indifferently, try to find out it by himself.
Aaron took out the mobile phone hidden by him.
He charged it, turned it on, and entered the password.
The screen showed the home page the background of which was a photo of Yolanda.
The first time Aaron turned on the phone, out of respect for Yolanda, he didn't peep at all her secrets
But everything was different.
He desperately needed some evidence to talk him out of his speculation.
Placing the phone on the table, Aaron gently clicked on the photo album after a long period of silence.
Basically, the albums were full of Yolanda's selfies. His fingers slid up little by little. And after a while, he stopped.
He got stuck there.
Although it was a thumbnail, Aaron recognized at a glance who the man and woman in the photo were.
In the quiet and sullen study, Aaron couldn't tell for a while whether the explosion he was hearing now was from the blowing wind outside or his pounding heart.
In a high-end romantic western restaurant, Yolanda was looking in the mirror to reapply her makeup.
Today, she wore the black suspender skirt that Phoebe gave her and put down her sleek long hair, which had been tied for several months, to have a curled-up hairstyle in a barber shop. A stunning comeback to the way she looked before bankruptcy.
What's more, before going out, Yolanda carefully sprayed a little of the perfume that she treasured.
In a moment of confession tonight, the smell of perfume should not be too strong. Otherwise, it would be interpreted as more seduction than sincerity.
So, Yolanda only sprayed a little on the suspender skirt.
The scent was just right, light and faint. And you can smell a little when you get close.
After all, it would be the most enticing only with a certain amount.
If Aaron could forgive her after listening to her explanation, then she wouldn't make use of the sexy suspender skirt and perfume.
If he couldn't though, then Yolanda would go all in. Before he got angry, she would immediately take off her jacket to show her sexy little black dress, before she sat on his lap all in tears for hours.
After she was done with the lips, Yolanda in the mirror appeared all gorgeous tonight, the way Miss. Walter, the dignified lady, had been in the past.
She pursed her lips. Then when she was just about to check the time and ask where Aaron was, she caught the figure of the man at the door.
Although her heart jumped nervously, Yolanda immediately waved at him: "Brother, here!"
Aaron was still in the same clothes as he had been when he came back.
With a poker face, he sat down opposite Yolanda.
Yolanda simply inferred that Aaron was just tired after a business trip. She handed him the menu obediently, "Brother, what do you want to eat?"
Aaron kept silent.
His eyes were fixed on Yolanda.
She looked phenomenal tonight that he thought he had never seen such a beauty before.
But when did the girl with such a pretty face start to plot so much behind him?
He didn't even notice any of it.
Seeing Aaron sitting still, Yolanda waved her hand in front of him, "What's the matter? Are you tired?"
Yolanda pushed away the menu she handed over and said lightly, "Why did you invite me to dinner today?"
"..."
Don't start the topic so early. Wouldn't it be better to eat something before getting down to business?
Yolanda was actually quite nervous, but she just pretended to be calm.
"No reason, just..." She picked up the red wine glass in front of her and pretended to be casual, "It's just worth celebrating today."
What Yolanda thought was, well, it was absolutely normal to hang out and celebrate on a holiday.
But Aaron mocked.
"For what?" He leaned on the seat back and looked at Yolanda coldly.
"For the end of your days of humiliation?"