Chapter 243

Chapter 243 I Never Broke Up With You Her words rang in his ears; it felt as though a thousand little needles were poking his eardrums. “What did you just say?” he demanded as he grew flustered.

She turned to look at him with a raised brow while feeling emboldened. “A marriage of convenience is still a marriage nonetheless. I am legally acknowledged as his wife.”

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” Alexander asked through gritted teeth. She’s saying this to deliberately provoke me.

“Doing what on purpose?” Courtney looked at him with curiosity while feigning confusion about what he meant by those words.

“I’m telling the truth. Is there anything wrong with what I said?”

He frowned. “Then, what about us?”

“Us?” She crossed her arms as she appraised him from head to toe. Then, she shrugged casually. “Isn’t it obvious? We’ve broken up and now, we’re nothing more than former lovers.”

Alexander’s icy demeanor had shifted after returning from Shanghai; he had requested for flowers and food to be continuously delivered to the Citron studio for the past couple of days.

However, Courtney knew better than to fall for his sugar-coated tactics. After all, he was in the wrong—he had yet to apologize to her and it did not look like he would do so anytime soon. Even if he did, she was not sure whether it would be enough for her to reconcile with him.

In the absence of an apology on his part, they would remain as nothing more than former lovers.

Alexander, on the other hand, seemed to disagree as he argued, “You appear to have forgotten that I never broke up with you in the first place.”

“Is that so? I seem to recall hearing that you told the cops that night that we were not a couple.”

On the night they broke up, she had called the cops out of anger and he denied that he had any relationship with her when he was hauled into the police station. If it was not for his background, he would have been charged for attempted rape and be taken into custody.

While that was in the past, Courtney could not help but hold a grudge against him. “Be a man and own up to your words. You can’t just take something back like that, you know,” she sneered.

Alexander simply gaped. He clenched his fists and grumbled, “I’m going to kill Josh.”

She sighed. “You can’t blame Josh for everything. He wasn’t the one who told me about this,” she clarified. Then, she gave him a withering look as she mocked. “It’s no wonder that you’ve been usurped—you don’t even know who told me about what you said at the police station. I guess you’re not that brilliant after all.”

Upon hearing that, Alexander’s expression soured. Is she going to hold that against me for the rest of her life?

Seeing as he had nothing to say in response, Courtney stopped mocking him and instead briskly said, “There’s something that I need to attend to, so I’ll be going off now.”

“I can drop you off,” he offered in a heartbeat.

“No need,” she answered in polite dismissal and gave a perfunctory smile as she explained. “I drove here. Besides, it wouldn’t be convenient for you to drop me off.”

Courtney knew that they needed to calm down before they could decide if they were truly compatible with each other. Between the both of them, it seemed as if she had a lot more to figure out than he did.

The few arguments they had were either triggered by the topic of the kids or the secret of her past and it was the latter that she needed to sort out before she could make up her mind about Alexander.

Meanwhile, Alexander was rooted in the same spot and his brows were drawn together as he watched her leave.

He was beginning to understand what Gale had said before he left, “Women hold grudges and they will bring up your past mistakes during your fights. If she hasn’t done that, it means she’s waiting for the right moment to use them against you. You’ll be rendered speechless by the end of the day.”

So that’s what it feels like, Alexander mused bitterly.

He had said those things out of anger when he was at the police station. He certainly did not expect Courtney to use his own words against him.

He brought it upon himself and he knew he deserved it, even if it killed him to admit it.

After a week’s worth of hard work, Bill and his team of designers managed to brainstorm with the final design for the workers’

uniform.

Prior to officially submitting their tender, Citron Apparel held another meeting about the project.

As the executive manager for Citron Apparel, Martin had already analyzed all aspects of the project. “All the tenders submitted will be internally reviewed by Sakura Group. The votes from the executives will account for thirty percent of the final decision whereas employee votes will account for the remaining seventy percent,” he informed dutifully.

“So, the main decision makers would still be the employees in Sakura Group?”

“If all is fair during the tender, yes,” he answered with a knowing look flashing across his face.

While it was known that the employees in Sakura Group would account for seventy percent of the decision making, there was no guarantee that there would not be any schemes or attempts to rig the votes prior to the review.

After all, the employees would probably think of the design of their uniform as the most important aspect of their work, but for fashion enterprises who were submitting their tenders to Sakura Group, the workers’ opinions mattered more than anything else.

As such, one could not discount the possibility that someone would try to bribe the employees to steer to odds in their favor.

Martin continued grimly, “We need someone to keep an eye on whatever happens within Sakura Group during this crucial time.

The moment anyone starts rigging the votes, we need to be ready to deal with it—swiftly and effectively.”

As soon as Martin was done speaking, the whole room burst into an uproar as everyone began to discuss in earnest. “Why do we need to keep an eye on the votes? Do we really have to go to the extent of spying?”

“Who would be able to pull off something like this?”

“I hear you can hire a professional for this.”

Just as the room descended into a frenzy, Courtney’s phone rang. She glanced briefly at the caller ID and rose from her seat, saying, “I have to take this call, but the rest of you may continue with the discussion.”

When the door to the conference room was closed behind her, she was once again enveloped with silence.

She picked up the call and pressed the phone to her ear. The crisp voice on the other end was that of a young man, who said, “Courtney, I’m done with the investigation. I’ll arrive in Melrose City in the afternoon.”

“That was quick,” she remarked, taken aback by the report.

Oliver had went to nearly half of Otharia just to look into Jordan’s accident. He tracked down all the nannies who worked for the Duncans during that specific period of time and his investigation was akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. He thought that it would be New Year’s Day before he actually found anything interesting, but he ended up getting all the information he needed within two months.

“I’ll tell you the details when I’m back, but for now, all I can tell you is that Jordan’s accident was deliberately set up, and...”

Oliver trailed off hesitantly before he continued. “And Alexander probably knows all about it too.”

Upon hearing that, Courtney felt her heart drop to her stomach and she asked in a low voice, “I’ll pick you up from the airport.

What time is your flight?”

“There’s no need for that. I’ll see you at your place.”

“Okay.”

With that, she hung up on the call. She was not quite sure how to feel about any of that, but she knew one thing for sure—if what happened that year had anything to do with Alexander, then there was no way she could let Jordan stay with him any longer.

Meanwhile, at the Duncans’ villa, the nanny reminded Alexander to pick up Jordan from school. Upon hearing that, he looked at the time and closed the newspaper that he was reading before standing up to head toward the garage.

However, before he could leave, the chef came out from the kitchen and called for him, stopping him in his tracks. “Mr. Duncan, Little Master hasn’t been eating well. Does he dislike my cooking? What does he like to eat?”

Alexander frowned and shook his head. “Trust me, you can’t make what he likes.”

The chef grew exasperated by what she heard.

To say she was frustrated would be an understatement—after all, she was a certified nutritionist who had turned down many lucrative job offers. However, from the very moment she started working for the Duncans, her cooking could not appease the two masters of the home.

The streamlined sports car emerged from the garage; its sapphire-blue coating looked all the more majestic as it glimmered under the brilliant sun. Alexander stepped on the accelerator and drove out of Royal Park.

Jordan’s picky eating habits were a continuous problem. The worst part of it all was that Courtney had indulged him. Now, he refused to eat anything other than what she made. The only meals he ate were the ones that Tina packed for him for lunchtime at school. He would not even so much as look at the food that the chef whipped up at home.