Chapter 436

• Rumors have a way of creeping back when you least expect them especially in a city like Eastborough, where the skyline is sharp and unforgiving, and the corporate world is even sharper. This time, the whisper campaign wasn’t just background noise. It was malicious. And it had my best friend Vivian’s name all over it.
• They said she'd been “taken advantage of” during her acquisition trip to Westhaven Tech. That she’d been humiliated, used, and tossed aside by executives from their firm in some sordid backroom deal.
• Of course, the first time these stories started right after she returned from the Sandorian merger talks last year we buried them. We had the PR team do their job, swept the slander under the rug, and it faded like all bad headlines eventually do.