Mr. CEO, You Look Strangely Familiar

Chloe Marshall met his gaze. ”A man like you, Boss Ellsworth... I don’t think there’s a woman alive who wouldn’t like you.”

”There are. Even a man like me, there are still women who don’t like me.”

”That’s because she’s too busy looking down her nose at everyone. She thinks something far off in the distance is better, not realizing the best thing is right in front of her. She just can’t see it.”

Ethan Ellsworth reached out and rested his hand on her long hair, his voice a little hoarse. ”Well said.”

Feeling the warmth of his fingertips brushing against her hair, Chloe Marshall felt her throat tighten. She leaned her head against his chest and wrapped an arm around his waist. ”Boss Ellsworth, before I became your assistant, did you ever have to deal with crazy fans?”

He chuckled. ”Too many to count.”

”I once saw online that back when you were a singer, living in a dorm with the other three members of your group, a fan mailed you a bloody sanitary pad. I don’t know if that was true or not.”

Ethan Ellsworth snorted. ”Not just that. They used the menstrual blood to write a letter and mailed it to us. It was completely insane, not a shred of sanity to be found.”

Chloe Marshall laughed softly. ”And it wasn’t just that, was it? I once saw a forum post where a user wrote: ’A pair of hairy underwear I stole from Ethan Ellsworth’s dorm—’”

Before she could finish, the voice above her head quickly clarified, ”That’s definitely not true. Our dorm was under tight security back then. A normal person couldn’t have possibly gotten in.”

Chloe Marshall still remembered seeing that story online back then. She had even left a comment, saying the user was disgusting and asking what was so great about a guy’s underwear that it was worth showing off.

As a result, she was attacked by a horde of his die-hard fans. For example, Die-hard Fan #1 said: ’You’re just jealous, aren’t you? Do you have any idea how much that pair of underwear is worth? You could work your whole life and still not afford it.’

Die-hard Fan #2 continued: ’You’re probably just some guy’s mistress, right? We’re all Ellsworth’s fans. Do you even get it?’

After that, countless other die-hard fans ganged up on her, to the point that Chloe Marshall never dared to casually comment on celebrity news online again.

”I figured as much.”

’I never would have imagined that I’d somehow stumble into being Ethan Ellsworth’s assistant, getting so close to him, and even sharing a bed with him.’

”I had no idea you used to follow my news so closely.”

”I didn’t! It’s just that you had so many scandals back then, I saw your name so often I just came to recognize it.” She would never admit that she had deliberately looked him up online.

”In the entertainment industry, only the really famous celebrities get a lot of press. And with more press, more people get to know who you are.”

”I know. It’s called creating hype.”

”That word, ’hype,’ can mean a lot of things. A celebrity’s private life is an open book. If you post something on Weibo, share a photo, or talk about a certain topic right as your movie or TV show is coming out, netizens won’t necessarily call it hype. But then there are the really deliberate stunts, like someone’s dress ’accidentally’ slipping on the red carpet, or someone taking an intentional fall. The deliberate stuff makes up a huge percentage of it.”

”It seems like you’ve never done any of that. Most of your news was about having a fling with this actress or getting flirty with that one. Boss Ellsworth, none of the actresses you were linked with in those scandals were very pretty.”

Ethan Ellsworth actually agreed with her. ”That’s right. Without makeup, they’re no different from ordinary people. They’re not as easy on the eyes as you are.”

Chloe Marshall’s heart swelled with happiness. That night, for the first time, the two of them really opened up to each other, talking late into the night before finally falling asleep.

Although they mostly talked about the entertainment industry, they still found they had common ground.

After Charlotte Young’s body was cremated, she was buried in a cemetery on the mountain.

Many reporters interviewed Charlotte Young’s family, but as agreed upon with the Grant Family, they refused to discuss her death. They would only say that the matter was closed, that she was gone, and that the living had to move on.

On the seventh day after the death, Catherine Callahan attended the memorial banquet.

After the banquet ended, she personally drove to Charlotte Young’s grave.

After checking to make sure no one was around, Catherine Callahan took off her sunglasses, squatted down, and pulled out two cans of beer. She opened them both, poured one out in front of the tombstone, and started drinking the other herself.

Staring at the photo on the tombstone, she let out a dry laugh. ”I came to see you. I know you must hate me. You probably don’t want to see me at all.”

GULP. GULP. After taking a few big swallows, Catherine Callahan composed herself. ”But even if you don’t want to see me, I’m here. Charlotte Young, you didn’t have to die. But you were too greedy. The money I gave you wasn’t enough; you also wanted Quentin. Heh—did you think I was just going to stand by and do nothing?”

No one answered her. There was only the bleak, cold wind scraping at her face, her voice carried away on its currents.

”I warned you, but you treated it like it was nothing. So don’t blame me for being merciless. Originally, I wanted you to go down with Nora Ainsworth, but she was smarter—and luckier—by comparison.”

The smiling photo on the tombstone watched her, but it couldn’t speak.

Catherine Callahan finished her beer and stood up. ”All right. You just have a good time down there. I won’t keep you company. I won’t be coming back to see you again.”

Clicking away on her high heels, Catherine Callahan turned and left, the beer can in her hand crushed out of shape.

*

The afternoon sky was gloomy and overcast.

It didn’t look like it was going to snow, but rather like rain was on its way.

Ever since the clinic confirmed that Jean Grant was having a girl, Mrs. Marshall had started playing mahjong again. After all, there was a hired housekeeper at home to take care of Jean.

She spent her days playing mahjong, trying to keep up with the latest trends, and browsing for things online, with nothing much to do.

Now in her forties, she had learned how to take care of herself, and her face looked much younger than before. She was also willing to spend money on her wardrobe, dressing head-to-toe in designer brands. One look and you could tell she was a wealthy woman.

She left the beauty salon with a mahjong friend of a similar age, and the two headed to a hair salon to get their hair done.

”Let me tell you, with the way you’ve been dressing up lately, you look like a young woman in her thirties—so young and stylish. Seriously, you’re still so young, how have you not thought about finding someone?”

Mrs. Marshall beamed with delight but feigned modesty. ”I’m already over forty, what’s there to look for? I’m content just to have raised my son. As for a significant other, I haven’t really thought about it.”

But those words were not what she truly felt.

A woman who had crouched outside her son and daughter-in-law’s door multiple times to eavesdrop on them... how could she not have thought about it?

”Now that your son is married, you should start thinking about it,” her friend said in a low voice. ”Don’t they say a woman at thirty is like a wolf, and at forty, like a tiger? You’re just a little over forty, and you’ve got a long life ahead of you. Do you really plan to spend the rest of your days lonely and alone, without even someone to talk to?”

Hearing this, Mrs. Marshall’s heart began to race with temptation. ”But I don’t have any way of meeting men my age.”

Her friend leaned in conspiratorially. ”Let me tell you... that salon we’re going to? It’s all young guys who do the hair. It’s not like other salons.”