Chapter 263



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Joseph’s questioning voice drummed against his eardrums. Hayden clenched her fingers tightly and her nails dug into her flesh hard to calm herself, but she knew that as soon as she said anything, he would be more suspicious of her as he heard her trembling voice.

“I’m much relieved.” Joseph suddenly let out a laugh, “So it seems you’ve always been quite suspicious of strangers.”

Hayden was stunned for a moment and unconsciously glanced at Joseph.

Seeing an obvious smirk on his face, only then did he slowly let out a sigh of relief.

“Yes.” She averted her eyes from him as she whispered, “I didn’t know you well then, so I couldn’t tell you everything.”

“It may rain today. Remember to bring an umbrella when you go out.” Joseph pulled an umbrella from the umbrella stand at the entrance and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” Hayden pursed his lips and bowed his head. She was still nervous.

After leaving the house, her heart was still pounding. She had a feeling that if she didn’t confess the truth to Joseph, he would soon learn the truth through his own means.

She could not predict what would happen.

…

The reason Dante called Hayden was to discuss the proposal for the Joann Group.

There were a lot of rumors on the Internet in the last two days, saying that Hayden was the sole heir of the Downey Group and that she had received a large sum of money left by Bentley, and a large part of the fortune came from the Downey Group’s financial loopholes. Bentley was therefore considered to be using his power of attorney to seek personal gain. It was an unreasonable legal way to transfer his fortune to Hayden.

The Downey Group was a large company with a few thousand employees, and the sudden closure of the company had caused a large number of people to be out of work.

The company had not been paying wages to employees for two months due to financial liquidation.

Not only were the farm workers causing problems at the construction site, the office workers couldn’t sit still either. When the rumors surfaced, everyone followed the trend of smearing Hayden, although they had not yet begun to smear Green Lemon Clothing.

In the second floor conference room of Green Lemon Clothing, Hayden looked out the window toward the pigeons while listening to Benson Jackson’s voice.

“In response to recent rumors on the Internet, we have to confront users on social platforms. We have to block content that disparages our company, otherwise, at such critical times, it may affect Joann Group’s votes. We have to take action as soon as possible.”

The company had just been incorporated. The Director of Public Relations, Benson Jackson, was a young man who seemed to have waited a long time before he got a chance to show his talent. He seemed very enthusiastic and was the first to learn that Hayden was being harassed on the Internet.

“Ms. Downey, what do you think?” Christ Clark’s voice rang out in the conference room.

Hayden was stunned for a moment before regaining consciousness. She wore a puzzled expression, “Huh?”

She had been thinking about what had happened before she left home and hadn’t been listening to the meeting.

Dante who was standing next to her noticed and reminded her what they had said, “What Mr. Jackson meant was that, we should stop the rumors before the netizens found out that you are related to Green Lemon Clothing, so that the Joann Group’s vote will not be affected. However, I think, if we just block the comments by communicating on social media, I’m afraid it will provoke a backlash and make us look like we have a bad conscience.”

His words were so crucial and it seemed like he wasn’t trying to remind Hayden, rather it was as if Dante was adding his opinion.

Hayden also understood his words and was reassured.

“That’s what I wanted to say. It’s not feasible for us to let social media deal with the problem, we have to set up our PR plan. The problem has already occurred and we have to find a deterrent way to solve it.”

After five minutes of brainstorming, Christ, who was still young, said, “Ms. Downey, how about we do this? We can ask the social media platform to block a portion of the misleading comments, leaving the most exaggerated and false cursing comments.”

Hearing his words, the crowd was perplexed at first, but soon everyone understood.

He was trying to do the opposite, as users would not believe the derogatory comments when they were too exaggerated.

Most Internet users believed the misleading comments. It was ridiculous for the company to try to explain itself and might not have much effect. Therefore, it was better to simply leave the most exaggerated comments for them to discuss, as people in their right mind would not believe such comments.

His proposal was unanimously approved at the meeting.

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