Chapter 152


    “The best way to make people


    believe that we did nothing wrong is to act proud as if we did nothing wrong.


    In reality, I don’t consider us dating to be wrong to begin with, so it really


    doesn’t bother me,” Ace said while sound extremely bored.


    “Right…” I murmured while I only


    felt half convinced.


    What we did and were still doing


    was breaking the rules no matter how he looked at it. Despite what I thought,


    the employees in thepany seemed to have so much faith in Ace and his words.


    After the press conference everything settled down quite fast in thepany,


    and within a few days, everything was back to normal. No one gossiped about the


    photos of us kissing anymore. Everyone seemed to have moved on.


    The key change for me was that now


    everyone in thepany recognized me, my name, and my face. Everyone knew Ace


    as the CEO of thepany beforehand, so nothing changed at all for him;


    however, very few people in thepany knew me. Only those that I had the


    pleasure to work with in some way knew me and that has changed dramatically.


    Now everyone ‘knew’ me and even though they no longer believed that I was


    inappropriately involved with their CEO, it still made me very self-aware and


    ufortable.


    This must be what it felt like to


    rise up in fame overnight. However, I didn’t gain all this unwanted attention


    and fame from some good merit that I did and that was probably the worst part.


    Pushing all of that aside, the bigger problem was how Ace was going to grow


    thispany into the size he promised his father.


    “Do you have any ns in mind?” I


    asked in a small voice when we were alone in his office.


    “Well, the first easy but important


    step is for us to win the Ashfordpetition with Project Alpha. Now that


    Chase Creastives is no longer in the picture, it shouldn’t be hard for us to


    win. That doesn’t mean that we can let our guard down and the reason is


    simple…” Ace replied.


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    “It doesn’t matter if we win if our


    work is below the standard and expectation from our potential clients. They’ll


    have their eyes on this…” I finished his sentence for him wlessly.


    “Exactly. Not just our existing and


    potential clients in the industry. If we want to expand our portfolio, we’ll


    have to work hard to attract even morepanies to work with us,” Ace


    surmised.


    “You’re right. It doesn’t matter who


    ourpetitors are, we still need to put out our best work out there without


    fail,” I said with determination.


    “Correct. Without fail. If we get


    this right, the winds will really be blowing in our sails,” Ace said before he


    reached out a hand and yed with a strand of my hair.


    …


    I sat down at the table for our


    regr Project Alpha meeting with the CEO’s office team members. It was such a


    relief to finally focus on my work without any distractions in my way. Things


    were looking up. We got our original storyboard back and we managed to clear


    the rumors in the news. Everything finally felt peaceful, and I was mentally


    prepared to focus on delivering real results for this project.


    Everyone was on time to the meeting


    except for Ace who told us beforehand that he would be around ten minuteste


    because of a previous engagement. That left me alone with my other colleagues


    and that was when I found out what they really thought about the gossip that


    was circting in the news.


    “I feel so sorry for you that those


    photos were leaked. They really are so misleading just like Ace said in the


    press conference,” a colleague told me with clear sympathy.


    “See? I told you that there is no


    way that Karina would be dating the CEO. I mean, he’s Ace. The gossip is


    nothing but gossip,” another person said.


    “I feel bad for you, but you really


    need to be careful. Ace is a public figure, so these things are bound to


    happen. It’s not your fault but keeping some distance between you two would be


    better in my opinion,” another person advised sternly.


    “Don’t be mean to her. I’m sure


    everything is fine now, Karina. We can focus on pushing this project forward.


    We have to finalize the detailed version of the storyboards enough so that we can


    start on the production nning,” Jeremy said with a smile.


    It always seemed like Jeremy had my


    back all the time. He was a genius at what he does, and he was also very kind.


    Just like me, he worked in design, and I was such a big fan of his storyboards


    too.


    As the people in the room chatted


    away about what they thought about the rumor