Page 199 of My Ruthless Neighbor

I drop my sunglasses in my backpack when the elevator stops at the fifth floor of KIM Advertising.

When the door slides open, I step out, my mask perfectly in place.

But as soon as I look around, my smile falls.

There are people everywhere. The creative floor is always crowded and buzzing with energy. But this time, the crowd seems bigger and the air around me is tensed.

Someone jogs past me. A distant sound of a landline ringing reaches me, followed by shuffled footsteps to my right. Voices speaking impulsively.

The usual laughter I used to hear around here is missing. I spot the intern who used to always ride the hallways with his skateboard is walking with a frown and bunch of files in his hands.

A door closes somewhere down the hall and more footsteps follows.

“What the hell is happening?” I muse to myself as I quicken my pace. When I reach the cubicles, I see the creative team with grim faces as they bustle around with stiff postures and tense silence.

“What are the updates from the damage control team?” Hannah’s hard voice makes me turn my head in her direction. She is wearing a white pantsuit, her hands jammed in her pockets as she stares at Brielle.

“No updates for now.” Brielle’s lips are set in a line as she stares at her computer.

Raleigh comes to view when he strides toward Hannah and stands beside her. He pulls off his leather jacket aggressively before throwing it on an empty chair. “Nobody will fucking leave this building until we get to the bottom of this, am I clear?”

They all murmur in agreement. I have never seen him this furious. And Hannah, who’s usually the calmer one among the two is barking out orders to a group of interns.

They file out one by one as she finishes with them and turn, her eyes falling on me. I hold my hand up in a small awkward wave. She starts toward me.

“Hey,” she says with a strained smile. “All the shoots for the day are delayed. Sorry, I forgot to inform you.”

“What happened?” I ask, concerned.

“Our competitor released their latest campaign for the hair product and it is awfully similar to our on-going one.”

“What?” I gasp.

“Similar?” Raleigh snarls as he reaches us. “They fucking plagiarized the whole fucking concept.”

Hannah nods solemnly. “All the essential components of the campaign, like the tone, the appearances of the models and also the color schemes they used are exactly the same to ours.”

Raleigh grinds his jaw. “They’ve been subtle in mimicking our style in the past. But now they’ve outright copy-pasted our work which hasn’t even been released yet.”

“Even the phrases we were going to use for the video advertisements are copied,” Hannah adds.

“Can they get away with it just like that?”

“No. We are going to fucking sue them.” Raleigh hisses. Then, “I’m going to find the motherfucker who leaked our project and tear them limb from limb.”

“You think someone leaked it? As in an employee of KIM Advertising?” I ask, my mouth falling open.

“No.” Hannah shakes her head. “The employees would never do such a thing. No one could betray Archer and his agency like that. But the freelancers we hired? The stylists? The models? Yeah, there’s a possibility that they could be working for our rivals.”

“Don’t call them our rivals.” Raleigh spits out. “They don’t deserve the title. They fucking planted a spy here so they could copy our hard work. They are fucking losers and certainly not our rivals.”

Hannah reaches out and interlaces her fingers with his. Their eyes lock and she nods her head and he releases a long breath. She gives him a smile that’s reserved only for him.

With her other hand, she clutches his arm and presses her forehead against his. “I’m sorry for raising my voice.” He sighs.

“It’s okay.” She kisses his jaw. Then, “You’re going to do the dishes for the rest of the week.”

Raleigh cracks a smile at that. “Fair enough.”

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