Chapter 454 - Not A Daycare

Iris giggled.

"Yes, Mr. Jin. I am indeed the future Madam Jin. And yes, I plan on just walking into Jin Corporation for everyone to see after we officially announce our relationship to the public. Soon."

"En, soon. I can’t wait," Jin Liwei said. "Alright. I’ll arrange for you to sneak in whenever you want. I’ll contact Gu Chang and Diao Yijue to accompany you inside."

She nodded. Then she tilted her head to the side, as a thought entered her mind. "Since we now know that Eagle has been tampering with the Singapore branch’s system, then maybe his real target is Jin Corporation and that the hacking on the other companies is just a front."

"Hmm... Or maybe the targets are all the top companies in the country," he said.

"Oh. Let me check."

She immediately did a quick check while still sitting on his lap. Indeed, she found traces of Eagle on the other top companies’ branches in different parts of the world. Like the Singapore branch, it seemed that he had been given access by someone from the inside.

Jin Liwei’s expression became grave after she told him of her findings.

"It seems like we’re up against something much bigger than we first thought. It’s not only the Youngs. There are also a lot of others conspiring with this...power. If their goal is to control the country’s business sector, then taking over the top companies is the way to go. Control the top companies of a country and you basically control its economy," he said.

Both of them were quiet after he said this. If this was before, Iris wouldn’t care about something like the economy. However, she was now a full-fledged businesswoman. She had no choice but to care about the state of the economy.

Afterwards, Iris spent a few minutes strengthening Ketchup’s security. She did notice some minute differences in Ketchup’s properties, but she dismissed it as the natural effect of the self-learning function. The differences were so subtle that it didn’t make Iris concerned.

The attack on Ketchup earlier made Iris more protective towards her. Ketchup was like the culmination of Iris’ hacking skills and experience so far. She wouldn’t let anyone obtain her cat AI—no, her baby.

If the hacker earlier was really one of those old guys, then they would definitely want Ketchup for themselves if they ever discover her. They were fun to challenge her skills and to compare notes with, but as enemies, even Iris felt wary of them. If they got their hands on Ketchup, they would surely transform her into something completely unrecognizable.

Finally done for the night, Iris and Jin Liwei prepared to leave the computer room and return to their bedroom. They could still sleep for about a couple of hours before they both needed to wake up again for another workday.

"Meow~ Goodnight, Mommy! Goodnight, Daddy! Ketchup will wake you in 1 hour and 49 minutes."

After saying goodnight to their kid, the two left.

###

In the bedroom.

Jin Liwei carried his exhausted baby girl towards the bed. She was almost asleep but still waited until both of them were lying on the bed together.

"Hm? What’s wrong, darling?" she asked sleepily after noticing that he was staring intently at her face.

"Nothing," he said. He paused for a few seconds before deciding to be honest. "Actually, I had this weird experience earlier. I’m sure that it was just my eyes playing tricks on me."

"What is it?" she asked, trying to stay awake to listen to what he had to say.

"While you were battling the hacker earlier, I thought I saw a blonde woman instead of you," he told her.

Iris stiffened and gasped softly.

Of course, he noticed her reaction. However, he thought that she was angry at him, so he hurriedly said, "I’m not fantasizing about a foreign woman or anything like that. Like I said, it was just my eyes playing tricks on me."

She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him with a sense of wonder.

As for Jin Liwei, he also looked at her, trying to detect if she was mad at him.

"Darling..." she finally started speaking again.

"Yes, love?"

"That was actually me, too. I’ve always been a blonde on the inside."

He blinked several times before a wide grin broke out of his face. Then he chuckled softly. "I see. What a hot blonde you are. But no matter if you’re blonde or brunette or a redhead, or even if you’re completely bald, I’ll still love you because you’re uniquely you."

historical

Iris knew that he must have thought she was just joking. But even so, she didn’t mind. His words delighted her.

"I love you, too. Goodnight, darling," she whispered to him, a sleepy smile on her face.

"Mmmn. I love you more. Goodnight, love."

The lovers slept in each other’s arms.

###

In the next few days, Iris and Jin Liwei returned to work like usual. They were both very busy. Iris had a lot of work commitments this season, not to mention that she was also busy with her companies. As for Jin Liwei, he had to increase his workload because he would be taking a break at around the end of the month for their much-anticipated plan.

Despite their busy schedules, Iris still found the time to sneak into Jin Corporation a few times—mostly at night—to upgrade the company’s security system. Jin Liwei, Gu Chang and Diao Yijue accompanied her and made sure that nobody except them knew about her presence.

The new upgraded system might not offer 100% protection against the formidable hacker, but at least it would give him a bit of trouble until Iris arrived to personally battle against him again. In addition to this, she also increased the monitoring on Rose Young’s activities within the company.

This system upgrade went unnoticed by most of Jin Corporation’s employees, except for those working in the IT and security departments. What almost everyone noticed, however, was their President blatantly disregarding CMO Young’s existence.

He didn’t even want to speak directly to her, preferring to use his assistant Xu Tian as a spokesperson instead. It came to a point that Rose Young started being laughed at by the other employees behind her back, especially the female and bent ones who had crushes on their President Jin.

"And here I thought that Miss Young is really the President’s fiancée. You saw that post on the gossip forum too, right?"

"Yeah. But the post and the photos are all gone now, even the ones that had been reposted on other websites. I checked so many times but I can’t find them."

"Who cares about those photos when there’s a video of what really happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Wait, don’t tell me you didn’t see? It was only up for about a couple of hours before it was taken down by the user who uploaded it. But there are still a lot of people who saw them including me. A user called KittyBaby posted a clip from a surveillance video footage at the hotel where President Jin and Miss Young have been seen together. It turns out that it wasn’t really a date but a business lunch at the hotel restaurant. Mr. Xu Tian and the other executives were together with them but they were cropped out of the photos. It seems that the photographer intended for people to misunderstand the photos."

"Really? So what happened in the video?"

The woman told her colleagues about how Rose Young pretended to trip just so she could hold onto their President Jin’s arm.

"Let me tell you, it was so fake! I booed when I watched it. The President was a gentleman, helping her stabilize her footing when it wasn’t even unstable in the first place. But I laughed when he dusted his clothes afterwards as if her hands which touched him were dirty. I wish he just pushed her away instead, though."

"That really happened? Wow! She’s the CMO and yet she’s acting like a total hussy. Everyone in the company knows that the President is engaged and that he’s in love with his fiancée, and yet she’s still continuing to chase him? But look at her now. The President doesn’t event want to acknowledge her existence anymore."

"Hmph! That’s what she gets for lusting after the President. All of us here could only look at his shoes, and yet she thinks that she can actually touch him? Who does she think she is? Being the CMO doesn’t give her the right to touch the president so casually. She should also go to a temple and cleanse her dirty mind! If not, the evil demon with the robotic voice should haunt her and make her go insane. That’ll teach her not to act so close to the President."

These employees continued to gossip and ridicule Rose Young. Although they were careful not to talk in her presence, she was still aware that they were laughing at her. Of course it upset her.

It wasn’t only her. Even some of the members from the board of directors who championed for her appointment as CMO became upset. A number of them were Jin relatives and were close friends with Rose Young’s maternal side of the family. They met with Jin Liwei at his office to complain.

Jin Liwei looked at them with a colder and more intimidating expression than usual.

"Where in our company’s policy does it say that the President-CEO must spoil and baby the CMO? Show me," he challenged them. "Jin Corporation is a multinational company, not a daycare. Is she a special child with special needs who has to have constant attention and care? She is the CMO you voted into the position, not a princess that everyone must bow down to."

With that, everyone was now certain that President Jin didn’t like Rose Young. Maybe he even hated her.