Chapter 368 - 457: I Said, I Won’t Accept Your Apology
"Finished?" Chloe Sinclair asked. She was sitting on the small sofa with her legs crossed. Though her position made her physically lower, her gaze was so searing it felt like it could see through anything, making it impossible to meet her eyes directly.
Tiana Warren instantly lowered her head, her face alternating between pale and flushed.
When Mr. Sinclair had told her to go to the study, she already knew the outcome.
Gritting her teeth, Tiana Warren quickly admitted her fault. "I’m sorry. I was wrong."
"You certainly were," Chloe Sinclair retorted. "But I’m not sorry, and I don’t forgive you."
"Not only that, I’m taking you to court. You will be held responsible for all damages and legal liabilities."
Tiana Warren’s eyes widened, and she suddenly dropped to her knees in front of everyone.
But aside from Aunt Warren, not a single person moved to help her up.
"Miss Sinclair, I apologize. I wasn’t thinking straight."
Chloe Sinclair raised an eyebrow. ’Just as I thought,’ she reflected. ’This isn’t so simple.’
As far as she knew, Tiana Warren was a Chinese major and had absolutely nothing to do with Physics.
To take such a huge risk to steal her manuscript, she must have been acting under someone’s orders.
Chloe Sinclair rose from the sofa and looked down at the kneeling Tiana Warren. Her eyes were filled with contempt and disgust, without a single shred of pity.
"Someone put you up to this?"
"Then who was it?"
Tiana Warren rushed to explain. "It was a researcher from Spire Tech. They gave me five hundred thousand to see if you had any information on your computer."
Chloe Sinclair glanced at Tiana Warren. When she saw the other girl had no intention of elaborating, she let out a soft laugh. "So you didn’t just steal my manuscript. You also deleted all of my data?"
The computer at home still contained a lot of her data. Some less important files were sitting right on the desktop, and Tiana had wiped them all completely.
Seeing that Tiana Warren was about to deny it, Chloe Sinclair leaned down and pressed an index finger to her lips, a smile gracing her face. "Don’t even try to deny it. I’ve already recovered the files you deleted. Once I cross-reference the timestamps with the security footage, it’s all over for you."
Tiana Warren met Chloe Sinclair’s faint, unreadable smile and stared at her, aghast. She blurted out instinctively, "How is that possible!"
The moment she said it, she saw Chloe Sinclair’s eyebrow arch slightly and realized she had misspoken.
Chloe, however, found this rather amusing. "What’s more surprising?" she asked. "That I got the files back, or that you were careless enough to let that slip?"
Tiana Warren instinctively shook her head.
But Chloe Sinclair was done talking. Her entire demeanor shifted, growing colder, and her voice became as sharp as ice. "The manuscript. Where is it?"
A tremor went through Tiana Warren. Knowing the evidence was irrefutable, she could only hang her head helplessly.
Chloe Sinclair’s heart sank. ’This is bad,’ she thought.
Aunt Warren, who had been standing to the side, finally grasped the severity of the situation. With her eyes turning red, she demanded, "What manuscript? Tiana Warren, why would you steal Miss Chloe’s manuscript!"
Although she didn’t fully understand what this manuscript was, the moment she heard talk of researchers and tech companies, she understood how serious this was. Even without much education, she knew such things were in a world completely out of reach for ordinary people like her.
This was her only niece, after all, but all she could do now was grab Tiana Warren’s head and try to force it to the floor.
"Apologize to Miss Chloe right now!"
As her head moved toward the floor, the pain Tiana Warren anticipated never came. Instead, she felt something cool, yet soft and warm, stop her forehead.
She looked up. It was Chloe Sinclair.
After a single glance, she lowered her head again.
"Tiana Warren, I told you I wouldn’t accept your apology."