Cliff's POV
This woman was getting more and more audacious, not showing the slightest fear in front of me.
"Ding ding -" My phone rings again, the ringtone jarring in the quiet atmosphere.
I answered the call impatiently, my tone harsh, "Speak."
"Alpha Cliff, Luna Vanya's results have come in."
The voice from the school office on the other end carried a hint of difficulty. I instinctively frowned, a sense of foreboding rising in my heart, and responded, "I see."
Vanya sits across from me, looking at my expression, seemingly having guessed what the call was about.
"Vanya, I really didn't expect that you would dare to cheat in the exam at Wolfe," I couldn't help but accuse, my heart full of dissatisfaction and doubt towards her behavior.
"I passed, didn't I?" Vanya completely ignored my words.
She seemed to care little about how I viewed her, focusing only on the exam results.
From my expression, she had obviously deduced something. She should have passed the cut-off line.
"Cliff, since I've passed, don't worry about how I did it. In front of others, I can cooperate with you to play the perfect couple, but behind the scenes, you better not try to interfere with what I want to do," Vanya's attitude was unusually firm, which fueled my anger even more.
I suppressed my anger and said, "You want to do your own thing, I can stay out of it, but on the condition that you can handle Veronica. If she finds out you went to Wolfe, I can't protect you."
"It's okay, we can just reject each other," Vanya casually uttered the words "reject each other," causing my brows to furrow even deeper.
These days she kept casually mentioning "reject each other," as if treating it as a talisman or a weapon to threaten me.
But she seemed to have forgotten that the cooperation projects between the Dalton and Todd families were underway.
Breaking off the engagement at this time was simply impractical.
"Don't use that to threaten me," I scolded coldly.
Vanya didn't respond, just sitting there quietly.
I knew very well that at this critical moment, I couldn't possibly reject her no matter what.
The Dalton family, though still holding some strength and prestige, was essentially a hollow shell, like a rickety building on the verge of collapse, likely to fall apart in a few years.
Without the support of the Todd family, the Dalton family would decline even faster.
Similarly, the Todd family couldn't do without the connections and project resources of the Dalton family.
So, the two families couldn't afford to fall out completely yet.
Thus, I felt she was threatening me.
"So for the smooth cooperation between our families, you better keep Veronica in the dark and not let her hear a whisper. Otherwise, we will have no choice but to reject each other," Vanya's face wore a smile, but in my eyes, it was full of provocation.
I even detected a hint of seriousness in her tone, which made me feel uneasy.
Theodore's POV
The night was as dark as ink, deeply shrouding the world outside the window.
I sat quietly at my desk, having just finished a call with the school office, slowly putting down the receiver.
"What did they say?" Derrick asked eagerly, his eyes full of curiosity and anticipation.
"Passed," I succinctly uttered these two words, my gaze still on the documents on the desk.
My thoughts, however, drifted to that unpredictable woman - Vanya.
Derrick's movements instantly froze, as if under a spell, then he raised his voice in disbelief, "Passed? She passed it?"
He stared at me wide-eyed, as if trying to find a trace of a joke on my face.
Seeing no response from me, he pressed on, "You didn't ask the principal to help her?"
"She got in on her own, it has nothing to do with me," I raised my head, meeting his questioning gaze, my tone calm and affirmative.
"My God..." Derrick exclaimed, his jaw dropping as if dislocated, unable to close his mouth for a while, "Vanya, she really has some skills. I remember the file said she used to study a foreign language, completely unrelated to finance."
I slightly raised the corners of my mouth, a hint of appreciation flashing in my tone: "Vanya is a linguistic genius, a woman who obtained her master's degree at seventeen. She's not stupid."
I recalled the scene when I first saw Vanya decisively acquiring the obsidian rough.
The determination in her eyes was still deeply imprinted in my mind.
I had a faint premonition that with her appearance, things seemed to be developing in an increasingly interesting direction.
Like a stone thrown into a calm lake, the ripples were gradually spreading.
And I, for some reason, was looking forward to these unknown changes.