It had been thirteen hours since Leo's emergency press conference live stream.
The screen of her laptop was split into several windows, showing real-time voting data and backend logs.
The "Support" votes, fueled by the PR campaign, were steadily climbing, the five-minutes data refresh felt oddly slow.
Charlotte closed the laptop, her thoughts returning to the previous night.
"Deal."
Leo readily wrote out a check for two million, but as she reached for it, he drew it back teasingly.
Charlotte raised an eyebrow, her gaze sharpened.
Leo seemed to enjoy the slight crack in her usually composed expression. "I gave you the leverage you wanted. Shouldn't I be heard now?"
"Get to the point." Charlotte shrugged, pulled out a nearby chair, and tilted her chin, gesturing for Leo to continue.
"You said earlier that we couldn't call the police, because all the evidence, while pointing to you, would also implicate me?"
Seeing her nod confirmation, Leo gave a cold laugh, his tone heavy with capitalist arrogance and contempt. "You don't get to decide my involvement. I will have my PR team release the results of a 'professional investigation' to the public."
Charlotte's expression shifted slightly. "Bringing in a private agency with zero credibility will only make the audience think you fabricated evidence to bury the news!"
"Doubt?" Leo's sneer intensified as he advanced on Charlotte step by step. "I'm not aiming for trust; I'm aiming for buzz."
"Your grandmother, the cancer diagnosis, your desperate need for a huge sum of cash—these are the perfect antidote to a PR crisis."
He spoke slowly and deliberately, radiating intense pressure. "My PR team will expose all of it, transforming what they see as a moral dilemma into a tragic tale of being targeted by a hacker!"
Leo seized her wrist, his eyes burning with unbridled ambition. "You have nowhere to run. Now, only I can protect you, and you must use your IT skills to safeguard this 'performance'!"
"Ding!" The laptop beside her flashed a maximum-level alert.
[WARNING! Program officially initiated! Core data is locked!]
The "Support" votes finally broke the threshold set by the limiting program.
The tampering program the opponent had implanted was activated, attempting to write new values into the underlying data to artificially suppress the vote count.
Charlotte's eyes burned with fierce anticipation; this was the moment she had been waiting for.
"An auto-launch, huh?" A bloodthirsty curve twisted her lips.
She quickly deployed the anti-tracking traps she had already installed on the system's fringes.
On the screen, lines of code flashed at a speed barely perceptible to the human eye.
She had to keep the program running to lure the opponent into staying connected, allowing her to collect evidence, while ensuring the hacker couldn't fix the connection vulnerability she had exploited before the voting ended.
For a full seven hours, the hacker constantly trying to break in and patch things up, yet couldn't understand why their code was sinking into quicksand.
The moment the countdown hit zero, ending the vote…
"Tap." Charlotte hit the Enter key, instantly completing the final data counter-attack on the hacker's connection point.
At the very last second, all core files on the opponent's device were corrupted, and their IP connection was dropped.
She watched with satisfaction as the final numbers appeared on the voting page.
#Charlotte Verdict: SUPPORT 67% / AGAINST 33%#
This wasn't PR spin; this was the truth she had protected with data.
After handing the already-packed luggage to Lucas, Charlotte got straight into Leo's car.
"Congratulations." Leo closed the file he was holding and looked at her with amusement.
"As expected," Charlotte returned his gaze. "I kept my promise. Now, it's my time."
"Did you find anything?" Leo's eyes sharpened. Though framed as a question, his tone was one of absolute certainty.
Charlotte nodded, a cold smile playing on her lips. "I couldn't trace the final IP address location, but when tracing the VPN subscription source, I discovered a corporate domain registration."
"The domain is registered under a partner studio of the Starlight production team." Charlotte turned her head to face Leo directly. "Evan's private studio, 'Eclipse Photography'."
Leo was silent for a moment, then looked at her playfully. "It seems the trouble you attract is far more expensive than I thought."
Charlotte scoffed. "My returns will far outweigh the expense."
The car stopped in front of a building. Before Charlotte got out, Leo asked in a low voice, "Are you going back in as a mole now?"
"No." She shook her head, her gaze sweeping over the training base before them, a cold glint in her eyes. "The focus is now Evan's camp."
She opened the car door, picked up her luggage, and looked back into the night, giving Leo a challenging smile.
"My first step is to return as the gentle, harmless victim."
Leo shook his head helplessly, leaning out the car door. "A tip for you: Evan's studio is known for its fairness. The only exception is Emily. What you need to figure out is whether Evan is the mastermind or if he's being used by his friend."
She narrowed her eyes, said, "Got it," and stepped directly into the dormitory entrance.
Of course, she knew that in the original novel, Evan was deeply in love with Emily, serving as her male best friend and exclusive photographer.
The moment Charlotte found out that 'Eclipse Photography' was owned by Evan, the information in her mind instantly connected.
She was almost laughed out of sheer anger. She had always thought Evan was just a cold, melancholic background male lead, but she hadn't expected him to be so ruthless.
To help Emily climb to the top, he would stoop to such despicable tactics, framing another girl and destroying her life.
In the dormitory lobby, all the trainees who had passed the individual round were back, awaiting the next round of closed-door public performance training.
The moment she stepped through the door, a dead silence instantly fell over the room.
All the trainees stopped talking and stared at her.
Charlotte felt the probing, scrutinizing, and hostile stares from everyone, forcing herself to maintain the weak, gentle demeanor of someone tormented by fate.
She quietly set down her suitcase without making any unnecessary noise, and spoke softly, her voice slightly hoarse yet laced with gratitude, "I'm back, everyone."
Emulating the original Charlotte's introverted personality, she forced a smile as she faced the crowd, subtly scanning the surroundings and mentally noting potential camera locations.
In that instant, Emily, her eyes glistening with tears, quickly rushed forward, affectionately grabbed her hand, and immediately pulled her into a hug.
"Charlotte! It's so good to have you back! I was so worried about you!" Emily's embrace was just the right strength, filled with the perfect display of best-friend affection.
Charlotte submissively hugged her back, leaning her head close to Emily's ear, and whimpered with a tone of deep grievance and dependence, "I'm sorry I worried you. I… I was so scared, I almost didn't make it back."
Hidden by her "crying," she held Emily tightly.
She subtly shifted her body weight to the right, aligning the angle of her jacket's right pocket with the slight bulge in Emily's rear-right pocket.
She remembered that Emily had a habit of carrying her phone everywhere.
During those three seconds of the hug, her backup phone completed a capture of Emily's phone's DLE broadcast data.
She immediately released Emily, her eyes teary and grateful. "Thank you, Emily."
The digital fingerprint was secured. The game of infiltration and revenge had officially begun in the opponent's most trusting embrace. Whether mastermind or accomplice, no one would escape…