The Fake Group Darling Picked a Fight with the Real Boss Chapter 08

The Fake Group Darling Picked a Fight with the Real Boss Chapter 08

By all accounts, she had lost completely tonight.

She hadn’t scored Manuel, her freeloading tab was laid bare, and even her most obedient puppet, Rupert, had been dragged home by his mom’s phone call.

By all logic, she should’ve left.

Yet she didn’t move.

She stared at me for a long time, and then a sudden smirk crossed her face.

It was the kind of smile worn by someone who still believe she held a winning card.

She turned to Manuel.

Word by word, she spoke up.

“Manuel, do you have any idea that Harleigh ruined the most important competition of your high school life?”

For the first time, true silence fell over the terrace.

The second those words landed, even Colson’s smile disappeared.

Everyone in our circle knew about Manuel’s national competition back in high school.

It was indeed a big deal, but Manuel had already secured early admission to a top university.

Entering the competition was mostly just his father pushing him to grab first place for the family’s image.

Yet on the day before the event, Manuel’s admission ticket disappeared, and he couldn’t even

enter the venue.

It caused a huge uproar back then-his father nearly sued the school.

Seeing that she had stirred up enough tension, Sylvie raised her phone.

Her voice trembled, practically buzzing with excitement.

“I reached out to one of your high school classmates just to get to know you all better.”

“He heard Harleigh say with his own ears, ‘I have the ticket.””

She flipped through the chat logs page by page for everyone to see.

“Don’t you all think she’s the absolute best? Your precious Harleigh ruined the most important opportunity of Manuel’s life!”

“Manuel, she’s been fooling you for over a decade!”

Everyone turned to look at me.

This time, even Colson stayed silent.

I set down my dessert fork, perfectly calm. “That’s right. I hid the ticket.”

Sylvie’s eyes lit up instantly. This was the exact line she had been waiting for.

She was already imagining the scene where everyone turned their backs on me.

Yet when she turned to look at Manuel, she found his expression hadn’t shifted a bit.

Sylvie was utterly baffled. “You… you knew all along?”

Manuel nodded. “I knew. She told me herself the next day.”

It was actually very simple.

The day before the competition, Manuel ran a high fever.

His father was ruthless about results, and Manuel was just as stubborn.

Said he’d take a shot, bring the fever down, and play the next day like normal.

The doctor explicitly warned later that pushing through another half-day in that state could

easily turn into pneumonia or even myocarditis.

I spent the whole afternoon trying to talk him out of it. Nothing worked.

So I stopped trying.

If I couldn’t reason with Manuel, could I really not handle a paper admission ticket?