When the call cut off, she sank into the bed. "Why is this happening to me?" she asked, looking up with Mo Qingchen.

  He gulped. "Plagiarism?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  "Have you called the lawyers?" he asked.

  "Li Min is doing it. Li Jun and his team will be in the call," she said quickly. She looked around the room aimlessly. "Should I dress up and go to the office?" she asked.

  "You can do all of this from home. Stay here. I am not leaving you alone, okay?" he said firmly.

  She sucked in a deep breath.

  "What do you think happened?" Qian Meng asked.

  "They used the scandal to delay you. When they couldn't, they sped up their production and waited for the last moment to file their copyrights so that you couldn't stop them or launch before they did," Mo Qingchen explained. That was his guess, though.

  "Why didn't I see it coming?" she whispered. "How long have I been in business that I didn't see it coming?"

  He squeezed her shoulder in reassurance. "You can only evade what you see coming. They have been working in a pattern for a while, right? You studied it and you took measures against it. How could you have known that they got their hands on your designs?" he asked.

  "That is the problem, right? They don't have our designs. They somehow made one face from the multiples every piece was meant for. The materials are different too. But the overall feel of the design is the same," she explained.

  "You've checked thoroughly?" he asked.

  "Yes, Li Min is sending over samples of all of them to me right now," she told him.

  "Li Jun will know what to do. You need to stop beating yourself up. There are highs and lows in business and you have faced it before, haven't you?" he pressed her to respond.

  "But everything together?" she squeaked.

  "Let your staff take control. You have me. You have me standing behind you. Understood?" he prompted.

  She nodded. Her eyes were teary, but she knew something would make sense. She would have to pull herself together and figure out a solution to this.

  For the better part of thirty minutes, Qian Meng stared at the ceiling and grumbled, going over plans that could work. If no one else could do it, she would have to find a solution immediately.

  The jewelry arrived about that time and Mo Qingchen stopped her from getting off the bed.

  "I'll bring it upstairs. Do you want a cup of iced tea?" he asked.

  "Thank you," she said awkwardly. When he left the room, her eyes glazed over slightly. The panic slowly set in. It was all a plot, right? All the transport and port companies making a fuss, the scandal, the low sales, the plagiarism, and then there was the smashed car and the man who followed her. The universe seemed to be throwing it all at her one after the after.

  Maybe it hoped that she would be buried under the fear and pressure and at that moment, the silence in the room made her sure that it was going to happen at any second.

  She was going to crumble.

  And then he returned.

  "I already checked the package," Mo Qingchen assured as he handed the box into her hand. "It only has jewelry."

  She tried to give him a smile but failed. Mo Qingchen didn't need her to speak to know that the prospect of something dangerous being sent to her frightened her. And that she knew it was a possibility.

  So, she went to work and inspected each and every accessory with the calculated eye of a designer and marketer. There were only a few minutes left until the meeting began so she scrambled to the closet to find something suitable. So, she settled on one thing.

  Qian Meng only changed into a formal top before settling into bed with her laptop on her lap. Mo Qingchen, seeing this, brought it a small table.

  "It's a table for the bed. I bought it years ago and never used it. It's now yours," he announced. He picked up her laptop unceremoniously and slid the table into place.

  She looked at him helplessly but felt a wave of gratitude when she looked at herself in the reflection.

  "Now, your employees can only see your top and face. Discard the pillows from behind you," he instructed.

  "What do you think you are doing?" Qian Meng questioned.

  Mo Qingchen blinked. "You need to think about solutions right now. You don't need to stress about how you look in front of your employees, so I am helping you out in that front," he said simply. "Now, focus," he told her.

  He settled down beside her, his fingers flying over his keyboard as he typed out something. It was distracting at first, but then it seemed to fill the deafening and awkward silence in the room.

  The video conference started and Qian Meng switched on her camera and waited for everyone to arrive. There were no greetings.

  Li Jun was the one who looked positively livid out of all of this and Qian Meng could figure out why it was. She would need the details from him in the meeting.

  "Okay. We all know the problem. The launch is tomorrow. How do we remedy it?" she asked to the room.

  Xiong Fen was the first to speak. "The PR packages have been received by the influencers outside the city. The smaller influencers in the city as yet to receive it because we were in the process of sending them out today. The popular influencers had been given the go-ahead last night," she started.

  "Put a hold on sending out the PR packages to the other influencers for now," Qian Meng agreed. "Ma Qui, what are you doing on the marketing end?" she asked.

  "The advertisements for China are still running on billboards. If we pull them down today and cancel our launch tomorrow, we'll get back most of our deposits. I can make that happen," he said quickly.