Chapter 214 I Didn’t Plagiarize It
“Alright. I’ll hold you to it, then.”
The smile Elise gave Alexander was so sincere that it was practically infectious, and he voluntarily reached out to grasp her hand. “Come on, let’s go home.”
Shoulder to shoulder, they walked off into the moonlit night.
…
The next day, Elise went to work as usual, only for a grim Brendan to follow her into her office immediately upon her entry. With a complicated look in his eyes, he stared at her and pursed his lips for a moment before stating, “I have something to ask you, my darling sister-in-law.”
Startled by both the appellation and the stern look on his face, she urged, “Go on.”
After a moment of contemplation, he continued, “Have you finished the draft for your design? May I see it?”
Even though Elise found it to be a strange request, she carelessly flipped through her papers to locate her design draft and hand it over to him. “It’s mostly done. If you need it urgently, I can finish it by today.”
Yet, Brendan’s expression turned ugly the moment he saw her design draft.
“What’s going on?” she queried. In the next second, he lifted his gaze and stared right into her eyes.
“Did you show this draft to anyone else before this moment?”
After thinking about it earnestly, she answered, “No one has seen it apart from you. Why? Did something happen?”
Without answering her directly, he pulled out his cell phone and handed it over to her. “Look at this.”
Elise took the phone and glanced down at it, and all of the blood drained out of her face. “How is this possible?! This design is my own. How can this person’s design resemble mine so much?”
“This is the work of a local first-rate designer, Coner. She announced it to the public last evening as part of her new series—the design I showed you being the main diagram. The whole series is in a style identical to yours.”
“It’s my design. I didn’t plagiarize it,” Elise muttered darkly.
The fact of the matter was that Brendan believed her, but his trust would do no good in a situation where Coner had already published her designs. This meant they could no longer use Elise’s design.
“We can’t use these diagrams anymore, Elise. You’ll have to redesign them.”
The more Elise thought about it, the more she realized that something was wrong. After all, she had noticed that someone had touched her drawing papers when she came back from lunch the previous afternoon, and now her design was on the Internet a scant few hours after that incident. There was no way this could be a coincidence.
“I designed this myself—” she uttered slowly, “—and now I suspect that someone has stolen it.”
The moment she said that, Brendan stared at her gravely. For some reason, he felt like she was telling the truth, but evidence was needed for everything nowadays. “Do you have any proof?”
It made Elise smile without any warmth in her eyes. “No, but the truth can’t be hidden or falsified. I will find the proof I need to claim my innocence. Until then, I hope you’ll believe me.”
Upon hearing that, he nodded obligingly. “If that’s the case, I have a solution.”
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