They Canceled My Ticket I Canceled Them Chapter 16
Daniel looked as if the air had been knocked out of him.
Madison hurried over, tears already welling in her eyes.
“Ellie, please don’t be like this. Daniel and Tyler really missed you. Are you still mad at me? What happened back then was my fault. You can blame me—just don’t treat them this way.”
She was falling back on her old trick: play the victim and wait for the others to pressure me into forgiving her.
It had no effect on me now.
I looked at her.
“Ms. Cole, I believe the project under plagiarism investigation was yours.”
Madison’s expression faltered. She looked away.
“I didn’t plagiarize. It’s normal for designers to reference each other’s work.”
“Is it?”
I took a business card from my clutch and handed it to our host, Mr. Cooper.
“LN conducts very strict reputational due diligence on its partners. If a firm was driven into bankruptcy by a plagiarism scandal, that would certainly affect our investment recommendation. Before you make any decisions, you would be wise to review the original design files and email records.”
Cooper nodded, his expression turning cool as he glanced back at Marcus’s group.
“We will be conducting our own independent review.”
Madison panicked.
“Elena! Why are you doing this? You used to work at Marcus’s company, too.”
“It’s precisely because I worked there that I know the internal records are worth a look.”
I placed my champagne flute on a passing server’s tray.
“And one more thing—address me as Ms. Preston. You lost the right to call me Ellie a long time ago.”
I took Julien’s arm and walked toward the VIP lounge.
Marcus and the Reeds stood frozen in place. Around them, the whispering had already begun.
The humiliation they once forced me to carry was now their own.