CHAPTER 512: CHAPTER 512: I’M BULLYING YOU

Rhonda Sullivan was woken up by the incessant ringing of the doorbell. Annoyed, she cursed before getting up to open the door, only to find that it wasn’t prospective buyers, but Mr. and Mrs. Sterling.

"What are you here for?"

"To buy the house," Ruby Sullivan replied, not wanting to waste words with her.

"I won’t sell it to you." Rhonda Sullivan said as she tried to close the door, but Ethan Sterling blocked it.

Ruby Sullivan sneered, "If you don’t want to bring trouble on yourself, you’d better not refuse us."

Rhonda’s eyes widened, ready to retort, but the chaotic memories of that night surged up, and all her anger was suppressed by fear.

Indeed, she was afraid of causing trouble. Faced with real trouble, she could only choose to retreat.

Defeated, she stood aside from the door in resentment.

A few minutes later, the three of them were seated on the couch. Rhonda Sullivan wrote down a price on paper, adding twenty million to her expected price.

Ruby glanced at the number she wrote and, not bothering to argue, directly crossed it out, writing a new price, "If it works for you, the deal’s done." She smiled, "If not..." She deliberately dragged out her words, glancing at Ethan Sterling, very pleased, then turned to Rhonda Sullivan and with a shift in tone added, "If something happens to you, I’ll be your only heir, you know that, sister?"

Her last two words were spoken lightly, yet filled with a threatening tone, which struck Rhonda Sullivan to the core as if her entire body had frozen.

"Ruby Sullivan, don’t push me too far!" Her expression and tone both faltered like a defiant clown.

Ruby Sullivan replied pleasantly, "Yes, I am bullying you because if I didn’t, you wouldn’t even get this much."

Rhonda Sullivan panted, feeling extremely uncomfortable.

Now, she truly was nothing, with no cards to play, living like an ant, easily crushed by Ruby Sullivan whenever she pleased.

What right did she have to bargain with them?

Rhonda stared at her for a while, exhaled deeply, and nodded in resignation, "Deal."

After completing the transfer procedures in the afternoon, Ruby Sullivan gave her a week to pack up and leave.

Rhonda Sullivan sat in her room, looking at the few packed suitcases, and suddenly burst into tears on the floor. Why had she ended up like this?

She didn’t know how long she cried, but suddenly footsteps echoed. Turning her head, she saw Henry Linden standing at the door.

"How did you get in?" Rhonda Sullivan yelled, then muttered to herself, "Did that bitch Ruby Sullivan give you a key?"

"Yes." Henry Linden admitted, looking at her with pity, "It wasn’t her; I borrowed it from her because I’m worried about you."

"I have nothing now, so stop putting on this hypocritical act in front of me."

Henry knelt beside her, holding her, "You still have me."

Rhonda Sullivan wanted to break free from this embrace; the man disgusted her, yet she burst into tears in his arms.

*

That evening, Ruby Sullivan cooked to celebrate with Ethan Sterling, not expecting the negotiation to go so smoothly.

She had to thank T a bit, although contacting them was inconvenient; she could only keep the gratitude in her heart.

Earlier that morning, Ruby Sullivan called Henry Linden on her way to the old house to inform him of their visit, not knowing that Henry had already been kicked out by Rhonda Sullivan. The fear of Rhonda and the intended price of the property were both told to her by Henry Linden.

Ruby Sullivan added one million to their intended price, considering it quite generous.

Henry Linden acted selflessly in this matter.

In fact, ever since Brandon Sullivan’s passing, Rhonda Sullivan’s mood had been very unstable, needing to take large amounts of antidepressants daily just to barely function. If she continued to clutch onto The Sullivan Group, she would ruin both herself and the group.

Leaving her current life was the most feasible and healthy treatment plan discussed by Henry Linden and Rhonda Sullivan’s attending physician.

He did all this for Rhonda Sullivan out of love for her.

Three days later, Rhonda Sullivan moved out. For a while, Ruby Sullivan didn’t know what to do with the old house, so it was left vacant.

She was too busy with the promotion of the new products to even care about The Sullivan Group’s audit situation.

Stella Jennings had recently been participating in a reality show about playing werewolf, having some time before joining a film crew for a teen drama two months later. During this time, it was best to finalize advertising arrangements. Currently, Nirvana’s PR department was somewhat dissatisfied with Stella Jennings’ reputation.

Male viewers found her very cute, always silly enough to fall into traps. No matter how she acted, she’d always be exposed, but most female viewers felt such incompetence was unsuitable for such a show.

The result was, Stella Jennings was being exposed online because of her first show with the company. Though the company could hire ghostwriters to suppress the backlash, it couldn’t salvage her reputation, so after discussing it with Stella Jennings, her manager decided to ignore the online exposure.

Yet Nirvana, as the client, couldn’t entirely disregard the reputation of the endorsing artist.

"Mr. Sullivan, insisting on hiring Stella Jennings as the youth series product endorser at this time is a reckless move that devalues us," Yara Sullivan from the PR department said with a stern face, unwilling to budge.

Ruby Sullivan doodled turtles with a pen on her notebook and thought, having gone from boss to Mr. Sullivan, how come now she didn’t even have the authority to hire an endorser?

She had always adhered to the principle of not using those you suspect and not suspecting those you use, thus always respecting departmental decisions. But she recently realized this approach might not be the best, as many people occasionally forgot that she was not only Nirvana’s chief perfumer but also a bona fide CEO, not just a perfumer.

She put down the pen and said in a deep voice, "When I founded Nirvana, I even hired Dong Xia during her low point and Emma after her disfigurement when she remained in seclusion because I valued the compatibility of the artist’s aura with the product."

"Mr. Sullivan, it’s the age of traffic now. If you’d requested this when the training camp was still a hit, I wouldn’t have opposed it. But now, for Stella Jennings, it’s a period of obscurity. If you insist on using her, please give me a reasonable explanation."

Ruby Sullivan frowned, thinking it was a bit... inappropriate for an employee to demand an explanation from the boss.

"I’m a fan of Stella Jennings. Does that explanation suffice?" With that, she rose, "Abigail, you’re responsible for this matter, meeting adjourned." Then she strode out of the conference room.

Yara Sullivan frowned, evidently still dissatisfied, wanting to vent her discontent, but a glance from Howard stopped her. She rolled her eyes in frustration.

And Howard quickly got up to catch up with Ruby Sullivan.