Love is the Sunshine

Chapter 586 The Tide Of Public Opinion

The title confused Carla, but her curiosity forced her to read on.

She skimmed through the article quickly. As she pieced together the meanings behind the words, a

feeling of dread started to gnaw at her stomach.

The writer hadn't included their names. He or she was completely anonymous, appearing to know all

about her. In this article, the writer had laid bare all the sordid details of her past. Admittedly, some of

the statements were true. Others, however, were entirely fictional. The author, whoever he or she was,

had exaggerated the truth and taken liberties with it.

There was no doubt about it, the article was written to discredit her.

Somebody wanted to tarnish her reputation.

This article was even more surprising given that recently she had been on the receiving end of a

surplus of positive articles about her. Journalists had been singing her praises and depicting her as

angelic, composed and selfless. They said she deserved to be the wife of the president of the AJ

Group. In those articles, Carla was the perfect, untarnished embodiment of every rich housewife in JA

City. She was serene and poised, but also generous, often putting others before herself.

But this article was something else entirely...

"What the actual fuck?" Violet swore in a loud voice.

She, like everyone else in town, had just seen the article about Carla.

As her eyes greedily absorbed line after line of the article, the anger inside her grew. "Who the hell

wrote this? Did the writer receive some kind of bribe? How could they write these kinds of things? For

fuck's sake! People are so stupid online! They'll believe anything, even these blatant lies!"

The more Violet read, the more indignant she felt.

Worried about whether Carla had seen the article, she glanced over at her. Carla's phone was in her

hand and her head was down, looking listlessly at the screen. She lifted her face and her eyes met

Violet's. The color had left her pretty face entirely. And Carla was white with shock at that moment.

In the article, Carla was portrayed as a scheming bitch. And not just that, she was also a rampant and

ruthless seducer of men.

The article even claimed that she feigned the devastating flood in her home just to make Terence feel

sorry for her and take her back.

And that by far was not the worst of it.

The article went even further with its sordid lies.

She did whatever she could to seduce a young general manager of the Hua family, even causing him

to lose his job. The article called into question her legitimacy as heir to the Hua family estate, claiming

that she obtained this position after sleeping with the young and naive general manager.

And the article still said that after Carla successfully became the heir to the Hua family, she discarded

the poor young manager like he was an old toy and set her sights on seducing Terence once again.

According to an inside source, Carla knew Terence was in a serious and stable relationship with a

woman he was considering marrying. But that meant nothing to Carla. She did all she could to lure

Terence to her bed and win him back.

It said she had schemed a marvelous and manipulative plan to get Terence back.

The article glossed over their beautiful wedding and all the years they had spent happily married. It

didn't fail to mention, however, that Terence had discovered her in bed with a vast array of different

men, not just once but on several different occasions.

And there were also those two photos at the end of the article. They were private photos of Carla and

Johnny getting intimate.

Somehow Carla summoned the strength to keep reading. She read that Terence once filed for divorce,

so Carla feigned the devastating flood in her home.

She designed to go through all that trouble just to make Terence feel sorry for her and change his mind!

Carla stopped reading there. She just couldn't take any more of it and so, in frustration, she slammed

her phone down on the table.

She couldn't keep her anger under control for a second longer.

And she couldn't read another word of that article.

"Carla, don't take it to heart! Honestly, those bastards are talking pure nonsense! They are complete

imbeciles! Don't be angry. We all know the truth and you're innocent!" said Violet.

She rubbed Carla's back gently, and tried to soothe her with kind words, "I guess someone must be so

jealous of you that they tried to embarrass and discredit you."

Carla was really angry. She took the glass of water from the table, and almost drank all its contents in

one long gulp. But it did nothing to extinguish the tight knot of rage forming in her stomach.

"Violet, I just can't bear to read the last few paragraphs. Could you help me to?" asked Carla.

"Carla..." Violet hesitated.

"Someone is trying to smear my good name, and I think the clues for who he or she is must be in the

article somewhere. Read it out loud for me. I want to know how they end the article and try to guess

who wrote it!" said Carla.

She knew she didn't have the energy to read it by herself anymore.

Recently, her life had been tranquil and peaceful, some would even say mundane. The newspaper

articles about her had shown her in a complimentary light. So why had the tide of public opinion turned

against her so quickly?

"Well, the article says that in the past four years, you have been deliberately hiding from Terence in

order to make him feel sorry for you." And when you knew that Terence had gotten married again, you

couldn't bear it and returned to the public spotlight with another man's child,"

Violet read on, although she knew it was difficult for Carla to hear.

The expression on Carla's face remained cold and stern. Violet continued to read, "It said that as soon

as you came back out of hiding, you drove Terence's current wife and daughter out of the house

overnight and you even refused to let Terence see them..."

On hearing this, Carla snorted, "I was wondering why that awful woman was so quiet. It was like she

had vanished into thin air, but it turns out that she was busy designing this little trap for me."

Others wouldn't know who could dislike her so much as to write and publish such terrible things, but

Carla knew.

It was obvious who hated her the most.

Although the article only mentioned Lucy and her daughter a handful of times, they were consistently

portrayed as the innocent party.

"Carla, do you mean that it was Terence's ex-wife that paid someone to write this article?"

Violet ventured. She had never met Lucy, but she had heard a little about her after her return to town.

Carla closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath.

"I can't think of anyone but her," she said, exasperatedly.

And with that, Violet slammed her hand down on the table and shouted, "So we know who wrote it!

Why aren't we out there looking for her?" Carla, let's go and find that god forsaken bitch right now! I'll

strip off her clothes, take some photos of her, and post them online. She'll be so ashamed she'll never

show her face in public again!"

Carla's lips stretched into a mischievous smile, but she shook her head.

"I can't go looking for her. If I sought her out, the public would think that those awful things mentioned in

the article were true.

Maybe Lucy is waiting for me, expecting me to find her and rebuke her, and maybe she will even have

called the reporter there in advance in order to record the entire scene. And then I really would be

portrayed as a villain,"

Carla uttered, letting out another long sigh.

It dawned on her that Lucy was not as simple minded as she had once thought. The woman had really

outsmarted her this time.

In today's society, the volatile tide of public opinion crashing over your head was one of the greatest

things to fear.

Although she hadn't done those things, the public would be prone to believe the slander. It would not Content protected by Nôv/el(D)rama.Org.

be easy for her to distance herself from the rumors.

"So...what are we going to do about it? Are we just going to sit here and let that woman bully you? We

can't let her get away with it!"

Carla's situation made Violet feel anxious and agitated.

But Carla, on the other hand, seemed calm and collected. She said, "Violet, have you heard the phrase

'adding insult to injury'? The only option available to us is to be silent and do nothing."

Carla stood up, walked to the window, stretched her body out like a cat, and said, "The truth will come

out slowly, and only if I remain calm and dignified. With time I can rid myself of these rumors."

With those words, the sea, which had been so peaceful all morning, became rough. Huge waves

crashed onto the shore.

At this point, the news had also spread within the AJ Group.

"Mr. Terence, have you seen it? It's simply awful!"

Rainer called out loudly as he hurried into Terence's office sweating.

Terence was sitting, focusing on his work. He had important deadlines to meet.

When he heard Rainer's nervous voice, he wrenched his eyes away from his laptop and asked, "What

happened?"

"Mr. Terence, it looks like we're going to have to postpone the activity for free sales we scheduled

before..."

Rainer put his tablet on Terence's desk. The article about Carla lit up the screen. He said, "It was only

just uploaded a few minutes ago and it's already gone viral. It's been shared over one hundred

thousand times."

Terence put down the pen in his hand, took the tablet and scrutinized the article carefully, reading every

single word. The more he read, the closer his eyebrows knitted together.

He reached the middle of the article and couldn't go any further. He scrolled down to the bottom of the

page, looking desperately and hopelessly for the writer's name.

There was no name there, but he did find the comments section. There were thousands of comments

stretching out and expanding below the scandalous article, as every second another reader added their

opinion. Some insulted Carla further, while others questioned the article's reliability.

"Jesus. I'm going to need you to do some research.

Find out who uploaded this article!"

Terence smashed his fist down on the bright screen of the tablet computer with such force that cracks

appeared across the screen like an intricate spider's web.