But she cared if Jaylene and the others would be affected.

After school, Alaricka walked up to Jaylene on purpose and asked her quietly, “Going to your part-time job again?”

Jaylene shook her head. “No, I just had one part-time job. You saw how things were.”

Alaricka looked at her. “So, what were you going to do after that?”

Jaylene slung her empty backpack over her shoulder and grinned easily. “What else could I do? Just take it one step at a time.”

Alaricka hesitated for a moment, just opened her mouth, and was cut off by Jaylene raising her hand.

“Hey, don’t say stuff like wanting to borrow money. I wasn’t that broke yet.”

Alaricka said, “Alright.”

She and Jaylene walked out onto the street and only then found out the rumors weren’t about her and Jaylene, but instead… Roschelle.

“Did you hear? It was Roschelle who brought people to mess with Alaricka, and even got Jaylene involved.”

“Yeah, I heard about it too. I heard it was Roschelle’s cousin who did it. They said he tried to rape Alaricka, but luckily Jaylene brought people to save Alaricka, so he didn’t succeed.”

“Huh? Roschelle did that kind of thing too? I thought everyone said she was really nice?”

“You know nothing. You can never really know a person. I never liked Roschelle; she was just a high-level manipulator.”

“That’s what people said online too.”

“Didn’t Kieran stop it? After all, Alaricka also lived in the Argent’s villa for a few years.”

“You didn’t know…”

“Wait, wait, Alaricka was behind you; stop talking.”

Alaricka stood next to a few girls, frowning. “What were you talking about?”

The girls looked at each other and shook their heads. “No idea, we didn’t say anything.”

Alaricka took a step closer and wanted to ask more, but those girls grabbed each other’s hands and ran off, leaving Alaricka with just their backs.

Alaricka’s frown got deeper and deeper. She remembered what the girl just said, took out her phone from her pocket, searched Roschelle’s name on social media, and a bunch of just-posted updates popped up right away.

The main idea was pretty much the same: all talking about how Roschelle set things up and forced innocent girls.

Alaricka felt something was off.

Given Roschelle and Kieran’s personalities, a post like this would only last an hour before it disappeared. But these posts were sent out half a day ago.

Roschelle always liked to steer online opinion in ways that benefited her, so there’s no way she didn’t know what was going on online. Alaricka always felt a bit uneasy.

Jaylene bumped her shoulder. “Come on, what are you stopping here for?”

Alaricka gripped her phone and shook her head. Jaylene glanced at her phone screen and raised her eyebrows, saying, “Isn’t this a good thing? Why do you look so upset?”

Alaricka whispered, “That’s not right.”

“What’s wrong?”

“When did you ever see negative comments about Roschelle stay online for so long?”

Jaylene was a smart person; she got things right away. “Yeah, why was that?”

This question didn’t get answered until Alaricka got home. It wasn’t until Wallace invited her to the Argent’s villa for dinner that she understood.

That day, it was Wallace’s seventy-eighth birthday, and the whole Argent family, over a hundred people, were invited to the birthday party. That included Alaricka.

Although the Argent family raised her, when Wallace asked her to go to the party, Alaricka did hesitate. This time, the people who came included Kieran’s parents.

The Argent family’s business was all over the world, and Kieran’s parents mainly handled the overseas stuff, so they hardly ever came back to the Argent’s villa. But in the few times it happened, Alaricka’s impression was really deep.

In her last life, she also went to Wallace’s seventy-eighth birthday party, and Kieran’s parents came too. At that time, a lot of people already knew she was pregnant.

Kieran’s parents knew too. She clearly remembered that Kieran’s mother, Marlene Argent, was a very elegant, gentle, and graceful lady. She wore a dark green long dress. Even though she was already in her forties or fifties, she still looked like a woman in her thirties.

She looked at Kieran with the kind of tolerance and love a mother had for her child and looked at others very politely. When she saw her, Marlene’s eyes were cold, looking at her like she was checking out some product, like she was sizing up her worth.

And the final assessment was, she totally didn’t deserve Kieran. Lastly, she hadn’t even said a word to her, not even a simple hi, and would purposely skip her when making a toast.

Kieran’s dad, Rolando Argent, was a serious guy, and in this way, Kieran was a lot like him.