Chapter 721 - 717: Not Only Easy, but Also Disgusting

Leontis Howard walked over to the desk, opened a drawer, and took out the device.

"Here."

He carefully handed the device to Duane. Duane took it and examined it for a moment before asking, "Is the memory card inside? Do you have any other backups?"

"N-no backups. Everything’s in there."

Leontis Howard watched the device in Duane’s hand apprehensively. Since there really were no other backups, he was terrified the man would smash the device at any moment, destroying everything.

"Sir, we agreed... I’d hand over... hand over the goods."

Not ready to give up, Leontis Howard spoke again. ’That’s not a small sum of money. We can’t just let it slide, can we?’

Hearing this, Duane couldn’t help but laugh out loud. "You really have a one-track mind when it comes to money, don’t you? Even now, you’re still thinking about getting paid?"

With a miserable expression, Leontis Howard mustered up his courage and replied, "A person has to have some integrity, right? Look, I’ve already given you the device. As for the money... if the original price is a problem, we can renegotiate..."

"Negotiate?" Duane sneered. "You won’t be negotiating with me. Someone else will be talking to you."

As he spoke, he glanced at one of his men and raised an eyebrow. "Flynn, go ask Cecilia to come in. Tell her we’ve got it."

The man nodded and quickly left the office.

A short while later, Cecilia Sterling stepped through the doors of Stellarwind Media. The scene inside the main office area was quite a spectacle.

All of the company’s employees, easily a hundred people, were lined up neatly in the aisles and against the walls. They stood with their hands behind their heads, not daring to move an inch.

Dozens of men in black watched over them, preventing anyone from secretly recording with their phones.

The moment Cecilia appeared, the disciplined men in black called out in unison, "Cecilia!"

She merely glanced up and said simply, "Don’t hurt anyone."

With that, Flynn led her to Leontis Howard’s office.

"Cecilia, here’s the video." Duane immediately handed the device to Cecilia before stepping back to stand behind her.

Leontis Howard and Mason Hughes exchanged a look. This woman, Cecilia, was a complete stranger to them; they had expected Connie to be the one handling the transaction.

Cecilia walked straight to the sofa and sat down. She looked up at the two men. "Who conducted this interview?"

"Him!" Leontis Howard pointed at Mason Hughes without a moment’s hesitation. Mason’s eyes widened in shock.

’Not even a second of hesitation?’

Cecilia looked at Mason Hughes. "What’s your name?"

Her voice was soft and devoid of emotion, making it impossible to read her mood. Though terrified, Mason Hughes obediently answered, "Mason Hughes."

"Play the video for me."

Mason Hughes froze, his fingers digging nervously into his palms. Afraid of being dragged down with him, Leontis Howard nudged him with his elbow. "Go on."

Mason Hughes shook his head, a conflicted look on his face. ’How could he dare?’ The video was still unedited. To make things easier, he had recorded the entire process, including how he had deliberately coached Leopold Hughes and his daughter to lie.

’I originally figured I’d have to edit it later anyway, so I could just cut it down to the parts I wanted to air. Who would have thought it would come to this?’

"Are you deaf?" Duane snapped viciously. "You know how to film but not how to play it back?"

Mason Hughes swallowed hard. With a trembling hand, he picked up the device, turned it on, and pressed a few buttons to cue up the video.

Cecilia held the device and began to watch, her expression unreadable. The entire office fell silent, the only sound being the dialogue from the device.

"That’s not the right way to say it. It’s not interesting."

"It’s something that happened twenty years ago. Who would have evidence?"

"Just do as I say, and I can even give you more money."

"..."

As the video played, cold sweat soaked through the back of Mason Hughes’s shirt. Leontis Howard didn’t dare to breathe.

Forty minutes had passed by the time Cecilia finished watching. She let out a cold laugh and said mockingly, "And you wanted one thousand dollars from me for this fabricated garbage? Making money sure is easy for you. And disgusting."

’They say the media will do anything for clicks these days, and it’s true. They’ll stoop to any dirty trick imaginable.’

"Initially, I considered calling the police and handling this through legal channels. But now I see that to deal with sewer rats like you, this is the only way that works."

Cecilia brandished the device in her hand, a mocking smile playing on her lips. "If I were to release the full, unedited version of this video online, what do you think the consequences would be?"

At her words, both Leontis Howard and Mason Hughes looked up, their faces stricken with terror.

Mason Hughes’s face went white as a sheet. He was the one who conducted the interview. Maliciously coaching his subjects, fabricating the story, manufacturing conflict, inciting a witch hunt online—any one of those things was enough to end his career.

Leontis Howard, on the other hand, was terrified that if the full video was exposed, every media account his company operated would lose all credibility overnight. Once a media company loses the public’s trust, years of hard work would go down the drain.

The influencers with millions of followers, the ones with tens of millions, and all the promotional accounts they had painstakingly built up would be implicated, reported, and maybe even permanently banned.

’They’d be finished! The company would be finished!’

Cecilia was satisfied with the looks on their faces. "Scared now? There’s nothing I hate more than being threatened, especially when it involves the person most important to me."

"Being threatened and blackmailed doesn’t feel very good, does it? Well, guess what? Now it’s my turn to set the terms."

Cecilia’s tone was casual, but every word landed on them with the weight of a thousand-pound stone.

"Miss..." Leontis Howard began, blinking rapidly, his voice thick with tears. "Now that we’ve given you the video, we definitely won’t release it. And we absolutely won’t pursue any more stories about Lily Sterling. How does that sound?"

Cecilia shook her head. "No."

Leontis Howard was on the verge of tears. "We don’t want the money either..."

"You’re still fucking thinking about money?" Duane cursed.

Terrified, Leontis Howard shook his head again and again. He looked at Cecilia with a pleading expression. "Then, miss... you tell us. What do you want?"

Cecilia blinked, a plan clearly already formed in her mind. "I may not be in the entertainment industry, but I’ve heard about some of its rules and tactics. When you want to kill a story, the best way is to replace it with a bigger one."

"You guys are paparazzi. I’m sure you’re sitting on a lot of celebrity dirt you haven’t released yet, right?"

At this, a small smile touched Cecilia’s lips. "Push out a scapegoat to take the heat off Lily’s story. I’m not asking you to sacrifice an innocent person. Just find some real scum—someone guilty of domestic abuse, cheating, drug use... You’ve got someone like that, don’t you?"

Leontis Howard’s heart sank. All that celebrity dirt was supposed to be leveraged to negotiate a high price with the targets. On this Lily Sterling job, not only had he not made a single cent, he’d actually lost twenty dollars on it. And now he was expected to just give away a celebrity scandal?

’This was a massive loss!’