Chapter <b>12 </b>
On Monday morning at eight sharp, N arrived punctually at Park Pharmaceuticals.
The HRpleted her onboarding and showed her around thepany, familiarizing her with the departments‘ locations. Afterward, she was escorted to the office of the R&D department manager.
The R&D manager, Genevieve Reeve, was a woman in her 40s with a neat short haircut. She was not one to smile easily, giving off a serious vibe.
“Have a seat,” she said after N sat down. “I’ve reviewed your resume. You achieved quite a bit during your school days, but you haven’t been in theb for the past few years. You’ll start as an assistant.”
“Okay.”
Genevieve approved of N’s calmposure without any hint of dissatisfaction. She liked subordinates <b>who </b>were down–to–earth. So far, N seemed reliable.
Genevieve stood up and addressed N. “Let me introduce you to your colleagues.”
She led N into the R&D department and raised her voice. “Everyone, hold on a moment. We have a new member in our department today. N, please introduce yourself.”
N stepped forward with a smile. “Hello, everyone. I’m N Jayston, your new recruit in the R&D department. There’s a lot I may not be familiar with initially, so please guide me along the way.”
As soon as she finished speaking, a sudden exmation came from her left. ‘Lucia! You added the wrong reagent!”
N turned toward the voice and recognized the frantic woman tidying up the reagents. <b>She </b>was surprised to see Lucia there<b>. </b>
Lucia’s father, Clement Pord, was the procurement manager at Harris Pharmaceuticals, where he and Harrison had developed a close friendship from their university days. As a result, the Jayston and Pord families were quite close, and N grew up alongside Lucia
However, after the Jaystons went bankrupt, the Pords quickly distanced themselves, and Lucia even blocked N.
Later, N learned from Vrie that at a high school reunion, Lucia had imed she never considered N a friend and had only been nice to her because of her father’s job at Harris Pharmaceuticals
This revtion had made N realize that not everyone who smiled at her genuinely liked her–some simply found her useful.
Genevieve looked at Lucia, frowning. “What’s going on? Aren’t you usually the most careful?”
Pouring out the reaction sk with the wrong reagent in a hurry, Lucia looked guilty <b>as </b>she nced at Genevieve. “I got distracted for a moment. I’m sorry.”
Lucia usually did her work meticulously, so Genevieve didn’t continue to chastise her, just reminding her to be more careful next time.
“Since you have more experience in experiments, N will assist you for now. Brief her on theb protocols and get her up to speed<b>.</b><b>” </b>
1,3
Lucia lowered her head, concealing her underlying disdain. “Okay.”
After giving a few more instructions, Genevieve left.
Lucia looked at N with a fake smile. “N, I didn’t expect you to work at Park Pharmaceuticals. I saw you from a distance at thepany gate a few days ago. I couldn’t believe it was really you.”
N didn’t miss the hint of disdain in Lucia’s eyes. She looked at Lucia Indifferently without responding to herment. “What do I need to do today?”
Lucia’s smile froze. She bit her lip, looking somewhat aggrieved. “N, are you still ming me for what happened before? When your father’s pharmaceutical factory had that incident… My family would have been affected too if I hadn’t distanced myself from you. You understand my <b>situation</b>, right?”
Although the others appeared to be focused on their work, they were all actually listening attentively. Given Lucia’s words and N’s <b>reaction</b>, it seemed there was some past conflict between the two, and it <b>was </b>likely juicy gossip.
N didn’t want to engage in reminiscing with her.
She said expressionlessly, “Ms. Pord, I’m here to work, not to dwell on the past. Besides, you just added the wrong reagent, and the experiment needs to start over from scratch. If you don’t get a move on, the entireb will have to work overtime because of your mistake.”
Lucia gritted her teeth inwardly upon seeing the unfriendly looks from her colleagues. She hadn’t. expected N to be so sharp–tongued after all these years.
Still smiling and intentionally softening her voice, Lucia said, “You just started today, and there isn’t any specific work for you to do yet. You can start by washing those reagent bottles over there.”
N nced over where Lucia pointed, a corner where there were 70-80 reagent bottles needing cleaning. It seemed like she had been assigned all the umted reagent bottles in the entireb.
Lucia’s smile grew a bit smug as she watched N look at those bottles without saying a word. Once N refused, she would go straight to Genevieve to tell on her.
Genevieve detested people who were both arrogant and ipetent, so she would surely start to dislike N. This meant Lucia could easily manipte her in the future.
However, N didn’t say anything and simply walked toward the corner where the reagent bottles were piled up.
Watching N’s back, Lucia smirked. Now that N was in her hands, she could do whatever she wanted. She would make N <b>regret </b>evering to work at Park Pharmaceuticals!
N worked straight through until 9.00 p.m., cleaning all the reagent bottles.
When she finally put down the brush, she felt like her back wasn’t her own anymore.
She got home after 10:00 p.m. and took a shower before preparing to sleep. Just as she set down her phone, it pinged.
N frowned slightly when she took a look. She recognized the profile picture–it was rk’s secretary.
The day after she found out <b>about </b>rk’s affair, she had deleted Jordyn from her contacts. She couldn’t believe Jordyn had the nerve to add her again.
N ignored it, but Jordyn clearly wasn’t giving up. She sent a message.
Jordyn: [Ms. Jayston, I’m pregnant<b>.</b><b>] </b>
N froze, her fingers gripping the phone until they turned white.
After a pause of more than ten seconds, she calmed down. She took a screenshot and sent it to rk, then promptly blocked Jordyn to avoid being revolted by her again.
rk’s response came quickly.
rk: [N, this is an ident. I will handle it properly promise <b>she </b>won’t appear in front of you again.]Text content ? N?velDrama.Org.
N felt his promise was insincere. He had made simr promises before, and what had happened then?
She didn’t reply and simply deleted their chat history.
Over the next few days, whenever N arrived at theb, Lucia assigned her a bunch of menial tasks. As forb protocols and how to conduct experiments, Lucia didn’t say a word.
Soon, a week passed.
On Friday evening, Genevieve came to theb to check on N’s progress.
Seeing her cleaning theb, Genevieve frowned and asked Lucia, “What’s going on? I didn’t hire her to do menial tasks.”
Lucia put on an innocent look, somewhat helpless as she said, “It’s not that I don’t want to assign her work. She hasn’t done experiments in years, so she can only start with the basics. That’s why she’s only doing these tasks for now.”