Chapter 12

Joseph announced amidst the excited squeals. “These are gifts from Mr. Rosenbloom. Thank you all for taking care of Pearl. Please take the gifts.”

My classmates exchanged looks.

“He’s talking about Mr. Rosenbloom and Pearl. Is she really Mr. Rosenbloom’s daughter?”

“That explains the choice of gift. The Rosenbloom Group started off by making goldware!”

“Pearl, you kept a really low profile!”

Finley refused to believe it. He pointed a finger at Tanner. “But isn’t Tanner the Rosenbloom son?”

Joseph looked in the boys’ direction. Tanner hurriedly turned his face away.

Joseph replied, “Sorry, but I don’t know him.”

Finley argued, “How could you not? He’s a Rosenbloom! Take a better look for yourself!”

Joseph chuckled. “Oh, there are many Rosenblooms in this world, but Pearl Rosenbloom is the sole heiress of the Rosenbloom Group.”

The revelation led to a stunned silence. The classmates shot dirty looks at Tanner.

“Was he lying all this while?”

That was not all. Tanner had intentionally misled everyone into bullying the real Rosenbloom heiress.

Juniper was the first to blame Maisie. “Oh, you’re gonna get me into serious trouble! Pearl is giving out 24K gold! Why didn’t you tell us that she was the Rosenbloom heiress?”

Maisie hung her head. “I-I had no idea either.”

“Bullshit! You come to school and leave school every day with Tanner. You must have known he wasn’t the real Rosenbloom heir. You deliberately lied to us on Tanner’s behalf and manipulated us into giving Pearl a hard time!”

Maisie cast a tearful and helpless look at Tanner. “Tanner…”

Frowning, Tanner walked over to Maisie to defend her. “Guys, that’s enough!”

When he spoke, he incurred the wrath of his classmates, as he was the main culprit behind the entire misunderstanding.

Finley indignantly questioned him, “Why did you lie about being the Rosenbloom heir?”

“I never said that aloud. You guys got it wrong.” Tanner’s nonchalant comeback turned everyone speechless.

I couldn’t stand his arrogance even after he was exposed. So, I extended my hands, palms up. “Give everything back to me!”

Tanner was in shock because he couldn’t believe I would humiliate him.

“Wait. Are you not going to return the stuff I bought you? You looked so reluctant to accept that Constantin watch from me. You claimed that I was insulting you with my wealth, and you said I was looking down on you by giving you a luxury watch!

“I reflected on my actions, and I realized I was the one at fault. I did not take into consideration your ego. Now that I have seen the problem, I think you should return all the gifts you took from me. This way, no one would mistake you as the Rosenbloom heir.”

While speaking, I pulled out a list of purchases that I printed at the principal’s office just now-36 pages of items that I bought for Tanner over the past six months, and each page contained at least six purchases. Tanner was really a greedy guy.

“Pearl, do you have to take it this far?”

“Tanner Rosenbloom, are you a stingy pauper? How could you refuse to return all this stuff?”

Tanner took off the watch with a sour expression. He visibly flinched when I set my eyes on the pair of limited-edition sports shoes he was wearing. He stammered, “The shoes… I’ll bring them to school tomorrow and return them to you.”

Someone commented, “Woah, so that was how Tanner got all his luxury items! He’s definitely an experienced scammer who played Pearl like a fiddle!” “Eh, did I miss something? I thought he hung out with Maisie all the time. Why did he accept gifts from Pearl, then?”

“That’s easy to explain. He prefers to go out with Maisie because she’s the campus belle, and he needs a lot of money to keep a popular girl happy!”

“Oh!”

Their classmates, who finally got a better grasp of the situation, turned to Maisie. As expected, they saw Maisie decked in a luxury watch and necklace. Maisie quickly covered up the items. “Hey, these are not gifts from Pearl! I bought them with my money!”

Chapter 13