Unknown Divorce Revelation Beyond Time (Charlene and Thorne)

Vesta was once again the star of the show, and the Spencers and the Hawkinses couldn't have been more delighted.

Leah shot a smug look at Charlene.

Maureen was also beaming with pride for her daughter.

Charlene, on the other hand, as always, couldn't have cared less. She didn't even bother glancing Leah's way.

She kept her head down, quietly sipping her tea, blending into the background and staying far away from the lively conversation between Vesta and Professor Mack. Vesta, meanwhile, was absolutely basking in the attention of so many respected experts in the field.

Watching all this, Dalton finally felt a sense of relief and satisfaction.

Just then, Kevitt Smith sent Vesta another message.

[PrimeStar is an incredible and innovative company. Not only is Stewart, the boss, impressive, but so many of their engineers are bursting with creativity. I'll probably be heading over again soon-I'm hoping to have a real conversation with Stewart and some of his engineers next time.]

The NMI journal had a double-blind review system, so reviewers never knew who submitted the paper. Kevitt Smith had no clue who the author behind the work he'd raved about actually was.

Vesta glanced at the message, assuming Kevitt Smith was still bummed about missing a real chat with Stewart last time.

She was just about to type out a comforting reply when she overheard Professor Mack talking to one of his students: "You couldn't help yourself, huh? Had to go check out the paper?"

"Yeah!" The student's voice was practically shaking with excitement. "The core of this paper is that it boosts large language model long-text processing efficiency over tenfold! Engineers worldwide are pulling all-nighters just to study it. It's already making waves overseas-and it just hit the top trending searches here, too. The best part? The paper was published by the PrimeStar team!"noveldrama

Vesta froze, her fingers pausing over her phone. She looked up at Stewart. Everyone else was staring too.

Maureen and the others were frowning.

Such a groundbreaking breakthrough, and it was Stewart's team who came up with it.

But then, with Stewart's talent, it wasn't exactly shocking that his company would produce something like this.

Still, the fact that Stewart was now focused on Charlene—and standing on the "other side" from them-left a sour taste.

It was uncomfortable, knowing that the professor championing her daughter's work was actually raving about a paper from Stewart's team.

Professor Mack, on the other hand, was genuinely delighted. He turned to Stewart and said, "Mr. Ferguson, another team to a major

leakthrough? Congratulations!"

But Stewart just smiled. “Actually, Professor Mack, you've got it wrong. I'm not the lead author-this new result wasn't my project. I just helped out with some minor details."

"You only helped with minor details?" The student's phone screen was still open to the author list. He leaned in and, sure enough, saw Stewart wasn't the first author. That was someone named Ross.

And not just the first author-the corresponding author was Ross as well. Stewart was listed second.

The rest-third, fourth, and so on-were probably engineers from PrimeStar, since they'd all listed PrimeStar as their affiliation.

Professor Mack looked at the name "Ross" on the paper and spoke slowly, "The first author is Ross-"

At that, Vesta, Dalton, Maureen, the Hawkinses, the Spencers—everyone— paused in surprise.

They already knew the paper was from the PrimeStar team. And Charlene just happened to be from PrimeStar.

Could it be

No way.

Charlene? Seriously?

But Stewart spoke up. "Yes, Ross-as in Charlene Ross."