A Breach of Trust

Upper Intermediate (B2) Social American Accent 57s

Two business partners process their disappointment after discovering that a trusted associate deliberately misled them about project finances.

Vocabulary Highlights

deceive /dɪˈsiːv/: To cause someone to accept as true or valid what is false or misleading; to intentionally mislead or trick someone.; "The seller tried to deceive potential buyers by concealing the vehicle's accident history." — mislead someone intentionally; "Appearances can easily deceive you when you only see what someone posts online." — give a false impression

Speaker 1: I honestly can't believe Jason chose to deceive us after everything we did.

Speaker 2: He knew that project was failing, but he kept feeding us false numbers.

Speaker 1: It feels terrible knowing someone you trusted was deliberately steering you in the wrong direction.

Speaker 2: What hurts the most is how calculated the whole thing was.

Speaker 1: He had multiple chances to come clean before the contract was signed.

Speaker 2: Instead, he doubled down on the story and made us look foolish.

Speaker 1: Do you think he actually convinced himself that nobody would notice?

Speaker 2: People who deceive others often start believing their own lies after a while.

Speaker 1: Well, rebuilding that trust is going to be completely out of the question.

Speaker 2: Definitely, I'm just glad we caught it before any real damage happened.

Practice in Shadowee with interactive phrase-by-phrase audio playback, Echo mode, and Focus mode.