Chapter 771 – His Second Chance Love: The Freezing Silence

Chapter 771 – His Second Chance Love: The Freezing Silence

Our last encounter wasn’t pleasant, but Sean was courteous enough to pretend that that never happened. He behaved like a perfect gentleman. It felt like he endured another round of insults while trying to gain control of the White Corporation.

These businessmen enjoyed talking business over a meal; Sean was no exception. He initiated his proposition halfway through the meal.

“Mrs. Featherstone, I have heard that you are currently the acting chairman of White Corporation. What is your opinion regarding the acquisition bid raised by GW?”

I was honest with Anthony, and I treated Sean exactly the same. I placed my cutlery down, wiped my lips, and looked him full in the face. “Our prior encounters had not ended well,” I said slowly. “Mr. Blondell, you may still harbor a grievance and possibly wariness toward me, but let me assure you that I personally have no malice toward GW group.”

I spoke from the heart and believed that I portrayed a sincerity upon my face to match what I felt. Sean appeared satisfied and nodded eagerly for me to carry on.

“However, it pains me to have to apologize to you.” I watched as Sean’s smile faded a little, but he did not interrupt. “In my capacity to represent White Corporation, I officially decline GW’s offer to acquire us.” He was the third person I’ve rejected on the same day. It would seem to an observer that I was being particularly difficult and prickly.

Sean’s expression turned an even uglier shade of green than before. He flung down the cutlery in his hands onto the porcelain plate with a crash. “Mrs. Featherstone, from the way you chose to take over White Corporation at this particular time, I had thought that you are different from Mr. Featherstone.”

It was true to a certain extent. Anthony and I were preventing White Corporation from falling into the hands of foreign investors. As Marcus was traveling between M Country and K City, his company was left without a leader. Despite the best efforts by the government, the shareholders ultimately chose to protect their own interests by voicing their desire to be acquired by GW Group. If I had been in favor of Anthony’s move, all I had to do was to be a spokesperson for Featherstone Corporation to placate the shareholders. Instead, I replaced Marcus as chairman and unknowingly became the face of corporate greed at the prospect of GW’s two billion.

It was not in my nature to beat around the bush. “Mr. Blondell, you know better than me as to why White Corporation had been subjected to so many changes within a short period of time. As Marcus had rejected your acquisition bid once before, I am merely doing him the courtesy of respecting his wishes. I don’t think you would go out of your way to be difficult, would you?”

Sean’s expression shifted but turned back to normal abruptly. “Mrs. Featherstone, I’m not quite sure what you mean,” he said as he leaned languidly back in his chair.

He’s still pretending? It was pretty convincing, too bad that the truth was more obvious than that. The disappearance of Camelia and Toby coupled with Marcus losing his bearing were no coincidences. GW Group was the most to gain from all those events.

This was one of my reasons for distrusting foreign businessmen. Once they tasted the hint of victory, they would relentlessly buy time by avoiding the problem at hand. To people like Sean, time was their best asset. The longer it dragged on, the higher were their odds for winning.

Too bad they miscalculated this time. White Corporation had diversified in AI technology while severing ties with industries destined to be extinct with technological advancement. With proper management, White Corporation would be right back on track in no time.

“Sean, listen to me.” I addressed him by his first name now; it was a gesture of respect from me. “I’m very clear on your motives. Mr. Featherstone had rejected your acquisition bid so you felt like you had no choice but to involve Marcus in dirty dealings. Consider this my final warning—you are not in M Country anymore. You are not as influential here as you are over there. The positions of Featherstone Corporation and White Corporation will only solidify within K City. If GW Group still intends on doing honest business in our country, you had best advise your superiors to abandon their intentions of blackmailing Marcus.”

I remembered Macy telling me once that I didn’t have a pretty face, but if one had the patience to wait and watch, my beauty would come through when I was in a cold fury.

This was one of those moments when I stood and faced Sean, distinctly aware of the coldness I was emanating. He definitely would have felt it too.

I narrowed my eyes to prevent Sean from reading them. Hopefully, they would release Camelia and Toby when they saw that I was dead serious.

Sean put aside his pride that was characteristic of a typical subject of M Country. Though his gaze betrayed a hint of suspicion, he appeared to be taking my words into account. After a long while, he spoke again in a carefully measured tone. “Mrs. Full… I mean, Ms. Stanhope, now I see why Mr. Featherstone is enamored with you. Trust me when I say that one day we will work together.”

I did not refute him; the future was full of possibilities. “We shall wait and see,” I said, extending my hand.

We were both clear on the fact that these were all business talk.

Sean and men in his field were opportunists after all. He knew that he would not derive any benefit from me by asking outright, seeing as I had rejected his acquisition proposal so blatantly. He did not even bother to maintain feigned courtesy anymore, for he ignored my outstretched hand and departed.

The strange thing was that I wasn’t even angry. In fact, after he left I laughed a little. I guess this was a demonstration of the old adage “know thy enemy”. Though Sean was just a representative of GW Group, his net worth was way beyond mine. For someone of his stature to be denied by someone like me, I could not help but feel a little pleased with myself.

However, the fear buried deep in my heart resurfaced again as soon as the laughter faded.

I hung my head and held my stomach as I became tormented by an incessant string of thoughts.

When GW Group had failed their initial negotiations with Anthony, they came up with the idea to blackmail Marcus with dirty tactics. It was clear that they did not intend to return to M Country empty- handed. If they were set on acquiring White Corporation, I would undoubtedly be their next target.

It didn’t matter much to me if I became a target or not; it was the least I could do after what Marcus had sacrificed for me. I couldn’t let anything happen to him. The best I could hope for was that the bodyguards dispatched by Anthony will do their jobs. I stayed indoors for the most part and tried to resolve the problems of White Corporation via video conference calls. It wasn’t much, but at least I managed to avoid being harmed.

White Corporation’s attorney showed up at my study at nine in the morning as I had requested.

“Good day, Ms. Stanhope.”

I may be a student of the law, but I’d have to admit that my knowledge barely came in handy here. My initial expectation was a smartly dressed professional. I looked up and discovered to my surprise that while the smartly dressed professional was accurately predicted, the attorney turned out to be a woman.

“Come on in.” Though I had not passed my bar exams, I intended to in the near future. I could see myself as the lady before me. I took a liking to her immediately. “Are you W. Tanner?” I asked.

I had made assumptions, of course. Her name sounded very masculine on paper. But she seemed to fit the stereotype well with the suave way she wore her suit.

“Yes, Ms. Stanhope. W for Wanda,” Wanda said with a respectful nod. She sounded very demure, which clashed with her appearance.

All this time spent around Anthony had accustomed me to being called Mrs. Featherstone. It felt strange being addressed by my maiden name. “It’s been a long time since somebody called me that,” I said.

Wanda looked apologetic. “Would you like me to call you Madam instead? It’s just that there is a conflict of your relationship with Mr. Featherstone over this project…”

“I understand,” I interrupted Wanda. “Business is business. You can call me Ms. Stanhope. You’re here today as a witness to the fact that Anthony and I aren’t colluding. Most of the time we are working separately on our own tasks. I will have Mrs. Eriksen clear a desk for you to work here.”

Wanda was very accommodating. She sat herself down on a chair in my study. “There’s no need for all of that trouble,” she said generously as she cracked her knuckles. “I have a computer with me; I just need a chair and I’ll get right to work.”

I smiled at how quickly she settled in and left her to it. Marcus had been managing his company remotely for more than a month. Though the sales had declined, core businesses such as automobile and electrical appliances were still top in the industry, so they weren’t affected much. I was unable to foresee when GW Group would back off, therefore we had to halt the expansion of electronic gadgets and put our resources into the industry mentioned earlier to buy him more time. Lose a limb to save a life, as the saying went.

It was a good thing that Marcus had a good eye for talent. After I had finalized our business plan, the respective departments had begun working intensively toward our objectives. All I had to do every night was to provide final authorization for the documents prepared by them. After a week of doing that, White Corporation was deemed stable enough. I relaxed as well and planned to give Marcus a call that afternoon to brief him on the latest progress.

My call went through quickly but hung up on its own after a long period of silence. Perhaps there was news on Camelia and the child, I thought. That was why Marcus was not picking up at the moment. I tried again a while later and it went straight to voicemail.

“Is Mr. White unreachable?” Wanda asked. She remained close by this entire time and occasionally chatted with me. There were some legal documents that I had no authority to sign for even as acting chairman. Wanda too was anxious for Marcus’s return.

I nodded and turned to head indoors. “Yes, looks like he had turned off his phone.”

On second thought, perhaps Marcus’s personal secretary had an alternate way to contact him. I placed another call only to be informed by her that everybody in the company, including herself, was unsuccessful in their attempts to contact Marcus for the whole month. That was another dead end we ran into.

I stared gloomily at the text exchange between me and Marcus’s assistant as I stewed in my own panic. GW Group would have backed off after my previous encounter with Sean. But at the news of Marcus’s disappearance, all hell seemed to break loose at this point. We had no solid ground to work from.

Wanda surveyed the scene in thoughtful silence. Then, she got up and retrieved a document tightly wrapped in an envelope. “Have a look at this.”

I felt a sense of foreboding at her secrecy as I carefully unwrapped the parcel.

I had some experience in dealing with legal documents of various sorts; it didn’t take much for me to understand them.

Benjamin White and his wife passed away not long ago. Marcus inherited White Corporation only to realize that some shareholders had taken advantage of the power shift to embezzle public funds. Acting under this suspicion, Marcus was able to secure the evidence to prove that the company’s assets had been transferred outwards.

As it turned out that the guilty shareholders were led by an old friend of Benjamin’s. Marcus chose to resolve the matter quietly and reached out to him.

Before he disappeared, Marcus had Wanda draft up some documents. They had been notarized by a law firm since then and only awaited his signature. Upon completion, he would then have the power to expel the troublemakers.

However, his absence had been an inconvenience. To make amendments to shareholder rights, his position as the rightful owner of the corporation deemed his consent mandatory. In other words, for every day that Marcus remained at large, it was another day that the thief held on to his shareholding rights. The worst part was that he possibly already had an escape plan in place.

I had a vague impression of the man in question. I met him once when I entered White Corporation for the first time. He had an unctuous smile and an air of deception about him. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he was the one who had orchestrated Marcus’s absence.

“Can’t we pursue this matter through legal means?” I asked with a frown.

Wanda sighed helplessly. “I’ve told Mr. White this before, but he had insisted on settling the matter in private. He mentioned that Mr. Yondel had once helped the White family. Mr. White’s father had given orders before when he was still alive: if the Whites and the Yondels were to ever have a disagreement, it must be settled diplomatically as opposed to an all-out war.”

She paused with a look of disgust on her face. “Actually, Leonard Yondel still cared about his friendship with Mr. White’s father and was unwilling to embezzle from the company. Mr. White had approached Mr. Yondel once regarding this matter. If he was smart he would have given up his rights voluntarily. But until today he still has not done that. The amount of scheming he had done makes one ponder as to what else he’s up to…”

Marcus did not expect to be backstabbed for his compassion. The opportunity for Leonard to steal was too good to pass, and it had gotten to the point where Marcus himself was needed to resolve this.

“It all comes down to locating him and bringing him back,” I thought out loud.

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