“Mommy, the snow is so heavy.” “I’ll take you for a snowball fight when the snow stops, okay?” Rachel combed Charlotte’s pigtails to comfort her glum mood. “Will Daddy come with us too?”
“Of course. Didn’t Daddy also come with us yesterday? Samuel, Mr. Wade, Godmother, and Mr. Hernandez are coming too…”
“And Leroy!” Rachel intentionally missed out on Leroy, but Charlotte could never forget about him, so she exclaimed, her face flushed. “You always remember to take him wherever you go, huh?”
Rachel glanced at Justin next to her and uttered, “Watch out. Your daughter will probably fall for good-looking men in the future. A handsome boy will win her heart!” “Well, there aren’t many people who look like Leroy,” replied Justin calmly.
“What if there is?” “If there is, she isn’t at a loss if he has good looks.” Rachel was surprised to hear that. “Are you sure Charlotte is your own daughter?”
When other people raised their daughters, they would usually be afraid that their daughters would get married to an indecent man, but why was Justin so confident that his daughter would not suffer at all?
Did having good looks mean they would be able to earn a living to support her? If someone was good-looking in an ordinary way, that might not be the case, but for someone as good-looking as Leroy, opportunities would come to him instead of him having to fight for them. “Okay, let’s look for Samuel. He must still be asleep.”
After Rachel was done braiding Charlotte’s hair, she put her down from her lap. Charlotte kissed her and Justin on the cheek before happily running out to play.
Rachel looked out the window and exclaimed, “It’s snowing so heavily outside. I wonder how it is in Geneva. Ria didn’t text me last night about whether or not she landed safely. Did she contact you?”
“Don’t worry. She went with a group of band members. Nothing will happen,” reassured Justin. Rachel nodded. “I wonder when the snow will stop and when we can go back.”
“Do you have a lot to do in the company?” Justin thought about how she risked her life to get a signal last night. “Are you in a hurry to go back?”
“Yeah, I have a lot of work on my hands. If there are trustworthy people over there, I won’t have to rush back. It won’t be a problem for me to work remotely, but I’m worried that there will be fluctuations among Hudson Pharmaceuticals’ board of directors.”
Evan headed the board of directors of Hudson Pharmaceutical, and he had been pulling tricks behind the scenes recently.
After all, Hudson Pharmaceutical started as a family business, and she was the only one left in the eldest son’s family to fight alone. Today, the survival rate of family businesses in the market was low. Other family members within the Hudsons or outsiders were starting to think that they might have the opportunity to take over Hudson Pharmaceutical.
Justin uttered thoughtfully, “I heard that Evan is holding proxy equity. If he starts controlling from this aspect, you may be able to plan ahead.”
“Proxy equity?” Rachel, as a major shareholder of the Hudson Family, was aware of that. However, Evan had always regarded himself as merely a shareholder to the public. So how did Justin find out?
“Evan’s mother is actually his stepmother, and he has always been at odds with her. In order to force him to be filial, his father left all his assets to his widow, so even if Evan doesn’t like her, he still has to visit her during the holidays.. The proxy right of the shares is also acquiesced to by Old Mrs. Holt,” explained Justin.
“If you can win the support of Old Mrs. Holt, then no matter what Evan does in the future, it will be useless.” Rachel was amazed at his knowledge of information. “How do you know all this?”
This was all new information to her. Justin hesitated for a while and clenched his fists, which were hanging by his sides. “Evan was able to get those share proxy rights in his early years because of me.” Rachel was taken aback by the new information. Early years?
In order to seek revenge, Justin took into account everything related to Hudson Pharmaceuticals.
If it weren’t for the accident, perhaps Hudson Pharmaceuticals would have been in decline by now, or it might have been eliminated by the market, or acquired by Burton Group. Moreover, the Hudsons would have fallen apart.
After all, Justin was capable of doing that. Justin took his leave, and Rachel kept pondering about it. She hesitated for a long time before sending a message to the company secretary, ‘When did Chairman Holt’s father pass away?
After a while, a reply came, ’20 years ago it seems.’ Rachel’s eyes widened in surprise before quickly typing, ‘Are you sure?’
‘It should be right. Two days ago, I happened to hear that Chairman Holt is planning to hold a memorial service for his father’s 20th death anniversary. I was going to ask you if you were going to attend.”
Rachel clenched her phone tightly in disbelief. She knew that Justin had approached the Hudson Family step by step in order to take revenge and had already incorporated the entire Hudson Pharmaceuticals into his plan, so he must have known everything about the company better than she. However, what she never thought about was the time span in between.
Twenty years ago, not long after Old Mr. Holt’s death, Evan received the right of proxy for the shares and officially joined Hudson Pharmaceuticals’ board of directors. At that point, Justin was already plotting revenge. However, at that time, he was only nineteen years old, a young adult!
For more than twenty years, he had been avenging someone he thought died because of him. That person was just a chance encounter with him, yet he sacrificed his entire life for her. How miserable must that have been for him over twenty years? How many twenty years did a person have?
Why had she never thought about it before? Rachel was not able to calm down for a short while. Her hands on the couch slowly tightened. She grabbed the blanket over her body. suppressing all the thoughts in her heart.
After some time, a loud noise came from the living room. Rachel opened the door to see four people at the coffee table playing poker, with Jolly leading the game.
Justin sat on the couch, looking after the two children beside him. He flipped through the magazines with a cup of steaming tea in front of him, looking like a retired veteran cadre.
Just as Rachel thought he wasn’t paying attention to the rest, and Jolly and Hernandez’s exaggerated movements almost overturned the roof, he reached out in time to move the teacup placed at the corner of the coffee table without a trace. Only Leroy noticed him.
“Jolly said I cheated, but I’m just lucky! Come on, Justin. Get down here and take my place!” “Bring it on! Pfft, how dare you say it’s all luck?! If he loses, you have to admit that you cheated.”
“You better not screw things up, Justin. You have to prove my innocence.” Justin had always been out of tune with the hustle and bustle, and he rarely took the initiative to join their fun, so everyone thought that he despised these childish games, just like what happened with yesterday’s snowball fight.
Surprisingly, when Leroy insisted on pulling him into the game, he did not show any resistance. Rachel leaned against the door frame and saw this side of Justin for the first time. It was as if she was learning something new about him again.
At that moment, she suddenly understood what. Gloria had told her before. “Justin has never been an indifferent person, but everyone around him is scheming, so he can only do the same.”
In fact, he was lonelier than anyone else all these years.
