Chapter 87
Zane’s eyes
lit up, and he couldn’t help but laugh.“Wow, how did you know?” Xander also sat down with interest, wanting to hear what I had to say.
Me:“It was a guess.”
“That night, the interrogation revealed where Lucas had kept me, and I also provided you with the recordings from the factory, identifying the two ‘ghost workers‘ who were drawing salaries without working, and Jackson admitted to going to the house where I was kidnapped. Logically, the evidence is conclusive, and it should only have taken a few hours to investigate.”
“But I knew it wasn’t that simple, because Jackson was acting strangely.”
“If they were ordinary accomplices, one party would never cover for the other. So, when he learned that Lucas had confessed, he should have been afraid, feeling that the game was up, but he clearly wasn’t afraid.”
“Why was he so confident that Lucas wouldn’t betray him? Unless they had made a prior agreement, sacrificing one to protect the other.”
“Even more so, they had planned everything before I went to the factory. I went missing, you came looking, and when you found out about Lucas, he voluntarily became the scapegoat, and no one would suspect Jackson, the mastermind behind it all. Mr. Shaw naturally wouldn’t have the energy to dwell on this matter.”
I finished speaking. The first part was fine, but my last sentence made Xander frown. “Sophia, don’t think so little of yourself. If you had disappeared, I would have kept dwelling on it.”
I was stunned.
I was stunned. He clearly said he would “keep dwelling on it,” but it sounded to me like he said… he would miss me constantly. My face flushed slightly.
“Uh, um… thank you for
your concern, Mr. Shaw.”
“I care about all my subordinates,” Xander said calmly.
Zane blinked, his wolf whispered, “HE CARES ABOUT ALL OF THEM? REALLY?”
The atmosphere inexplicably fell into an extremely awkward silence…
Zane finally broke the silence, smiling as he continued talking about the factory.“Sophia, you were seveny percent right. Amazing, amazing.”
“What about the other twenty percent?” I was curious, using the question to shift the awkwardness.
“The two ghost workers were real ghosts. They’re dead. Lucas killed them.”
“Dead!”
I was shocked. I had considered that the two might be Lucas‘ relatives or friends, but I never imagined they were victims.
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< Chapter 87
Zane:“It’s unbelievable. This involves a murder case. We didn’t expect it either.”
Me:“I understand. That’s the leverage Jackson had. No wonder he was confident that Lucas wouldn’t report him and was willing to be his scapegoat.” Embezzlement and kidnapping were nothing compared to murder.
“Those two were factory workers, among the first batch, a married couple. But less than two weeks after arriving, they were killed by Lucas one night. He claimed it was a case of accidental manslaughter during a quarrel.”
“Later, Jackson discovered it, and he came up with this idea, creating the illusion that the two were still alive, even fabricating a story of a workplace accident. To get the other factory workers to cooperate, they split the salary. From then on, Jackson completely controlled them, making them work for him.”
“Jackson wasn’t after that small amount of money; his appetite was huge. He used his partner’s younger brother’s name to start a new energy company, having Lucas cooperate in stealing research data and raw materials, the accountant falsifying accounts, and the workshop director covering up… it’s shocking. We thought it was a small problem, but it turns out the whole thing was rotten.”
