Inheritance of Two Trillion

Chapter 2717: Chapter 1939: The Informant (Part 2)

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After the meeting, back in his own office, Vice Chairman Morgan listened to his confidant’s report on all the private gossip and flew into a rage.

”Someone must be deliberately spreading this, targeting Caroline!”

Vice Chairman Morgan gnashed his teeth, but there was nothing he could do.

At a juncture like this, if he stepped in to whitewash Caroline, it wouldn’t just be ineffective and risky, it might even intensify everyone’s hostility and backfire.

The more Vice Chairman Morgan thought about it, the angrier he grew, and he couldn’t help venting his displeasure again and again.

”Caroline, oh Caroline, what on earth have you done this time!”

”You had me get ready to coordinate with you, to hunt down that Bai Xiaosheng in one fell swoop! And now you yourself have become the target of everyone’s arrows first!”

”From the looks of it, your plan leaked, and someone turned the tables on you. You really are wise for a lifetime, foolish for a moment!”

His confidant probed, ”Mr. Morgan, why don’t we find a chance to talk with Miss Caroline, see how to respond. If it’s inconvenient for you to appear, I can go.”

Vice Chairman Morgan pondered for a moment, then still shook his head. ”Let’s leave it for now. Go see her around midnight and ask what’s going on. Keep your movements as secret as possible—Wen Yan’s people are watching closely. We can’t get ourselves dragged into this!”

When all’s said and done, this trouble was stirred up by Caroline alone; she has to find a way to clean it up herself.

Of course, if she needs Vice Chairman Morgan to step in, he will help.

If it truly reaches a critical crisis, he won’t just stand by and watch her die.

But the premise is that Vice Chairman Morgan’s side must not be drawn into it.

After all, only someone standing on solid ground can pull a person out of the mire.

Hearing this, that confidant nodded repeatedly at once.

After the Zhenbei Group top-level meeting ended, Caroline had a hard time leaving headquarters; she could only lock herself in her office and call people to hurry up and do damage control.

At this moment, the crisis of Caroline’s ”scarcity” of trusted personnel showed itself.

There were many people she was not suited to contact personally, and many tasks that urgently needed handling.

Now that suspicion was hanging over Bernice, Caroline could no longer trust her, and after thinking it through, she simply turned to her clan relatives.

At a time like this, relatives with aligned interests were still slightly more trustworthy than outsiders.

Caroline contacted two young clan members she’d been grooming for some time, having them go handle some things—but none involving core matters.

After that, she called Robert.

Compared to clan ties, a full-sibling blood relationship would always carry a bit more trust at a critical moment.

”Robert, where are you right now?!”

When Caroline called, she could hear noisy voices in the background on his end.

”Big Sis Caroline, I just got off the plane, I’m about to head home,” Robert shouted so she could hear clearly.

Caroline was instantly overjoyed. ”You’re already back? That’s really great!”

”What’s going on?” Robert asked, immensely curious.

”I can’t explain it to you right now. Go straight home, into my study, then call me. I need you to handle something,” Caroline said in a low voice.

”Alright, no problem,” Robert naturally agreed.

After hanging up, Caroline began waiting patiently.

On the other side, Robert took a car back home.

His return at this exact time point had also been planned in advance with Bai Xiaosheng.

Including that big blowup argument between Robert and Bernice and his storming out in a huff—it had all been premeditated.

Caroline would probably never imagine, even if you beat her to death, that the one who really leaked the information to outsiders was not Bernice, nor Robert, nor even Maiyous, who provided Bai Xiaosheng with part of the list.

It was someone she would never in a million years think of—Stuart, the old butler who had always looked down on Robert within the family.

Old Butler Stuart had always been loyal only to the Clan Leader in the family. He maintained respect toward Caroline, but kept his distance.

Precisely because of this, Caroline usually gave him some face.

As the chief of all the house stewards, Stuart controlled all the household staff, including part of the security personnel.

After decades of wind and rain in this family, it couldn’t be easier for Stuart to cultivate a few trusted men; using the convenience of his work to do certain things was even easier.

Caroline would probably never imagine, even if you beat her to death, that secret listening devices had been installed in her study—cutting-edge ones, hard to detect.

By coincidence, it was in her study that Caroline had dictated that list to Bernice—never put on paper, no electronic files, originally thought perfectly safe—yet it had all fallen into Stuart’s hands.

What followed became extremely simple.

Old Butler Stuart gave the list to Robert; Robert told Bai Xiaosheng; Bai Xiaosheng went straight to Wen Yan.

Among the vast sealed archives in the Zhenbei Group HQ’s Inspection Department, there had long been all kinds of leverage and evidence on those companies and those responsible persons. Even if some of it was unrelated to the current incident, it didn’t matter—as long as it could serve as a threat, or provide an angle of attack.

In this area, the people in the Inspection Department were absolute pros.

Everything had already been investigated in advance.

As for the specific timing of formally launching accountability against those people, that had been provided to Bai Xiaosheng by Maiyous—it was part of the original plan between him and Caroline.

Choosing that node, beyond satisfying some of Bai Xiaosheng’s malicious little tastes, was mainly about hitting Caroline at the moment she was least prepared, leaving her no time to respond.

And it was also a way of psychologically breaking an opponent.

In a duel between masters, besides fierce moves, psychological warfare is absolutely indispensable.

Back to the present: after Robert rushed home, he headed straight for Caroline’s study.

Of course, there was a minor episode in between.

Old Butler Stuart publicly refused to open the door for Robert, claiming that Caroline’s study was considered a restricted area within the family; apart from Caroline, only the Clan Leader was entitled to open it.

Robert even called Caroline in front of everyone, and Caroline then instructed Butler Stuart over the phone to open the door.

After this little episode, Robert was finally able to enter Caroline’s room.

”Now walk over to my bookcase and slide aside that oil painting.”

Caroline gave Robert instructions over the phone.

Robert did as told, and the wall revealed two small safes side by side, one on the left and one on the right.

They were custom-made safes; besides having unmatched security, they were equipped with a self-destruct feature—input the wrong password several times in a row and the files inside would automatically be incinerated.

”Don’t touch any of the knobs on the left safe. Take that parrot ornament on my desk, pull out the bird’s tongue from its beak, and insert it into the small hole in the lower right corner.”

Over the phone, Caroline taught Robert how to open the safe.

Robert took the parrot’s tongue from the ornament and found it was an oddly shaped key, with circuit-board-like patterns on the surface.

After he inserted it, Robert reported back to Caroline.

On Caroline’s end, her phone triggered remote unlocking, involving voiceprint, fingerprint, iris pattern—none of them skipped.

Moments later, once the safe was successfully opened, Caroline gave further orders over the phone. ”Take out the top file. On the last page there are several emergency contacts. You must call them one by one, tell them I’m invoking highest authorization, and have them begin ’damage control’ operations. The code phrases for talking with them are also there. Don’t touch any of the other files!”

”Understood, Big Sis Caroline,” Robert replied without hesitation.

However, after hanging up, Robert looked at the confidential files stacked half a foot high inside the safe and couldn’t resist reaching out, wanting to take another one to flip through.

Just then, someone grabbed his hand.

He turned to the side.

Old Butler Stuart, his expression grave, gave him a slight shake of the head, then typed something on his phone for Robert to see: ”This type of safe has gravity sensors and remote alarms. If you take even one more file, the total weight will change, and a remote alarm will go off—your sister will know!”

Robert couldn’t help but suck in a cold breath at that, nodding slightly, and dropped the idea of looking through the other files.

Caroline’s caution was evident everywhere; they absolutely couldn’t lose the big for the small.

Robert leafed through the file in his hand, found the list and code phrases at the back—he was going to help Caroline with the damage control.

In this respect, he would carry out Caroline’s instructions to the letter.

Robert’s ultimate goal was to help Bai Xiaosheng kick his arrogant, all-powerful sister out of Zhenbei Group and drag her down from her lofty perch in the family.

But with just this current storm, all they could do was shake Caroline’s position within Zhenbei Group, cut down her influence there, make most of the upper management hostile to her, and give the Inspection Department leverage over her. Anything more would be unrealistic.

Yet that was already enough.

Within the family, Robert’s aim this time was to topple Caroline’s confidant Bernice and replace her himself, which would likewise achieve his objective.

So he didn’t need to overcomplicate things—he only had to do the task before him well and earn Caroline’s trust.

Robert muttered to himself, ”Big Sis Caroline, don’t worry, I’ll definitely do this exactly the way you told me!”