What Horace just said surprised both Lionel and Jill.
But Jill was the one who seemed to have gotten shocked the most. She took a minute to comprehend what was happening before she could finally snap out of it.
"Horace, what are you saying? Are you kidding? What do you mean Rufus is the chairman of TY Group? Didn't they say that the head of the TY Group was someone by the last name of Li?" Jill asked with a baffled look on her face.
It's no secret that Jill had always been envious of Arthur's mother. His mother had been shooting her mouth off that the TY Group had seen a lot of potential within the Dawn Star Group, so they invested in the company to help it improve quickly. And it even gained traction that towered above the Tang Group at one point in time, making the Dawn Star Group an entity for the other companies to aspire to be.
Jill remembered, albeit vaguely, that the family name of the TY Group's Chairman. And how come now Horace said that it was actually Rufus?
"Well, as it turns out, Jasper Li was just a puppet, and the one moving the gears behind the scenes had been Rufus all along!" Horace answered after losing his patience.
He gave Jill a cold stare. She had always been slow on the uptake about everything and had been practically useless for so long now. He had had enough of her always being such a burden!
Shifting his gaze over to Lionel, Horace tried to guess what he was thinking about in his mind solely from the look on Lionel's face.
"Lionel, you're aware of this, aren't you?"
Horace's eyes, much like the sharpest and most refined scalpel, could cut open Lionel's head with ease and read his thoughts clearly.
With his heart suddenly pounding crazy like a drum, Lionel was getting weakness in the knees.
He had always shuddered at the thought of Horace unveiling the truth one day. And that was happening in front of him now.
"Dad, what do you mean? How was I supposed to know? I just found out about it the same time mom did!"
Lionel instinctively went on the defensive. For sure, it was someone with a big mouth who told Horace Rufus's real identity.
The first person he could think of was Ivy, just imagining the look on her face filled him with intense rage.
'That treacherous double-dealing bitch! It was so stupid of me to trust her!' he thought to himself.
In return for keeping her silence, Lionel lent her a hand in getting her brother out of prison. He even secured a position for him in the Tang Group. Who would've expected that she'd betray him like this in the end?!
If Rufus was really the chairman of TY Group, then for someone of his stature, fifty million would not be an amount worth getting his hands dirty from running off with.
That being the case, the only other logical person to be suspicious of would be Lionel.
"Horace, why are doing this? How could you even think that? Why are you suspecting your own son? From the time he was old enough to help out in the business, Lionel has been dedicating himself to serving the Tang Group. Haven't you noticed how much weight he has lost in the past few weeks? I find it hard to understand why you'd even suspect him!"
Tears began to fall on Jill's cheeks, in an attempt to de-escalate the situation and distract Horace from pushing Lionel to the wall.
Deep inside, she knew full well that if Horace ended up finding out the truth, it could tear their family apart.
"Shut your mouth! You're the one who has been overindulging Lionel so much that he even had the guts to embezzle fifty million from the company and frame Rufus up!"
Horace yelled at Jill, his hand was trembling out of so much anger as he pointed his finger at her.
"If you still insist on aimlessly defending your son, I'll ask my lawyer to have the divorce papers ready by tomorrow! After all, I feel like you're not interested in staying with Tang family any longer. Go ahead and go home to those useless brothers of yours!"
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