By the time Wang Cheng returned home, Bodyguard A had been back for a while. Originally, they thought that he would only need about ten minutes to sneak into Li's house. They didn't expect that this matter would cause another trip to the health clinic, so the time was more than sufficient.
The items at the door had been removed, as Granny Wang did not dare to squat in front of Wang Cheng's house anymore. Not only that, but she also asked Li to check if she had left any hairs in the quilt. Wang Cheng could no longer be bothered to complain about her overwhelming behavior.
"How did your task go?" Wang Cheng asked Bodyguard A to enter the house with him, in order to make sure that no one could eavesdrop on their conversation.
The bodyguard carefully pulled out a woven bag from behind the door, which seemed to contain something heavy. He created a small opening at the top of the bag, saying, "Zhou Shao, I successfully completed the task. That woman below the balcony hadn’t discovered me at all."
The small opening revealed a stack of red banknotes [T/N: stacks of 100 yuan bills]. This was the money that Wang Cheng had asked the bodyguard to steal from his eldest uncle's safe. At a glance, it was a lot of money.
"How much money is that in total?"
"The total is two hundred thousand."
"They still have two hundred thousand?" Wang Cheng had heard that Wang Ningkai's company had closed down, so they should be in debt. It was impossible for them to have so much cash. He thought the safe would amount to around one hundred thousand at most.
"Zhou Shao, I also found these things in the safe." Bodyguard A took out some data that he had stuffed into the bag. ly, he had only given it a rough glance. He didn’t know if it was useful or not, but figured since he was already there, he might as well steal everything.
At that time, Li had not discovered that the safe was robbed, because the only ones who knew the password to the safe were the Wang Ningkai father and son. Since the two were not there, no one currently at their house could open the safe.
After Wang Cheng looked over the data a few times, he finally understood how Wang Ningkai's safe could have 200,000 in cash. It turned out to have been cheated from a business partner.
The bankruptcy of their company was inevitable. After the Wang Ningkai father and son found that there was no way for them to recover the company from debt, they let some employees calculate the estimated loss after bankruptcy. When they found that the amount was beyond their reach, they began to transfer the property to others in increments. However, this transfer could not fill that gap of loss. Papa Wang also refused to lend money. At that time, they happened to pick up an order from a traveling businessman, and the other side was paying half a million yuan. So, the two had the idea of taking the money for themselves.
Wang Ningkai took 300,000 yuan from that payment to repay part of the debt, and the rest became the 200,000 yuan in the safe that they planned to keep for their own use in the future. Therefore, they were obviously well-off, but were still not willing to repay the debt to the workers.
"Those two are really bold." Wang Cheng was stunned after reading the data. He could guarantee that Li and Granny Wang didn't know that the money was cheated. He finally understood the reason why Wang Ningkai's company went bankrupt, yet they could still keep their house in the city.
Bodyguard A asked, "Zhou Shao, what should I do with this money now?"
Of course, it was impossible for him to pay back this cheated money to the unfortunate business partner. Wang Cheng originally only intended to let his eldest uncle's family panic for a while and let everyone know that his eldest uncle still had money, and then later find another chance to secretly return the money. However, now that he found that the money was not theirs, it was a different matter.
"I’ll have to think about it."
This caused a change to his plan. Maybe the Wang Ningkai father and son would have go to jail, as this behavior constituted fraud. As long as their business partner came looking for them, the Wang Ningkai father and son would never be able to escape. Wang Cheng did not believe that this sort of thing could be kept hidden, but the Wang Ningkai father and son obviously hadn't thought about this problem, otherwise, they would not have spent the money. At this point, their house in the city would have to be sold even if they weren’t willing to sell it.
Wang Cheng did not tell his parents about what went down today, nor did he tell them that he had sent someone to his eldest uncle’s house to steal money. Both of them were honest rural people, so if they learned of this, he would have to give the money from the safe back immediately and they might even beat him.
However, Wang Cheng was very concerned about the matter of whether Papa Wang was born to Granny Wang or not. This could be checked through DNA identification, but he was already very sure that his father was not Granny Wang’s biological son. Wang Cheng was even more curious about what had happened in the past.
How could Papa Wang have become Granny Wang’s son over fifty years ago?
The most troublesome thing was how over 50 years had passed since this incident, and as the times have changed, things have changed; there was no more Wang’s Village now, so it was even more difficult to investigate.
Li and Granny Wang called Li’s husband immediately after they got home to inform him that the plan had failed. Today was the deadline, so the group of workers was coming over tomorrow.
"How could the plan fail? Could it be that Wang Cheng got the better of my mother?" Wang Hongwei didn't believe in this fact, as it was not his mother’s character to compromise so quickly. He knew his mother, and for her eldest son’s family, she would definitely spare no effort in making trouble with the third family.
Li secretly cast a glance at the two elders who were sitting in the living room, and took her phone to the kitchen to say in a low voice, "There has been an incident. Your third brother might not be the biological son of our parents. Husband, did you know of this?"
"What?" Wang Hongwei cried out in surprise. Even he hadn’t known about it. The ages of the three brothers were not too far apart; he was only four years older than his third brother. He was still young at that time, so even if he did see something, he would have forgotten it with age. How could he remember something that had happened so early in his life?
Li immediately told him of Wang Cheng's conversation with Granny Wang. Let alone Wang Cheng, even Li could see that Granny Wang had some kind of guilt in her heart. Granny Wang's reaction was just far too obvious.
Wang Hongwei thought similarly to her after hearing this. "No way, we absolutely must not let anyone know that the third son is not the son of our parents."
Their family only dared to make trouble by pointing at the blood relationship between the two families. This was a fact that could never be erased. Especially when it came to Granny Wang, a blood relationship was like a golden finger to avoid death. No matter what Granny Wang did, Wang Hongxin would still have to succumb to their blood relationship in the end. So, once this layer of protection was lost, the result could be imagined.
The Granny Wang husband and wife might have watched Wang Hongxin grow, but many knew that the couple had treated Wang Hongxin badly since he was young; Wang Hongxin's obligation to support them now should not be so heavy.
"I will let our parents stay at home for this period of time. But shouldn’t you and Ningkai come back?" Li clearly understood that even if someone did doubt their familial ties, without any DNA identification, the third family was still unable to deny their blood relationship to the elders.
Wang Hongwei said that he would come back this afternoon before hanging up the call.
"Dad, do we really have to mortgage the house to Wang Cheng?" Wang Ningkai couldn't bear it. After letting go of the house for two years, its value might increase by another 100,000 - this was their family’s only high-end house.
"I'm afraid that we have no other choice in this matter, unless we don't borrow money at all." Wang Hongwei was also unwilling, but now that they were caught by Wang Cheng, they no longer had the choice.
Wang Ningkai thought for a while, then said, "Dad, can’t we not borrow at all?"
The reason they originally came up with this scheme was to cheat the third uncle's money. However, the other side now wanted them to mortgage the house they prized. If this transaction was completed, there would be no benefits for them.
"Ningkai, don't forget about that five hundred thousand," Wang Hongwei nervously hinted to his son. He also wanted to take 300,000 without paying a thing, but the current situation was clearly not as good as they had thought it would be. Wait until the businessman found out that it was a scam; if their hometown was unearthed, neither the father nor son would have good fruit to eat*.
[T/N: no good outcome or result]
Wang Ningkai's face changed. He had not forgotten.
Wang Hongwei said: "Presently, we have two ways to go. One is to mortgage the house to Wang Cheng. However, though the current market value of the house is about 1 million, we can think of a way to raise the price of the house a little.”
"What about the second way?"
Wang Hongwei's eyes suddenly darkened a bit. "I don't want to use this method, it is a last resort. If the matter your mother just spoke of really can't be hidden, then we can take advantage of it before being exposed."
Wang Ningkai didn't quite understand, but he knew that his father must have a plan.
While the father and son were still discussing their next strategy, Wang Cheng sent someone to investigate two matters.
The first matter was the one that had long since occured, it had taken place over 50 years ago. The younger and middle generations certainly didn’t know of this incident, so he could only look for elders in the same generation as the old lady and her husband. Fortunately, the Wang’s Village had a good environment and beautiful scenery, so most of the old people there could live to 80 or 90 years old.
The second matter was the fraud committed by the Wang Ningkai father and son. Wang Cheng directly contacted Zhang Wu [T/N: hotel manager’s son, leader of the new Dongwang Group] and asked him to investigate Wang Ningkai’s company and who they had cooperated with before going bankrupt. 500,000 was a big deal for Wang Ningkai’s company. If these things were true, it would certainly not have been kept quiet at the time.
Zhang Wu proceeded to immediately look into it. The results came unexpectedly smoothly, without much effort needed at all.
Because the Wang Ningkai father and son had done a good job keeping things under wraps before their company went bankrupt, not many people knew that they were in debt. That deceived businessman only discovered that something was wrong after a few days. When Zhang Wu sent someone to investigate, he happened to find that the hapless businessman was looking for the Wang Ningkai father and son everywhere.
***
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