Chapter 128: Chapter 128: Conflict

Jessie Sterling didn’t bother hiding her emotions in front of Lynn Jennings.

“Yeah,” she nodded.

“Regret it?”

“No way,” Jessie Sterling said. “I just feel… uneasy.”

Believing she was in the right was one thing, but if Victor Morgan was truly holding a grudge over yesterday’s slap, she would naturally be upset.

Lynn Jennings didn’t offer Jessie Sterling any advice. Instead, she just peeled a tangerine for her that was nearly cooked from the heat of a nearby fire.

It was a green-skinned tangerine, its fragrance particularly fresh, with a taste that was sour yet sweet.

Refreshing.

Just then, both Lynn Jennings’ and Jessie Sterling’s phones chimed. It was a video from Serena Lynch, showing them on the ice.

A group of people who were clearly not young were now pulling each other around on plastic sheets they had found somewhere, going wild on the ice.

After the video, Serena Lynch also sent Jessie Sterling some firsthand intel from her end.

[Serena Lynch: Victor didn’t leave his room all morning. He’s been in there alone. And get this—Nina Walsh actually left on her own yesterday afternoon. She must have been furious.]

As evening fell, Jessie Sterling still hadn’t received any message from Victor Morgan.

Lynn Jennings, who had initially wanted to comfort Jessie Sterling, was suddenly at a loss for words.

Watching Jessie Sterling clutch her tablet and sketch, Lynn could tell how frustrated she was just from the sound of the stylus tapping against the screen, even though she didn’t know much about drawing.

She walked over and handed Jessie Sterling a glass of warm water. “Want me to take you over there?”

She was offering to take Jessie Sterling back to the cabin she shared with Victor Morgan.

Jessie Sterling’s reaction was strong. She snapped her head up, her eyes filled with defiance. “Why should I be the one to go to him?”

’She didn’t get married just to be wronged.’

In the second-floor living room where Victor Morgan was, there were some “unwelcome guests.”

He hadn’t shown his face all day. Even people as dense as Xavier Warren and Roman Lynch could tell something was wrong.

Roman Lynch sat across from Victor Morgan, an awkward expression on his face.

Last night, after Nina Walsh left, Serena Lynch had specifically gone to see him.

Serena Lynch hadn’t been so gentle with her own brother. She’d thrown the video she received that afternoon right in front of Roman Lynch.

“…Has our family not been good enough to her? Otherwise, just because of Auntie Wei, would she have been able to attend school with us since we were kids? To study abroad now? She’s not any younger than Jessie, is she? Jessie graduated ages ago, but Nina’s still just trying to get an undergraduate degree overseas. How many years has her graduation been delayed? It’s embarrassing to even talk about!”

Serena Lynch had plenty of friends in their circle. They all came from similar family backgrounds and were of a similar age—all poised to inherit their family businesses one day. The wealthier the family, the less they dared to slack off on their studies.

Otherwise, delaying your graduation would bring shame to the entire family.

But Nina Walsh? She was already twenty-four or twenty-five and couldn’t even manage to get a bachelor’s degree.

The million-plus yuan a year for tuition and living expenses was a drop in the bucket for the Lynch family, but for an ordinary family, it was a fortune.

What right did Nina Walsh have to live such a privileged life?

“If you want to keep coddling that precious ’sister’ of yours, you’d better draw a clear line with me when you get back. And another thing—I won’t feel safe leaving the family business in the hands of someone as muddle-headed as you,” Serena Lynch said bluntly.

Her meaning was clear: as long as Roman Lynch continued to be used like an idiot, she wouldn’t mind taking over both R&D and management.

When that time came, the two siblings would inevitably have a showdown.

Serena Lynch might not have been overly ambitious, but she wasn’t without ambition either.

What else could Roman Lynch do?

Besides, what Serena Lynch said did make sense.

He didn’t know how Nina Walsh had turned into the person she was today. She used to be just a sweet little girl who would follow him around calling him “big brother.”

If Victor Morgan and Jessie Sterling’s relationship truly soured because of Nina Walsh, then given how much Seth Sterling doted on his eldest daughter, Roman Lynch had no idea what he might do.

And when that happened, wouldn’t the Morgan and Sterling families blame the Lynch family for it?

It would be a complete and utter disaster.

“…You can coddle her if you want, but if you do it at the expense of our family’s future, then, Roman Lynch, I won’t let you off the hook.”

Serena Lynch’s voice seemed to still be echoing in Roman Lynch’s ears. He couldn’t even quite remember how he and his own full-blooded sister were no longer as close as they had been in childhood.

“Why haven’t you come out all day?” Roman Lynch spoke first. Looking at Victor Morgan, who was holding his laptop and hadn’t moved, Roman had to force himself to ask, “Where’s Jessie? Why haven’t you gone to bring her back yet?”

Only when Roman Lynch mentioned Jessie Sterling did Victor Morgan finally look up at the two men sitting across from him, who were staring at him with bright, intense eyes.

“You two have too much free time?” he frowned.

Seeing things were getting tense, Xavier Warren tried to smooth things over. “Hahaha, well, we noticed you didn’t join us for dinner, and Jessie wasn’t around either, so we just came to check on you guys.”

The probing nature of Xavier Warren’s words was too obvious, and Victor Morgan didn’t take the bait.

The room seemed to fall into a strange silence.

Victor Morgan had never been a man of many words, and he wasn’t about to start now.

As if oblivious to the uncomfortable quiet in the room, he kept staring at his laptop screen without making a sound.

But perhaps only he knew that no matter how hard he stared at the screen, as if trying to burn a hole through it, none of its contents were actually registering in his mind.

“Old Man Morgan, about yesterday… I’m really sorry, to both you and Jessie,” Roman Lynch spoke up again. “Serena came to see me later. Nina doesn’t think before she acts. She’s an adult, and she has to face the consequences. When she comes back from overseas this time, our family will no longer be providing her tuition or living expenses for next year.”

This wasn’t a demand from Serena Lynch; it was a remedial measure that Roman Lynch had come up with himself in that moment.

If Nina Walsh didn’t have the status of being his ’adopted’ sister, Victor Morgan probably wouldn’t even know who she was.

Asking Victor Morgan and Jessie Sterling to forgive Nina Walsh now would just be giving her too much credit.

Victor Morgan remained unmoved.

He had never given a second thought to a person like Nina Walsh, and he wasn’t interested in what Roman Lynch planned to do.

“…I won’t go near Jessie myself. You should be the one to bring her this news personally,” Roman Lynch finished.

In his view, once Jessie Sterling heard the good news from Victor Morgan, she would stop being angry with him.

But Roman Lynch probably never expected that Victor Morgan had no intention of delivering that message.

“You want me to go take the credit?” Victor Morgan’s attention finally shifted from his computer screen. He looked up at Roman Lynch with a smirk.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep