Chapter 25: 25. Complete Collapse!

“Yang Tingting, explain yourself! Speak clearly, right now, or you’re fired!”

After a long pause, Su Mengqing switched off her phone, her knuckles turning white from how tightly she gripped it. She lifted her bloodshot eyes, glaring daggers at Yang Tingting as she roared.

“Hmph, they’re just a bunch of parasites leeching off our Su Family. They have the nerve to curse us in the group chat?” Zhang Meili’s chubby face turned stormy, and she raised a hand to stop Su Mengqing.

She was the administrator of the Su Family chat group. In the past, any appearance she made was met with fawning praise, like a star surrounded by planets, basking in the endless flattery of relatives and friends. Who would have thought they would all change their tune now? Not only were they calling for blood, but they also harbored a bone-deep hatred for the Su Family, making them all feel like reviled outcasts.

Burning with anger, Zhang Meili had jumped into the group chat to argue, only to be relentlessly berated by her relatives. Unable to get a word in edgewise, she flew into a fit of shame and anger and muted all the members. Now that Su Mengqing had noticed something was amiss, Zhang Meili frantically opened her phone and dissolved the family group chat entirely. Out of sight, out of mind!

“Director Su, you’ve misunderstood! This is actually wonderful news!” Yang Tingting declared, her face wreathed in a smile, not looking flustered in the slightest. There was even a hint of smug satisfaction in her eyes.

“Wonderful news? Those relatives have been cursing me out like a dog!” Su Mengqing yelled, looking between the two of them before furiously smashing her phone on the ground.

“What does it matter if they curse a little? Most of Su Pharmaceutical’s stock was cashed out at this morning’s peak price anyway!” Yang Tingting smirked, picking up the phone. “Director Su, after Lin Fan leaked the Injury Ointment and its recipe last night, I anticipated our stock price would be severely affected today. Don’t worry, we sold the earliest and the fastest. We have no real losses!” Her smile grew even more triumphant as she adopted an expression that clearly fished for praise.

“You… how much did you sell?”

However, Su Mengqing’s face was tense; there was none of the praise Yang Tingting expected. Snatching the phone, she opened the app to check the company’s stock price. She froze, then began to tremble violently.

“Uh…” Seeing this, Yang Tingting was slightly dissatisfied and disappointed, but she continued to explain with a smile. “We sold the majority, retaining just enough to maintain a controlling interest. Director Su, don’t you think you should consider giving me a promotion and a raise—”

SLAP!

Su Mengqing gasped in shock and then erupted with fury, slapping Yang Tingting hard across the face.

“Mengqing, what are you doing! Tingting is a great benefactor to our family! Why do you keep hitting her?” Zhang Meili shot to her feet in alarm, stepping in front of Yang Tingting to prevent Su Mengqing from lashing out further.

“Yes, Director Su! Mrs. Zhang told me to do it!” Yang Tingting cried, covering the bright red handprint on her cheek. Her eyes, welling with tears, shone with indignation and a sense of grievance. “I saved the company from a huge loss!”

“Mom! Can’t you see? Our company’s stock price has completely tanked!” Su Mengqing choked out, tears streaming down her face. “You two are so foolish! As dumb as pigs! Of course leaking the recipe would start rumors and cause the stock price to fluctuate. If we had just been willing to spend money on public relations to suppress it, the loss wouldn’t have been significant! But you chose this exact moment for a massive sell-off, which did nothing but confirm the rumors and send the stock into a freefall!”

On the phone’s screen, the displayed stock price for Su Pharmaceutical was a horrifying sight, a catastrophic plunge. It was a complete and utter freefall.

A chill spread through Su Mengqing’s limbs, and her teeth ground together with an audible crunch. Her heart filled with despair and sorrow. Lin Fan’s actions last night were merely a knife to the heart of Su Pharmaceutical. While it was a serious blow, it shouldn’t have been crippling.

Who could have possibly expected that her own family would be the ones to shove the company off a cliff into an abyss of no return? Billions in market value had evaporated, with only a tiny fraction remaining. Her four years of painstaking work were utterly destroyed in an instant.

“Ah… that can’t be right, can it? We already cashed out. The money is in our hands, isn’t it?” Seeing Su Mengqing’s ashen face as she bit her lip, allowing tears to fall unchecked, Zhang Meili’s expression faltered, and a hint of panic crept in.

SLAP!

She whirled around and slapped Yang Tingting across the face, then pointed a finger at her nose and began to curse. “You idiot! Why didn’t you warn me?! You’re completely useless!”

“Mrs. Zhang, you have to be fair!” Yang Tingting wailed, stomping her foot in devastation. “You were the one who told me to do it! How was I supposed to know the consequences would be this serious?”

“Hmph, don’t you dare shift the blame to me!” Zhang Meili’s face was crimson as she rained more slaps on Yang Tingting’s cheeks, cursing nonstop. “It was you who said the stock would plummet and urged me to find a solution! You caused this crash, so you will take full responsibility! You useless thing, you dare blame me? If I told you to go eat shit, would you do that, too?!”

“You’re all bullying me… this is too much… Waaah… Waaah…” Yang Tingting, her hair disheveled and her nose and mouth bleeding, broke down into hysterical sobs. For a time, the hospital room was filled with the sounds of slapping and wailing, causing passersby in the hall to glance over at the commotion.

A moment later, Zhang Meili lowered her tingling hand and shoved the sobbing Yang Tingting to the floor. Turning back to the silently crying Su Mengqing, she offered a sheepish smile. “Mengqing, so what if it plummeted? We have a lot of cash on hand now. We can just buy the stock back. We could even make a huge profit, right?”

“Mom, you’re so stupid. Unbelievably, incurably stupid,” Su Mengqing wept, pounding her fists on the bed. “Do you have any idea how much effort and energy I’ve spent over the last four years to ensure the stock price rose steadily?”

“You child, how can you talk to me like that!” Zhang Meili’s face was as red as a monkey’s rear as she, too, slammed her hand on the edge of the bed. “What did I do wrong? Wasn’t it all for the good of this family?”

“…How much money is in the company account right now?” Su Mengqing took a deep breath, ignoring her mother’s excuses. She turned her gaze to Yang Tingting, who was still kneeling and crying on the floor.

“A little less than six hundred million,” Yang Tingting replied between sniffles, wiping her tears as she scrambled to her feet. “After we repay the principal and interest on the bank loan, we’re still waiting on final payments for several large client orders…”

“What do you mean? I distinctly remember we had at least forty million in liquid capital on the books!” Su Mengqing said, stunned, a deep suspicion rising in her eyes. “Adding the money from the stock sale, it should be over six hundred million!”

“Maybe… maybe I miscalculated. I must have remembered it wrong…” Yang Tingting’s eyelid twitched, and she ducked her head, her words coming out in a stutter.

“If you can’t do your job properly next time, don’t blame me for being unforgiving and telling you to pack your bags!” Su Mengqing clenched her fists, forcing herself to calm down. If not for their urgent need for personnel, and the fact that her brother Su Gang and Yang Tingting had always been flirtatious, she would have fired her on the spot.

However, this mess wasn’t entirely Yang Tingting’s fault. Aside from her mother Zhang Meili’s self-righteous arrogance, all the rest of the trouble was caused by Lin Fan.

You want to see me, Su Mengqing, fall? You want to see Su Pharmaceutical crumble in my hands? Lin Fan, if I, Su Mengqing, could rise so quickly in four years, then I can lead this company back to its peak again. Your schemes are destined to fail!

“Director Su, it’s… it’s a call from Director Shen of Tianfan Group…”

Just then, Yang Tingting carefully approached, holding out the phone with both hands. The caller ID on the screen showed it was indeed their largest client for the past four years: the head of the Tianfan Group from the neighboring province.

“Hello, Director Shen, this is Su Mengqing.” Pressing the speaker button, Su Mengqing forced a smile onto her face and spoke softly into the phone. The man on the other end was a major benefactor of Su Pharmaceutical; for four years, his company had accounted for more than half of their orders.

“Su Mengqing,” a cold, detached male voice came through the speaker, “I’m calling on behalf of Yunhai Group, Hongwei Pharmaceuticals, and three other companies to jointly issue a notice of contract termination.”

BOOM!

Su Mengqing’s smile froze. Her entire body shook.

Zhang Meili and Yang Tingting’s faces went pale, and they held their breath in sheer terror. Those five clients accounted for almost ninety percent of Su Pharmaceutical’s orders. If all of them canceled their contracts, the company would face complete and utter collapse.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep