Chapter 189: Then You’re Still Too Inexperienced
To avoid getting murdered by his good friend later, Brandon Jennings felt he had to do some damage control. "Quincy tried to press them," he said, "but they insisted there was no such person."
’Oh, so at the end of the day, he’s just not very good at getting things done.’
Brandon Jennings: "..." ’Why does it feel like the more I explain, the worse it gets?!’
However, Arabella was also a bit confused. By all rights, now that they’d been caught, shouldn’t they have sold out their accomplice? They could have tried to get on the good side of the Ulrich siblings, hoping to make up for what they’d done and avoid being completely ruined. So why were the two of them suddenly acting so fiercely loyal?
But on second thought, Arabella suddenly understood.
’Could it be...’
The Jennings family: Huh?
’If that’s really the case, then those two really are blinded by money!’
According to Arabella’s theory, the mastermind was Chloe Ulrich’s maternal half-sister. She had accidentally discovered that her sister’s boyfriend was gay and had been secretly involved with another man for a long time. The sister then used this secret to blackmail Terry Jules. She demanded that he help her set a trap for Chloe, intending to extort a large sum of money before releasing the photos to completely ruin her reputation.
The initial plan between Terry Jules and the sister wasn’t just about getting money, so they were naturally dissatisfied with this greatly diminished outcome. But the sister held all the cards. If Chloe Ulrich were to learn the truth, Terry wouldn’t even get this final payout, so he had no choice but to reluctantly compromise.
But things were different now. The leverage Miss Ulrich had was exposed prematurely, so it was no longer leverage at all.
Instead, the fact that she had recently used this threat to force Terry Jules to set up and scheme against Chloe Ulrich had, in turn, become leverage he could now use against her.
’If I’m not mistaken, had this ’Miss Ulrich’ been the least bit cautious, she wouldn’t have left any digital trail of her contact with Terry Jules; she would have met him in person. But if Terry has half a brain, he’d know what they were doing was illegal. He would have definitely saved some evidence to protect himself, in case she decided to throw him under the bus and pin all the blame on him after the fact. So, he probably has a video or audio recording of them plotting together...’
The members of the Jennings family exchanged glances, seeing the astonishment in each other’s eyes.
Eugene Jennings’s mind wandered. ’Just how many court-intrigue and family-drama novels has our little cousin read to piece all this together so seamlessly? She’s figured out everyone’s motivations completely.’
’They were just temporary partners in crime, each with leverage over the other. Now that the scumbag’s leverage is gone, the balance of power is broken. He’ll probably use his leverage on the younger Miss Ulrich to blackmail her instead, trying to extort the money from her that he originally planned to get from her older sister. A classic dog-eat-dog situation. It’s just textbook!’
The Jennings family: "!!!" ’He’s going to pull a move like that?’
Once you understood what these people were thinking, you could naturally predict their next moves.
’Miss Ulrich’s sister probably won’t abandon her plan so easily. Knowing that the route with the scumbag is a dead end, she’s highly likely to take matters into her own hands or hire someone else to do the dirty work. No, I have to warn them.’
Brandon Jennings tensed up, his interest piqued. The truth was, after the incident with the boyfriend, Quincy Ulrich had been emotionally reluctant to suspect his own mother and sister. However, his rational side had taken over, and he’d gone ahead and arranged for paternity tests for his family.
His probing question to Arabella now was also an attempt to see if there was any more gossip about their family that he had missed.
"Um..." Arabella cleared her throat. "Miss Ulrich was there the other day, so there were some things I couldn’t really say. After all, we’d only just met. Saying certain things might not have helped and could have even made an enemy. But everyone here today is family, so I’ll be blunt."
"Yes, yes." As soon as Arabella finished, Mrs. Jennings eagerly chimed in to show her support. "There are no outsiders here, just family. Don’t be afraid. Say whatever’s on your mind. We all believe you."
"Mom’s right. Just say it."
"I was observing Miss Ulrich’s features the other day. Her eyebrows are knotted, which foretells trouble among relatives of the same generation. This means she’s highly likely to be backstabbed by a relative soon, most likely a sibling. But... but their familial connection might have a slight discrepancy."
"A discrepancy? What kind of discrepancy?"
"Half-siblings. Either sharing a father or a mother."
"What?"
The Jennings family members all put on appropriately shocked expressions and turned to look at Brandon Jennings.
Brandon Jennings was silent for a moment before offering his prepared excuse: "The two of them are fraternal twins. That shouldn’t be possible."
Arabella stared at him for a good while, making him think his acting had been either too calm or too over-the-top, that his cousin had seen through his ruse and he’d blown it. But then, the very next second, he heard a major bombshell.
’You’re just not well-informed. It’s possible for twins to have different fathers.’
Brandon Jennings: "??!" ’Ah... I guess I really am ignorant!’
’But she and her older brother do have the same father and mother.’
Brandon Jennings: "..." ’That scared the hell out of me! I thought the gossip was about to hit my own friend!’
Arabella, unaware of the rollercoaster of emotions someone was experiencing, decisively sidestepped the topic and continued smoothly, "Besides her older brother, does she have any other siblings?"
"She has a younger sister."
"A sister." Arabella stroked her chin, pondering for a moment. "Cousin, do you have a photo or video of her? A recent, clear video would be best."
Brandon Jennings didn’t have one, of course, but Quincy Ulrich definitely would.
Brandon Jennings immediately called Quincy Ulrich and asked him for a video of Yara Ulrich.
It was from Chloe Ulrich’s birthday party not long ago. In the video, the younger Ulrich sister had beautiful curly hair and wore a delicate, simple oleander gemstone barrette. She looked pure and harmless.
But upon zooming in for a closer look, Arabella noticed that this person’s eyebrows were much thinner than Chloe Ulrich’s. They had probably been deliberately touched up.
You know what they say, rich people have cameras with higher resolution. Arabella zoomed in on her eyebrows as far as she could and discovered that this ’Miss Ulrich’ seemed to have broken eyebrows. She had probably plucked a large portion of them because she found them unsightly, then deliberately used an eyebrow pencil to darken the line.
The newly drawn brows greatly softened her features and concealed the blatant scheming in her eyes. But even the best mask can’t hide a person’s true nature for long.
After watching for a while, Arabella noticed another difference between Yara Ulrich and her older siblings. Her nose bridge was sharp, thin, and lacked flesh. It looked high but was conspicuously slender, completely different from the fleshy, slightly flat, and very auspicious-looking large noses of Chloe Ulrich, her brother, and Mr. Ulrich.
Looking again, Mrs. Ulrich didn’t seem to have that kind of nose either. It was highly likely she took after her biological father.
After meticulously studying Yara Ulrich’s facial features, Arabella finally understood why she held so much animosity toward her own sister.
’So that’s how it is! No wonder she’s trying every trick in the book to ruin her sister’s reputation. Her biological father actually wants to give her away to some seventy- or eighty-year-old man!’
The Jennings family: "??!"