Chapter 1057 - 547: You... You’re a Thug (2)

"The difference between men and women is that even without love, men will still sleep with women. But if a woman is willing to sleep with a man, then it must be for love." Eliza Bell looked at Avery Jane. In some ways, Avery was very smart, gifted, quick, outstanding—not just because she knew how to play a good hand of cards. In other ways, though, some of her thoughts were actually very simple, so simple that one look was enough to know exactly what she was thinking.

"You mean he doesn’t love me, he just wants to screw me?" Avery Jane had clearly misunderstood what Eliza Bell meant.

Her face went pale with fright. Eliza Bell shot her a look: "Sis, I’m saying you like him in your heart, otherwise you wouldn’t sleep with him. Where the hell are you taking this?" If Joshua Hughes ever heard something like that, she could already imagine just how ugly a death she’d die......

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The reception had just ended, and Joshua Hughes returned to his office. After ending the call, Julian Carter, whose face was usually calm and composed, now carried a hint of anxiety as he strode in after him. "Something’s happened."

Joshua Hughes lifted his eyes to Julian Carter’s grim expression; this had to be serious, or his face wouldn’t look this bad. Suddenly the light on the floor caught his attention—that was Avery Jane’s necklace, set with lots of tiny diamonds, very good quality, glittering brilliantly under the lights. He bent down and picked up the necklace. It was extremely beautiful, elegant, and carried a faint sense of lingering intimacy. Hanging on her noble, swan-like neck, it was even more heart-stirring. The only problem was he didn’t like the designer of this necklace. His fingers slowly tightened around it, then with a sweep of his long arm, the beautiful necklace traced a smooth arc through the air and landed precisely in the silver trash bin in the distance.

He lightly clapped his hands, and the deep-pool darkness of Joshua Hughes’s eyes flashed with a cold light. "What is it?"

"I mean the old company. Luis Hughes has already obtained five percent of the shares from Madam Hughes. Add his own, plus all the board members and some scattered minority shareholders who’ve signed consent forms, and it proves that back then his shares in the Hughes Clan were more than yours, while everything you did in the Hughes Clan wasn’t authorized by him. Now the charges aren’t just dereliction of duty; there’s also under-the-table benefit transfers, asset stripping, and a bunch of other odds and ends. None of that is the real problem. Do you know what’s fatal here?" Julian Carter closed his eyes, head pounding.

"The most headache-inducing part is that the judge this time is actually Benjamin Lopez." This case was seriously tricky. If the court was dead set on going after Joshua Hughes, then this matter would be nowhere near as easy to resolve as it sounded. Julian Carter muttered a curse under his breath; of all times to run into something like this.

Benjamin Lopez. A deep, unfathomable light flickered in Joshua Hughes’s eyes. His thin lips pressed into a hard line, and his gaze sharpened, turning razor-like.

Julian Carter’s voice grew even lower, slow but clear as he spoke: "I know what happened back then was never really your fault. We’ve just set this new company up. If something happens to you at a time like this, or if there are court people coming here day in, day out issuing summons, it’s really not a good look. From what I’ve heard, Luis Hughes and Benjamin Lopez have already met in private several times. The two of them are planning to team up and destroy us, you get that?"

It was almost laughable. The famously iron-faced Judge Benjamin Lopez had an only son, Leo Lopez, who used to be a tyrant in the nightclubs back in the day. Relying on his status as the third generation of the family, he played with young women in every way imaginable, sometimes nearly ruining them. There was one time Joshua was there too; he was probably in a bad mood that night. He watched them pour all different kinds of alcohol into one bottle and force a young girl to drink it. The girl was crying her heart out, refusing to drink no matter what, then shoved Leo Lopez and tried to run. But they grabbed her, pinned her to the ground, and seven or eight punk rich kids yanked down their zippers, pulled themselves out, and pissed all over the girl’s face, making her cry even more miserably in an instant.

No one dared to interfere, no one dared to step in. Joshua Hughes had a few bodyguards drag them all out—not because he was some kind of saint, but simply because the girl’s sobbing mixed with those youths’ laughter was just too damn irritating to listen to.

Those few were notorious little devils in the city, so being thrown out like that was something they couldn’t stomach. A few shoves turned into a fight, and in the brawl Leo Lopez had one eye stabbed blind by a beer bottle, with a long gash torn across his face. After that, Benjamin Lopez and his wife shipped him overseas, and he was never seen again. For years things had stayed relatively peaceful: first, because it wasn’t Joshua Hughes who struck the blow—one bodyguard took all the blame; second, probably because Benjamin Lopez knew Joshua’s roots ran too deep to move him at all, so he held back. If he was presiding over this case now, that meant he’d come prepared, or already had a certain degree of confidence. That was the real crux of Julian Carter’s headache.