Chapter 226: Miles York and Alice Cole Argue

If Chloe York hadn’t gone to save Sophie Lane, the secret of the stolen college admission spot would have remained hidden forever, and no one would have ever seen Sophie again.

It was all Chloe’s fault. Everything was because of her.

“That’s right, blame Chloe, blame Sophie. Brooke, you’re not wrong. You’ll never be wrong,” Alice Cole said, pulling Brooke York into her arms.

“Right. I’m not wrong. I’m not wrong.”

“Yes, my daughter is absolutely flawless. Everyone else is in the wrong. It’s them being ungrateful; it’s them being too wicked.”

Seeing Brooke’s emotions slowly stabilize, Alice probed tentatively, “By the way, Brooke… that girl being kidnapped, did you do it?”

Alice could only imagine Brooke doing such a thing. If it were anyone else, the secret of Brooke stealing someone else’s college spot wouldn’t have been exposed.

Hearing Alice’s words, Brooke looked a bit uncomfortable. “Mom, how could you suspect me?”

“Mom isn’t suspecting you. Mom just wants to say that if it was you, you need to tell me. You can’t keep it from me. The incident has already happened, so if things blow up later, Mom can help you handle it!” Alice’s tone was soothing, acting entirely out of consideration for Brooke.

Hearing Alice say this, Brooke hesitated. Seeing her hesitation, Alice instantly knew—Brooke was the one who did it.

“Oh, Brooke, Brooke. How could you be so foolish?” Alice was genuinely a bit angry. She had already told her that her dad was handling it. Why did she still have to do these things and bring a heap of trouble upon herself?

“I didn’t want to either, but she threatened me. I was just so angry; that’s why it happened.”

Seeing Brooke looking so pitiful, Alice’s heart softened again. “Alright, I understand. We won’t talk about this. If it gets exposed, we’ll figure something out.”

“Mhm.”

An hour later, Alice finally emerged from Brooke’s room.

As soon as she came out, she saw Miles York. Her expression instantly soured. “Didn’t you say you’d take care of this? How did it end up like this?”

“Alice, are you accusing me?” Miles’s tone carried obvious surprise, as if he hadn’t expected her to point fingers at him.

Obviously, none of this seemed to be his fault, yet he had still done his best to fix it. And now she was blaming him?

“Shouldn’t I be accusing you? Do you think you did the right thing? Did you find the right person? If you had found the right person, would Brooke have been threatened like this?

“And after Brooke was threatened, you were the one who said to leave it to you. So how did you handle it? How did you manage to let them expose the whole thing?” Alice grew angrier as she spoke. In her mind, she was entirely pinning the blame on Miles, effectively using him as her punching bag.

But Miles wasn’t a punching bag who would just quietly take a scolding. “Alice, you can blame me for the issue with finding the right person, but you can’t pin Brooke getting threatened over the substitution on me. Yes, I said to leave it to me, and I did take action. But as for why they backed out? I think that has everything to do with you two.”

Miles felt that Sophie backing out so suddenly and exposing everything must have been triggered by something. Otherwise, there was no way she would just throw away such an easy money-making opportunity.

Hearing Miles’s words, Alice’s gaze became evasive.

Miles didn’t know what Brooke had done, but she did—after all, it was blowing up all over the internet. It was just that Miles didn’t pay much attention to online matters. Plus, the news of Chloe rescuing someone had only been out for a short while before the trending topics were completely overshadowed by Sophie’s exposure. If Miles found out that Brooke had sent people to kidnap Sophie, and that it was Chloe who had saved her, things would get messy.

“I’m not in the mood to argue about this with you right now. Let me tell you, this incident is having a massive impact. Brooke will definitely be expelled. So if there’s any problem with your company, or any problem with you, don’t bother us.”

With that, Alice returned to Brooke’s room. The reason she said this was to make Miles handle whatever fallout came up on his own without dragging their mother-daughter duo into it, forcing him to hold back even if he wanted to lash out at them.

Miles was indeed not in the mood to deal with them. The exposure of this scandal was bad for his reputation too. He had to rush to do damage control, and at the same time, he needed to meet with Sophie to find out why she had suddenly betrayed him.

The scandal of Brooke scoring zero in all subjects and stealing someone else’s college admission spot was causing quite a stir. However, the York Group soon issued a statement claiming that one of the school’s teachers had mixed up the scores of the two students.

It claimed that Brooke’s scores were actually zero from the start, but this teacher had mistakenly recorded Brooke’s score as valid and Sophie’s as zero. Later, they realized the error—Brooke’s score was the real zero, and Sophie was the one who deserved to go to college.

Who knew what they were thinking when coming up with this explanation, but the netizens certainly weren’t buying it.

[Wow, inventing a scapegoat teacher out of thin air! Absolutely incredible.]

[Rich people sure are rich people. Even at this point, they can still call black white. I’m in awe.]

[Honestly though, both sides actually benefited. That girl took the money and gave up her college spot, while the other paid the money and got the college spot. How is that not a win-win situation?]

[I think the person above is telling the truth. That girl definitely sold her college spot for money. Maybe the terms fell through, things blew up, and now they’re just tearing each other apart.]

[They’re purely treating us netizens like idiots. The names are completely different—how could the scores possibly get mixed up?]

[So at the end of the day, it’s still good to have money. The things that require hard work can easily be bought by the rich.]

Seeing Miles’s incoming call, Sophie didn’t want to answer. She knew exactly why he was calling. It would be nothing more than asking why she had gone back on her word after agreeing so readily. Thinking of something, she ended up answering the call anyway.

Before Miles could say a word, she spoke first, “Let’s meet. Once we meet, you’ll know why I exposed this.”

“Can’t you explain it over the phone?” Miles actually wanted to know the reason immediately. Having to meet in person to talk? He didn’t have that kind of patience.

“It’ll be clearer in person, and I have something to give you. Let’s meet at the usual place! Today at 5 PM.”

With that said, Sophie hung up without hesitation.

Listening to the dial tone coming from his phone, Miles froze. He hadn’t expected her to demand a meeting. She was the one who did something wrong, yet she still had the nerve to demand a meeting.

Fine. Then he would meet her and see how she was going to explain herself.

He dialed the intercom. “Secretary Morgan, come in for a moment.”

Soon, Secretary Morgan entered.

“Mr. York, you’re looking for me?”

“Don’t schedule any work after 4 PM today. I need to go out.”

“Yes, sir.”