Chapter 340. Cracks Within

Chapter 340. Cracks Within
By the third day, Preston’s shares had fallen all the way to the daily limit, causing an enormous amount of the family’s wealth to disappear almost overnight.

Andrea immediately called an emergency meeting. He demanded that every member of the Preston family put up their personal assets to save the companies. But the people who had always acted loyal to him began looking for ways to protect themselves. Some of them even secretly moved their assets away and started making plans to leave the country before it was too late.

Galvin and Kevin had not completely brought the Preston family down yet, but cracks had already begun spreading through it from the inside.

Andrea slowly lost control of himself and started beating his own bodyguards. He believed someone in the family had betrayed him, so he ordered his men to seize two managers and question them. It did not matter what those men said. Andrea’s subordinates still used both physical and psychological torture on them, tormenting them again and again as they tried to force out the answers Andrea wanted.

Knowing that neither of them would be allowed to leave alive, one of the two managers covered for the other and helped him escape from Andrea’s territory. After getting away, the surviving manager went straight to Galvin and turned himself in.

In exchange for Galvin’s protection, the man handed over all the secret ledgers Preston had kept hidden for many years.

Those ledgers did not contain only ordinary business dealings. They also recorded bribes, payments made to people hired to do Preston’s dirty work, and a list of several secret warehouses.

The moment Galvin looked through those records, his expression darkened. Those warehouses did not look like places used to store normal goods. They looked more like they were being used to hide… illegal goods.

He immediately ordered his men to investigate the warehouses separately and keep the matter quiet. If his suspicion turned out to be true, that evidence alone would be enough to destroy Andrea for good.

Meanwhile, Andrea began fighting back. He knew he could not keep relying on money alone to hold the Preston businesses together. If he wanted to save Preston, he first had to force Galvin and Kevin to stop attacking him.

Andrea ordered his people to spread word that Wyndham Group was facing a serious crisis because of Galvin’s failing health. Several photographs of Galvin coughing up blood in the hospital were sent to the media. Rumors that Galvin was close to death quickly spread everywhere, and the price of Wyndham’s shares also began to shake.

Andrea even bribed several shareholders. He wanted them to put pressure on Galvin and demand that he step down from his position as the head of the group. But Galvin had already expected Andrea to make a move like this.

Before the battle had even begun, Galvin had instructed his lawyers to prepare voting rights for Ellie and Ansel in advance. The most important major shareholders had also been told about the situation beforehand. Compared with the Preston family, Galvin’s side was far more united, and no one important turned against him simply because of a few rumors.

On the very day the rumors spread, Galvin personally appeared at the group’s online meeting.

His complexion really did look terrible, but his mind was still clear. He calmly laid out several ways to deal with the media crisis in front of them, and at the same time promised the shareholders that they would receive a very large return once Andrea had been defeated. After the meeting ended, Wyndham also announced a new project in cooperation with the government, and the value of that project was extremely high.

The rumors immediately lost most of their effect. Wyndham’s share price only fell for a short time before quickly becoming stable again.

Andrea then turned his attention toward the Thorne family. He had his people release evidence showing that Kevin had once used violence against Helena, hoping to ruin the Thorne family’s name and drag their reputation down with him.

This time, Kevin did not deny it. He even took the initiative and told his lawyer to make part of the truth public. He admitted that he had misunderstood Helena and had hurt her because of that misunderstanding. At the same time, he also released the evidence showing how Andrea had created one lie after another and pushed Helena into that situation in the first place.

What Kevin did made the members of the Thorne family extremely angry, because Kevin had almost destroyed his own public image with his own hands.

But he did not care. He knew that sooner or later, he would have to pay for the things he had done. If all the criticism aimed at him could also bring more attention to Andrea’s crimes, Kevin was willing to take it.

After his admission was made public, Kevin was indeed heavily criticized by the public. There were people cursing him everywhere, and many of them believed he deserved every word. But Andrea still failed to achieve what he wanted, because Thorney Group did not withdraw from the fight at all.

Instead, Kevin ordered the company to end every transportation partnership with any business connected to Preston.

This was no longer a matter of using inspections to delay their shipments. It had become a complete refusal to work with them. Several overseas ports managed by the Thorne family’s partners quickly made the same decision. Preston’s cargo ships were forced to move to smaller ports, causing their costs to rise by a large amount. Some goods that spoiled easily could not wait that long, so in the end, they had to be sold off quickly at very low prices.

Andrea suffered another huge loss. He used the last connections he still had to put pressure on Wyndham and Thorne’s business partners, but the two families were working together too closely. Something like this was rarely seen in the business world. Even when two sides were partners, each side normally wanted to keep the largest benefit for itself and push as much of the loss as possible onto the other side.

But this time, Wyndham Group and Thorney Group were tied together so tightly that they were even willing to accept losses themselves so the other side could gather its strength and keep attacking Preston Group.

Whenever one side lost a contract, the other side immediately stepped in and made up for it. If one of Wyndham’s shipping companies was bribed by Preston, Thorney immediately provided another route to replace it.

Andrea could no longer find any opening large enough to drive a wedge between the interests of the two major groups. It felt as though two hands were tightening around his throat at the same time. Every time he tried to struggle free, the pressure only grew stronger.

His repeated defeats in the business world drove Andrea closer to madness, and he no longer had the patience to keep waiting.