?Chapter 373:


    She turned to him. “Mr. Smith, what do you think?”


    Shaun stared at the panicking Nixon. After a moment, he sighed. “Nixon’s been a supplier of ours for years. Maybe it really was someone on his team cutting corners. I’ll give him one more chance.”


    Nixon nearly dropped to his knees from relief. “Thank you, Mr. Smith! Thank you for trusting me!”


    Ste didn’t push further. Since Shaun had made the call, she’d respect it—for now. She nodded. “Fine. But everyst piece of faulty material gets reced.”


    “Absolutely! I’ll oversee it personally!”


    As Ste and Shaun got into the car, Nixon stood by the site gate, grinning and waving like a fool. Shaun didn’t say anything, but he watched the man carefully from the rear window. Nixon’s smile faltered as the car pulled away.


    Once they were out of sight, Ste sighed, still unsettled. Shaun dropped her back at the research institute, and she returned to work—but her gut kept twisting. Something about all this didn’t sit right. After work, she went digging into Nixon’s background.


    What she found was shocking. The guy was a serial offender. He had a track record of skimming money off projects just like this. Ten years ago, one building that was built with his materials even copsed—someone died.


    Ste sat frozen in front of her screen, her heart sinking the more she read. The deeper she dug, the more it became clear—the Smith Group’s project wasn’t just a simple construction job. It was crawling with hidden agendas.


    Nixon barely made it through primary school. No high-profile background. His parents were simple farmers. On paper, he was a nobody. And yet, somehow, he’d managed to climb his way up, rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names in the industry.


    And that death from a decade ago? No police investigation. No media outrage, not even a whisper online. It had been buried. Entirely.


    Which could only mean one thing—Nixon wasn’t just some greedy middleman. Someone powerful was protecting him. Pulling strings behind the scenes.


    His involvement in this project was no ident—it was part of arger scheme. Ste’s mind shed back to the construction site. That suffocating chemical stench had been worse than anything she’d encountered before. Not just cheap materials; they were toxic ones. The kind that could cause real,sting harm.


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    With her background inb work, her nose was trained to pick up even the slightest chemical traces. She didn’t need ab report to know something was seriously wrong.


    This wasn’t just about one shady deal anymore. Even if the problem wasn’t limited to the Smith Group’s project, she had to stop it before others got hurt too. That entire batch of materials had to be destroyed—fast.


    And now, thinking back to earlier today—how she and Shaun had agreed to give Nixon another chance—regret twisted deep in her gut.


    Opening her phone, she sent everything she’d found to Shaun. Every report. Every link. Every detail.


    And then she followed up with one short message. “Mr. Smith, Nixon’s done this before. He’s a repeat offender. Someone like him doesn’t deserve our trust.”


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