Chapter 440 Shane’s Subtlety
Charlotte purposely picked a buffet restaurant so that she didn’t have to order for the children. The kids could just pick whatever they wanted to eat without hassle. There was also ice cream and desserts to satisfy them too. Even though the cost was relatively high, she thought it was worth it. She liked to bring them to buffet restaurants for meals.
As it was not the weekend, there were not many people around.
“Well, I have the information right here. Do you want to have a look?” Avery suddenly moved closer to Charlotte. “I think you must be aching to read the information about my brother.”
“Your brother?” Charlotte’s interest was piqued. She put down her utensils and turned her head to look at him. “What’s there to know?”
“My brother was burned to death, wasn’t he? Why do you think that happened?”
“Perhaps he offended someone?”
“That’s right. Guess who it was.”
How could Charlotte guess that?
However, the way Avery spoke about this matter made her think that it was probably a very powerful person. Furthermore, she could probably guess who it was judging by the powerful people Augustus kept around him… Charlotte had a bad feeling about this. She lowered her voice and asked, “Could it be Shane? It can’t be, right?”
“Where’d you get that idea from?” Avery rolled his eyes. “My brother offended the Animal Protection Association.”This text is property of Nô/velD/rama.Org.
That was wholly unexpected.
This was an organization that could not get along with Augustus. Augustus liked to abuse animals. As such he bought a lot of cats, dogs, and some parrots just to inflict pain on them. Everyone in the circle knew about this matter, and some have even reported him for it. It was said that the first person who reported him was a man with the surname Zhang. The man owned a Samoyed who had given birth to a puppy which he had given to Augustus as a gift. But not long after, Augustus told him that the puppy had died.
The Samoyed owner felt that something was off about the matter. Generally, pet owners would have brought their pets to the vet for check-ups when they thought their pets were unwell. It was odd for them to just die like that with no medical records. Even though Augustus had raised so many animals before, it seemed like none of them had been sick. They had all just died suddenly.
Thinking that it was suspicious, the man secretly collected evidence, and then reported Augustus to the Animal Protection Association.
Augustus was the first young master of the Hart family. Ordinary citizens, even Shane, could do nothing about it at that time, so the association decided to teach Augustus a lesson themselves.
That fire was part of the lesson.
“Shane was the one who orchestrated everything.” Avery lowered his voice. “But he had only intended to frighten my brother, not kill him. After all, Shane wasn’t personally responsible for carrying out that whole operation, but the people from the association. This is also the reason why Shane chose to hold the birthday party at the crime scene.”
Charlotte was dumbstruck by the information.
“So it makes sense why he’s been struggling to accept how everything turned out because he technically had a hand in killing him. Not to mention, he had found out that his childhood best friend was a pervert. What would you have felt if you were Shane?”
“I would probably fall into a deep depression…”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Don’t tell anyone, but I did find some evidence of Shane’s depression at that time. Very few people know about it. I found this out from Zander’s children”
Charlotte took a deep breath, but even that couldn’t calm her down.
Avery continued, “What’s more, many things have happened since. Because of his depression, Shane had impulsively destroyed the Animal protection Association in the country. So now Brine doesn’t have one anymore…”
“Why would Shane do such a thing?”
“Think about it, Augustus killed a lot of people’s pets, right? Shane must have had a pet or two when he was growing up as well. People like him loved things with all their heart, so he must have loved his pets as well. So let’s assume that Shane gifted Augustus his pet, or perhaps even gave him their babies. Instead of taking care of them, Augustus ends up killing them…”
Charlotte shivered at the thought.
If that were the case, it was possible that Shane wanted to take his revenge on Augustus.
She rubbed her temple and said, “Shane’s twelve-year-old mind is so complex. I can’t believe we’ve worked under him for so long…”
“There’s one more thing…”
“There’s more?!” Charlotte yelled out in disbelief.
Avery spread out his arms and said, “I did more digging and found something interesting that happened between him and him. You would never guess…”
“Just tell me!” Charlotte exclaimed, exasperated.
“Although Shane was only twelve years old, he’s so much better at chess than Augustus. Because of that, Augustus didn’t like him very much. He had already declared Shane as his enemy. Also, I heard that Augustus had feelings for Heidi, but he thought that Heidi liked Shane back then, and that Shane returned her feelings as well.”
He continued, “Basically, Augustus acts like Shane’s brother on the surface, but in reality, he was very dissatisfied with Shane for stealing his limelight.”
“If Shane wasn’t sharp, he wouldn’t have picked up on Augustus’ animosity towards him. However, Shane eventually realised that he did not have his friend’s loyalty. As such, at the age of twelve, Shane had taken the initiative to strike.
“That’s why I’m suspicious of this matter. Perhaps Shane stopped ageing once he turned twelve because he wanted to switch up Augustus’ fate. Of course. I’m not saying that he’s a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe he already knows that Augustus has died before, so he wants to come up with a better plan to deal with Augustus. Shall we check his plans?”
At the mention of that, Charlotte was reminded of Shane’s odd behaviour before. She remembered that Shane had opened the mapping software on her computer when he was using it to deal with official matters last time. At that time, she had been confused but did not say much about it even though she didn’t know why he needed to do so.
Maybe Avery’s guess was right.
On the same day, after eating, Avery offered to take the children out to play. As Irena had seen him and Charlotte discussing something together these few days, she assumed that the two must be brewing up a plan, and diverting the children’s attention should be part of it. As such, she offered to help take the children out as well.
“Well, since Irena will be coming… Shane, why don’t you come with us too?” Avery immediately suggested.
“I want to go read an encyclopedia.”
“Come on, that’s so boring! Once you recover your memory, you’ll find that you’ve already read the whole thing before,” Avery said and pulled Shane to him. “Let’s go then. Lottie, you can head back now.”
Without even bothering to say goodbye, Charlotte left. Shane’s gaze remained on her retreating back for a long while before he finally withdrew his gaze.
His intuition told him that Charlotte and Avery must be planning something.
“You and Charlotte have been secretly talking about Shane, am I right?” Irena walked up to Avery’s side, holding Freddie’s hand with her right hand.
“That’s right. I’ve asked her to go look over the plans on her laptop.” Avery paused for a short while and said, “We have to keep the children away from the villa as long as possible.”
“It seems that my guess was right.”
Avery quirked his lips into a smile and said, “It seems that you know me well, as always.”
Irena didn’t say anything after that.
…
The first thing that Charlotte did when she got back was turn on the mapping software on her computer.
Shane seemed to have drawn a hotel’s internal structure diagram, which contained a lot of passages and stairs. However, she found that the entire diagram looked strange.
What caught her eye was the style of the diagram. One half’s style looked completely different from its other half.
Charlotte looked at it for a long while and felt a chill down her spine.
It couldn’t be, could it?
After Shane lost his memory and mentally became a twelve-year-old, the first thing he did was draw the first half of this diagram. As he needed to do something about Augustus in three days, there was no time for delay. As for the other half of the diagram, Shane must have recovered his memory and completed it.
But why did he do it?
Why was he still drawing this diagram even after he recovered his memories?
Charlotte felt that she did not understand Shane anymore.