The moment Ethan finished speaking, the entire room fell silent.
The Bennett Group’s contract with the Whitmore family had legal loopholes?
That was no small matter.
If true, it could send shockwaves through the entire American business world!
The Bennett Group was one of the country’s most prominent business empires, with interests spanning restaurants, film and television, entertainment, real estate, and numerous other industries.
Its influence extended across the country, making the Bennett family a name few people could afford to underestimate.
The Whitmore family was no less formidable.
Having established itself in Grayhaven, it possessed considerable wealth, political connections, and influence of its own.
A partnership between two such powerful families should have been a recipe for extraordinary success.
Yet Ethan was claiming that their cooperation agreement contained hidden legal loopholes deliberately designed to target the Bennett Group.
If he was wrong, then it was nothing more than an embarrassing misunderstanding.
But if he was right, the consequences could be devastating.
The project involved hundreds of billions, and a legal trap buried in its contract could potentially inflict catastrophic losses on the Bennett family.
“Are you telling the truth?” Claire’s smile disappeared, replaced by a grave expression.
She had approached Ethan out of curiosity, never imagining that his so-called fortune-telling would lead to something this serious.
Contractual loopholes weren’t a trivial matter.
They could determine the fate of an entire business empire, and the implications went far beyond the financial losses themselves.
If the Whitmore family had deliberately inserted such loopholes, it would mean they had been plotting against the Bennetts from the beginning.
Worse still, how had the loopholes escaped the Bennett Group’s legal department?
Someone inside the organization might have been helping the Whitmore family.
It was even possible that several senior executives were involved.
Claire could no longer afford to treat Ethan’s warning as an entertaining prediction.
The Bennett and Whitmore families had maintained a close business relationship for more than twenty years.
Their cooperation had been built on a foundation of mutual trust, and neither side had previously given the other any reason to suspect foul play.
Under ordinary circumstances, Claire would never have believed such an accusation without evidence.
But Ethan was an outsider with no apparent reason to fabricate a claim that could have such enormous consequences.
More importantly, his earlier predictions had already demonstrated a degree of accuracy that she couldn’t dismiss.
If even part of what he said proved true, the Bennett family could be facing a crisis far more serious than anyone realized.
“Do you think I’d joke about something like this?” Ethan asked with a faint smile, taking another sip of wine.
Claire immediately pulled out her phone and called her father.
She walked toward a quieter corner of the private room to speak with him.
The surrounding classmates fell silent, their attention fixed on her as they waited to see what would happen.
Even Adrian Cross put his irritation aside for the moment.
The Bennett Group was an even more formidable force than the Cross family.
If a business empire of that magnitude had become entangled in a major scandal, the news would shake the entire business community.
Everyone wanted to know whether Ethan’s warning was true.
Meanwhile, in Grayhaven, the Bennett family estate was hosting a family meeting.
The sprawling estate had been developed and built by the Bennett family itself, and it served as a residence for members of the family.
At that moment, dozens of relatives had gathered in the main conference hall to attend a regular meeting led by Richard Bennett, the current head of the family and Claire’s father.
Richard was discussing several important family affairs when his phone suddenly rang.
He glanced at the screen.
“Claire is calling.”
Raising one hand, he signaled for everyone to be quiet.
The entire hall promptly fell silent.
“Claire?” Richard answered.
The stern expression he had worn throughout the meeting softened immediately.
A gentle smile appeared on his face, and his voice became noticeably warmer.
“Dad, you need to check the real estate cooperation contract with the Whitmore family immediately,” Claire said without wasting time.
“Look for any hidden legal loopholes!”
Richard’s smile faded.
“Hidden loopholes?”
His brow furrowed, and a sharp glint appeared in his eyes.
He turned toward the secretary seated nearby.
“Bring me every real estate cooperation contract we have with the Whitmore family.
All of them.”
“Understood.”
The secretary immediately got up and left to carry out his instructions.
Richard returned his attention to the phone.
“Claire, where did you hear this?”
He knew his daughter well.
Claire was levelheaded and rarely believed rumors without good reason.
If she had gone out of her way to call him about something this serious, she must have received information she considered credible.
“Dad, please don’t ask me that yet.
Just check the contracts first.
We need to establish whether there’s actually a problem.”
Claire deliberately avoided explaining how she had learned about it.
How could she possibly tell her father that one of her former classmates had predicted the existence of hidden contractual loopholes through fortune-telling?
Even she found the explanation difficult to believe.
It was better to wait for the results before trying to explain anything.
“Brother, what’s happened?”
Several members of the family noticed Richard’s sudden change in expression and exchanged uneasy glances.
“Nothing serious,” Richard replied calmly.
As the head of the Bennett family, he understood the importance of maintaining his composure, especially when faced with potentially significant problems.
He wasn’t about to alarm everyone before he knew what was happening.
Nevertheless, his eyes briefly swept across the members responsible for the family’s legal affairs.
The reaction was subtle, but it didn’t escape notice.
Several people from the legal department immediately lowered their heads.
A few looked visibly nervous, avoiding Richard’s gaze as though they were afraid he might question them directly.
His expression remained unchanged, but he silently took note of their behavior.
Before long, the secretary returned carrying a stack of documents.
Richard looked toward two younger members of the family.
“Grace, Nathan, you both studied law, didn’t you?
Come over and help me review these contracts.”
The two immediately stepped forward.
After Richard indicated which documents they should examine, they began checking the relevant agreements for irregularities.
Back at the reunion, the other classmates were still struggling to process what Ethan had said.
“Ethan, was that warning really true?
Are there actually loopholes in the agreement between the Bennett and Whitmore families?” someone asked.
“Who knows?” Ethan replied with a shrug and a slight smile.
He gave no further explanation.
By then, the food had arrived, and the classmates gradually returned to their seats.
Claire temporarily ended her call and rejoined the gathering, behaving as though nothing unusual had happened.
She continued chatting and smiling with the others, showing none of the tension she had displayed a few moments earlier.
Yet her attention kept drifting toward Ethan.
The other classmates soon returned their focus to Adrian Cross.
The affairs of two distant business empires were beyond their immediate concerns.
They were far more interested in improving their own prospects, strengthening their connections, and discovering whether Ethan could offer them useful predictions about their futures.
Ethan, for his part, continued chatting and laughing with everyone as usual.
One classmate after another asked how he had learned to tell fortunes, and he answered their questions with a few casual remarks, leaving them to draw their own conclusions.
The dinner continued, and the atmosphere gradually became livelier.
Then Claire’s phone rang.
Several classmates immediately looked up.
Was this the answer they’d been waiting for?
Claire rose from her seat and walked toward the corner of the room before answering the call.
No one could hear what was being said, but they could clearly see the change in her expression.
Her eyes widened slightly.
A look of unmistakable shock crossed her face, and she instinctively turned to glance at Ethan.
That single reaction was enough.
The classmates exchanged startled looks as the realization dawned on them.
Something really had happened with the Bennett Group’s cooperation agreement with the Whitmore family!
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