Before Dalton could even finish his sentence, Abelard cut him off, “Are you trying to say that Stewart sided with Charlene again and gave Ms. Hawkins a hard time?”

Dalton was genuinely taken aback by Abelard’s spot-on guess. “How did you know, old man? Do you already know what went down?”

Abelard chuckled, “I didn’t know. Just a lucky guess.”

The thing was, if Charlene and Stewart had initially agreed to work with his somewhat clueless son because of him, they wouldn’t deliberately make things difficult for him at work without reason. His son wasn’t the type to stir up trouble either, which meant that any conflict probably wasn’t directly between Dalton and them.

It seemed more likely that someone Dalton cared about had run into issues with Charlene and Stewart. And that someone was probably Vesta.

Earlier that year, when he met up with Geoffrey, Charlene, and the gang for dinner, they happened to bump into Ms. Hawkins at the restaurant entrance. Abelard had noticed how attentive Dalton was to her, and given her poise and charm, he had approved.

That was until Hickey Watson informed him that Ms. Hawkins was actually Thorne Henderson’s girlfriend. Abelard wasn’t privy to the intricacies of Charlene and Thorne’s relationship, but he did notice the odd expressions Charlene and Stewart had when they saw Vesta and her father. Clearly, there was no love lost there.

Charlene didn’t seem like the type to pick fights easily, so if there was tension with his son, it likely had something to do with Vesta.

With that hunch, Abelard had called Dalton to confirm. And sure enough, it was all because of Vesta that there was any discord.

Dalton believed that Charlene was intimidated by Vesta’s talent, fearing Stewart might develop feelings for her, so she deliberately targeted Vesta. Stewart, according to Dalton, was just blindly supporting Charlene, which nearly made Abelard laugh out of disbelief.

“So, what’s your plan?” Abelard questioned with a bemused grin. “You want me to call Kenton and fill him in so he can rein Stewart in?”

“Exactly,” Dalton replied. “Stewart’s behavior this time is just too out of line. If this keeps up—”

Abelard interrupted him. He had no intention of revealing the truth. “I can’t do that for you. If you want to help Ms. Hawkins, you’ll have to get in touch with Kenton yourself.”

Dalton frowned, “It’s not just about helping her, I actually like Stewart. I don’t want him going down this path—”

So, Dalton thought the root of the problem was Charlene?

Abelard’s patience was thinning. “Stewart’s being reckless? I don’t know about that. Maybe you’re the one who’s biased because you’re fond of Vesta—”

“Old man, you don’t know anything about it. How can you say I’m the one who’s biased?” Dalton shot back.

Abelard sighed. “Alright, then tell me what happened.”

Dalton gave him a rundown of the situation.

After listening, Abelard said, “This whole mess was Ms. Hawkins’ fault to begin with. As the company head, she should have sorted things out promptly. Instead, she sided with her staff and family against PrimeStar’s employees. If I were Stewart, I’d be upset too.”

“Besides, this shows that Ms. Hawkins and her family have poor judgment and don’t respect their business partners. If they weren’t worried about the financial hit from ending the contract with PrimeStar, I doubt they’d even apologize. From Stewart’s perspective, it’s

reasonable not to want to continue working with them.”

Dalton quickly defended Vesta, “No, they apologized to PrimeStar’s employees right away. And she even called Stewart personally to apologize, showing a lot of sincerity.”

Dalton believed that if it weren’t for the bad blood between Charlene and Vesta, Stewart wouldn’t even consider terminating the contract with Neural Nexus Tech over something so minor.

“Those are just surface gestures,”

Abelard said curtly. “Ms. Hawkins is

already in a relationship. When I brought this up before, you said you understood. Initially, I thought she was impressive, but her handling of this makes me question her character. Honestly, son, you and Thorne both have questionable taste.”

Dalton hadn’t expected Abelard to say that. He wanted to argue Vesta’s case, to show Abelard just how remarkable she was, but Abelard cut him off again. “Look,

if you want to help her, I won’t stop you. But don’t expect me to get involved.”

With that, Abelard ended the call.