1024 Close the shop and hand the money over The shop had a great location and the business was good as well. What was more no one paid attention to her as Master Jiang was busy with his own troubles while the Jiang family was stationed at the borders thus she could muddle things as much as she wanted before handing some poor financial records to Master Jiang.
Madam Lian remembered that she had hinted to Jiang Fenhua to hand the lease of the shop to her at a low price, telling him that it was better for a woman like her to do business in this shop instead of a mer like him who was due any minute. A few weeks ago Jiang Fenhua finally went into labour and gave birth to a daughter, Madam Lian thought that after giving birth to a daughter Jiang Fenhua would limit his visit to the town and even think of handing the shop to her.
This was why she saw that Jiang Fenhua had come to visit her, she thought that he was here to hand her the documents from the shop, who would have thought that he would ask her to move and look for another job?!
Where would she find a shop where she did not have to work and just needed to sit tight before filling her pockets?
Madam Lian tried to coax Jiang Fenhua, even asking him to sell her the shop at the market price. She did not even dare to make use of the price that she had offered earlier thinking that she would offend Jiang Fenhua.
Jiang Fenhua however simply placed the cup of tea down and then stated calmly, " I might be a mer but I know the market situation better than anyone else, Madam Lian. The shop that I gave you to take care of is obviously in a good place, any other shop on Main Street generates a revenue of more than two hundred taels.. and that is the minimum amount that I am speaking of, but you complained to me saying that the fabric that our shop sold was not good enough or the dresses were too old fashioned which caused lack of traffic. You always failed to bring me the revenue that you were supposed to, crying and making a fuss saying that you would try better but the situation hasn't improved. I think that it's better for this shop to be closed as it cannot generate any more revenue."
Madam Lian felt like someone had slapped her in the face.
She had actually earned more than two hundred taels every month but she only handed fifty to sixty taels to Jiang Fenhua thinking what a mer like him would know about. At first, she only smuggled ten to twenty taels but when she saw that Jiang Fenhua was hardly paying attention to the shop as his wife did not respect him and he was having a hard time at his house, Madam Lian grew bolder and she started to steal even more, sometimes the money that she snatched went above two hundred taels!
What was more, when she saw that Jiang Fenhua couldn't be bothered by the shop she started to dilly-dally. She would hand him a month's revenue in two and half months saying that the shop did not do good or that the condition was really bad.
In the past, Jiang Fenhua did not mind but now he had a daughter to take care of and he was staying in the Big River Village alone with Master Zhou. There was hardly any source of income for them as Yu Dong had yet to start the mushroom business and thus he could only turn his attention to this shop when Yu Dong reminded him about it.
She even mentioned that the shop was doing good and told him to think about it carefully. Yu Dong said that this shop was doing good yet Madam Lian said that the shop was hardly generating any revenue, how can he not understand what was going on?
When the workers including the tailors heard that the shop was going to get closed and they would be laid off from work, they all glared at Madam Lian. They knew that the shop was doing good but they couldn't tell anything to Jiang Fenhua as Madam Lian would fire them as soon as they were to bring the matter up.
However now things have changed, if they don't speak then they will be losing their jobs! Thus not one but many mer workers immediately spoke up against Madam Lian and her unscrupulous actions.
" You…"
Madam Lian wanted to scold the workers but upon being glared at by Jiang Fenhua, she couldn't say anything and lowered her head before stating, " I.. that .. I might have made a mistake because of greed, Master Jiang but please give me a chance."
" It doesn't matter if you made a mistake or not, you have broken the trust of your master and now you dare to say that you want me to give you another chance that is something that I don't think will happen with how much money you have stolen from the shop," he then turned to look at the account book that his aide had found from the back of his shop and then pushed it in front of Madam Lian. " I can see that you have stolen ten and thousands of gold taels in the past ten months, I will not ask you to pay everything back but you should at least return half of it, do you understand ?"
When Madam Lian heard that she had to return the money, her expression was really unpleasant. Especially when she saw that she had to return half of the money that she had taken from this shop, just the very thought was enough to make her heart feel stifled.
From the money that she had stolen along with the extra bribes that she took everything was mentioned in the account book, this was something that she wrote to keep track of her earnings never did she think that one day this account book would come and slap her in the face!
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