Chapter 62
"What did you do?"
Chen Qiang's mother's broken voice came from the speaker of Chen Qiang's phone, with all four of the remaining Team X members sitting around the meeting table.
Each of them had a broken expression on their faces that she couldn't see, especially Chen Qiang who had been dreading the phone call. He choked as he tried to answer. "We… Didn't know…"
Mrs. Chen gave no room to argue or retort as she began ranting. "You didn't know? No wonder little Yi hasn't answered my calls in four years! No wonder! I thought you said you were still searching for him, but what were you doing all this time? Letting the netizens act up, going on a vacation, not defending him, did you even look for him?"
"I did…"
Mu Yichen, Li Hao, and Tang An all sputtered. "You did?"
Chen Qiang swatted them away. "I did. I did, okay? I've sent out three private investigators to look for him but he couldn't be found and when they tried to go for Xiao Qiu, the Xiao family blocked it!"
Chen Qiang was the only one of the four who had some small little piece of him that believed that Xiao Yi wouldn't do any of the acts that he claimed he did. He just never had the evidence to confront him with.
He had hoped, that if he found Xiao Yi, he wouldn't be able to avoid the confrontation in person.
Yet, he also wished that he never found Xiao Yi, because if his intuition was wrong, and Xiao Yi screwed them over, it would forever ruin the childhood that he had.
Mrs. Chen spewed out. "I can't say anything about the three of you, but Chen Qiang… We raised him, he was like our second son and he was also like a brother to you. Had we known all this was happening…"
Chen Qiang closed his eyes.
Of course, his parents wouldn't know, he had gone into their phones and blocked the words 'Frost' and 'Team X' from appearing in any social media post they could see. Even then, the odds of them knowing were slim, they hardly checked social media aside from checking in on him every now and then, and their friends had no idea that Frost was Xiao Yi due to everyone keeping it silent.
He had done the same to his social media when he left the country to wander around, he didn't want to think about him anymore, he wanted to run away from the bond he'd created and run away from the dreams he'd had.
He had no excuses, though.
This time, his mother found out through a journalist who had found her after asking around about Xiao Yi.
They found her after talking to a few neighbors around the old Xiao home and pieced together the story. Honestly, even Chen Qiang was a bit surprised that they'd be able to remember the kid whose parents were essentially blackmailed into allowing the Chen family to take him.
"I know I didn't raise you like this."
Chen Qiang looked down as Mu Yichen finally spoke. "We were wrong…"
"Yes, yes you were! How would you feel if it was you being attacked like that, for four years straight?"
Li Hao piped in. "Mrs. Chen, he told us he did those things himself, think of how we felt."
"Pei, pei, pei! At least you had yourselves during this, who did he have? Do you remember how his family treated him?"
They all paused at that.
That video…
Of course, they remembered, but they weren't thinking correctly. When they were told that they were betrayed by their close friend, how could they think about his condition? They had to worry about their future, too, and it's not like he stuck around to figure things out with them.
He disappeared.
They didn't search for him, or at least, Li Hao, Mu Yichen, and Tang An didn't, but they didn't wish him death either.
Mrs. Chen calmed herself down before speaking again. "You'll fix this. Stop whatever you had planned for revenge, get down on your knees and apologize."
Despite their reasonings earlier, they still planned to do exactly that, they didn't need her to explain.
Chen Qiang covered his forehead and agreed. "We will…"
"And tell him to call me."
"Yes, mother."