Seeing that her son looked a bit strange, Charles Brooks walked over to William Carter with some concern and touched his head. Last night, he had been helped home by someone, tossed and turned all night, wanting to vomit but unable to, and only managed to fall asleep in the latter half of the night. In the morning, she didn’t wake him, letting him sleep in.

Charles Brooks knew her son was feeling down. What had seemed like a sure thing had now gone awry; he couldn’t stay at the factory and would most likely be assigned back to his registered residence in Nantang.

Compared to Changzhou, Nantang was like heaven and earth—completely incomparable. In the future, he might never have the chance to return to Changzhou for the rest of his life. Thinking of this, Charles Brooks felt a wave of sadness.

“Sanzi, are you alright?”

“Mom, I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.” William Carter glanced out the window. In Changzhou in July, even early in the morning the temperature was already rising. So, what would happen today?

In his memory, Nancy Jennings’s father, James Jennings, would be investigated by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection the day after he himself was rejected by the factory. As a result, six months later, James Jennings would hastily step down due to some unsavory matters, and the former director of Workshop 35, Brian Young, would take over as deputy factory director.

And without her father’s protection, Nancy Jennings’s situation in the factory became very difficult. After Paul Young launched a fierce pursuit, half a year later she broke up with him and ended up in Paul Young’s arms.

However, as he recalled, the marriage between Nancy Jennings and Paul Young didn’t last long either. Before the last year of the twentieth century was over, Nancy Jennings divorced Paul Young and lived alone with her child.

He remembered that by then he was already serving as deputy director of the Longtai County Government Office, and she had come to him, but only to borrow money.

At the time, he almost didn’t recognize her. The once-beautiful flower of Factory 715 had become just another ordinary woman you’d see on the street. The hardships of life had completely erased her former beauty, so much so that after she left, he couldn’t sleep that night.

The next day?

Wasn’t that today?

William Carter had already realized that something in this world might have gone off track. He didn’t know what was going on, but if everything followed the course of history, then today James Jennings would be taken away for investigation by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Back then, the corruption case at Factory 195 was definitely sensational news in Changzhou in 1990. Deputy factory director James Jennings was investigated by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection for suspected bribery.

Logically, James Jennings was only a department-level cadre, not high enough in rank, but the Central Commission did get involved. It was said that the case implicated a vice-provincial-level cadre, and how many vice-provincial-level cadres were there in Factory 195?

Two: besides the party secretary Mark Goodwin, there was the deputy party secretary and factory director David Lane.

Targeting James Jennings was like Xiang Zhuang’s sword dance—aimed at Liu Bang.

James Jennings was in charge of logistics and infrastructure at Factory 195, but he had always been very close to party secretary Mark Goodwin, while his relationship with factory director David Lane was rather strained.

The Central Commission coming for James Jennings was clearly targeted, but in William Carter’s memory, Mark Goodwin wasn’t much affected by this incident. He stayed on as party secretary for several more years before retiring.

What was even stranger was that the bribery case against James Jennings dragged on for over a year. After being arrested by the procuratorate and detained for more than half a year, the case was ultimately blocked at the court stage, and he was not held criminally responsible. However, James Jennings was removed from his position as deputy factory director and expelled from the Party.

In other words, the criminal investigation for bribery didn’t make progress, but James Jennings probably had other issues, so he was given Party and administrative disciplinary sanctions.

As far as William Carter knew, James Jennings was relatively clean financially; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so close to the upright and rigid Mark Goodwin. However, James Jennings didn’t have a clean record when it came to women.

There were always rumors in the factory about his ambiguous relationships with the announcer at the factory’s radio station—nicknamed Black Peony—and a woman in the publicity department. Such things weren’t a problem unless they escalated, but once someone wanted to find fault, it could become a fatal weakness.

After being released from detention, expelled from the Party, and dismissed, James Jennings resigned and left Factory 195, abandoning his family and heading straight to the coast. It wasn’t until many years later, after he had become the executive vice president of a nationally renowned private enterprise group, that he returned to Changzhou—but that was many years down the line.

James Jennings’s case remained a mystery. The bribery charges were never conclusively proven, but other issues were uncovered. The Central Commission came to investigate, but in the end, only imposed Party and administrative disciplinary sanctions on a department-level cadre. This was almost unimaginable, but it also showed how cautious and meticulous James Jennings was in his conduct.

The reason William Carter knew about the details of this case was because, many years later, by chance, he overheard a friend from the provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection chatting about a major internal and external collusion theft case that had happened at Factory 195 at the time.