Chapter 483 The Yang Family Made a Mistake
The accounts of the most profitable shops were perfectly prepared. Anyone else, let alone a "newcomer" like her, or even a seasoned accountant, would never have noticed the problem.
However, He Rui came from a merchant family and was exposed to business from a young age, so she had an exceptional talent for business and bookkeeping.
She identified the problems in several shops with almost no effort.
Overall, from March to May of this year, a very profitable shop experienced a decrease in revenue for three consecutive months.
In fact, compared to revenue, the decrease is not a large amount.
The total loss over the three months amounted to a mere thousand taels. Compared to the shop's monthly revenue of over ten thousand taels, it was nothing.
However, starting in June, the income of the other shops decreased slightly, almost imperceptibly.
The shop that had been there before saw an increase in revenue over the next few months.
All things considered, the increase is exactly the same as the decrease in the previous three months.
The slight decrease in income of the other shops over the past few months, when added together, is exactly the same amount that the other shop gained.
In short, He Rui believes that someone must have embezzled the income from the first shop.
Then someone gradually transferred money from the income of several other shops to make up for this loss.
Although it all boils down to just a thousand taels of silver, the problems it reveals are quite serious.
Qiao Qinghe frowned almost imperceptibly and instructed A Shuang, who was standing beside her, "Go and call Yang An here."
"Grandma..." Ah Shuang looked at He Rui, then at Qiao Qinghe, and hesitated, "Is it not appropriate to call people here like this?"
"Why aren't you going yet?" Qiao Qinghe's tone was no longer very friendly.
Ah Shuang hurriedly went to call for help.
He Rui looked at Qiao Qinghe with a nervous expression, "Grandma?"
Qiao Qinghe raised her hand reassuringly, "We'll talk about everything when Yang An arrives."
She was actually willing to believe He Rui.
But she also wanted to give Yang An a chance.
Yang An recognized He Rui's talent and recommended her to him.
Moreover, according to He Rui, Yang An taught her with sincerity and did not intend to cling to power.
Therefore, there must be something she doesn't know about this.
Half an hour later, Yang An hurriedly arrived.
"Grandma, you wanted to see me?" Yang An greeted Qiao Qinghe respectfully, just as he always had.
Qiao Qinghe raised her hand and gestured, "Please sit down."
Yang An thanked her and sat down halfway in the chair. "I wonder what brings you here, old lady?"
Qiao Qinghe glanced at He Rui and said, "Tell Manager Yang about the problem you discovered."
"yes."
He Rui stood up, greeted Yang An, and then explained how she had discovered the discrepancy in the accounts.
After hearing He Rui's words, Yang An knelt down on the ground with a thud.
"Grandma, Yang An has betrayed your trust and deserves to die!" Yang An burst into tears instantly.
He did not make excuses, nor did he hold a grudge against He Rui. He simply admitted his mistake honestly, saying, "It's all because I didn't manage my household properly, which is why my daughter-in-law, Liao, had bad intentions."
"Tell me, what exactly happened?" Qiao Qinghe asked calmly.
Yang An wiped away his tears with his sleeve before recounting the whole story.
It turned out that ever since the Yang family was freed from slavery and Yang An's eldest grandson, Yang Hongyuan, passed the imperial examination and became a scholar, the Yang family members had a sense of pride and joy.
They moved their house from the poor west city to the wealthy south city.
Prices in the capital were high, and the Yang family had almost emptied their pockets by moving and buying a new house.
Therefore, after Yang Honglan, the granddaughter of the Yang family, became engaged to Gu Yuan, the nephew of the maternal uncle of Lady Bai, the wife of the Duke of Jin, the Yang family began to worry about Yang Honglan's dowry.
Yang An originally planned to sell some land, but everyone disagreed.
Firstly, those lands were given to us by Qiao Qinghe, and we can't sell them easily.
Secondly, the Yang family all wanted to keep the land to pass down to future generations.
Land in the suburbs of Beijing is easy to sell, but it's extremely difficult to buy it back later.
After discussing it, the family decided to use all their available resources to prepare a dowry for Yang Honglan.
Even after piecing it together from various sources, he only managed to get one hundred taels.
Although for ordinary families, one hundred taels of silver is considered a very generous amount when marrying off a daughter.
However, Gu's father was a scholar who had passed the imperial examinations, and the Gu family had the Duke of Jin's mansion as a marriage alliance. This marriage was already a step up for the Yang family. One hundred taels was simply not enough to offer.
Fortunately, Qiao Qinghe later arranged for someone to add to Yang Honglan's dowry, so the dowry was barely acceptable.
And so the matter was settled.
Unfortunately, the Gu family relatives who wanted to marry their niece to Gu Yuan were unable to do so because the Yang family interfered.
So they secretly sabotaged the Yang family, mocking them for being born into slavery and criticizing the Yang family daughter's meager dowry.
They even said that the Yang family's daughter was already a seventeen-year-old maid, and they didn't know what tricks she had used to marry into the promising young man of the Gu family, and that she should bring more land as part of her dowry.
They found out that the Yang family owned fifty acres of land in the suburbs of Beijing, so they set their sights on that land.
Ultimately, everyone knows perfectly well where those lands came from.
If the Yang family were to marry their land to their granddaughter, it might anger Qiao Qinghe, the original head of the household.
Without the original owner's family's protection, the Yang family was nothing in the eyes of the Gu family.
Even if this didn't sow discord between the Yang family and Qiao Qinghe, it would still allow the Gu family to receive more dowry. In short, it was a good thing for the Gu family.
The rest of the Yang family listened to the instigation from the Gu family relatives, but Liao, Yang An's daughter-in-law and Yang Honglan's mother, took it to heart.
After failing to persuade the Yang family elders to provide land as part of her dowry, she hatched a plan to embezzle money from the shop she was in charge of.
By the time Yang An discovered it, the thousand taels of silver that Liao had stolen had already gone to the Gu family with Yang Honglan.
Yang An couldn't come up with enough silver to cover the deficit in a short time, so he came up with a stupid way to piece together the money to fill the hole.
Only Yang An, Granny Fang, and their daughter-in-law Liao knew about this.
Because of this incident, Granny Fang was too ashamed to see Qiao Qinghe.
Qiao Qinghe has been back in the capital for so long, and Granny Fang only showed up once on the day she returned to Nancheng.
They only exchanged greetings briefly and didn't say much before Granny Fang left.
“Madam, my wife and I have been discussing this these days. We’ll find a time to tell you the truth when you’re less busy.”
"We plan to return the one thousand taels of silver that Liao stole to you in the form of land in the suburbs of Beijing."
"Speaking of which, those lands in the outskirts of Beijing were also given to my wife by you. Now that I want your things and owe you a debt, I... I am truly ashamed."
Yang An lowered his head in shame, filled with deep regret.
If I had known, I should have told the old lady the truth as soon as she returned to Beijing.
Now that the old lady has found out, nothing he says will help.
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