Never Judge

"What do you mean he kidnapped and tortured Katerina?" Alexi asked angrily as he heard his father's words.

"The man and his wife are dead, you don't need to concern yourself." Katerina said, shocking everyone.

"So that's why he is after you." Cedric said as he scratched his chin.

"What do you mean by that Cedric?" Jose Sebastian asked as he glared at Cedric.

"Uncle Benedicto, how about to you, who is that man?" Cedric asked as he looked at Ray's father.

"Someone who owed people money and needed to be dealt with." Benedict Laurence said with a shrug. "It was that money that led him to kidnap Katerina."

"How come we didn't know Katerina was kidnapped?" Nicole asked with a worried look on her face.

"Because we told you she was away studying." Rebeckah Sebastian explained with a frown. "I hope you have good reason for bringing up these painful memories, Cedric." She said as she looked at Cedric who maintained his calm expression.

"All in due time auntie." Cedric said with a nod.

He turned his attention to the Lim family who had stayed silent. Cedric knew that both guilt and pain lingered with the name Rene Ty for them.

"How about for you uncle -" Cedric began to say when Ian cut him off.

"Cedric you don't need to ask dad that. I'll tell everyone." Ian said with  frown.

Cedric simply nodded and let him do as he asked.

"Rene Ty is my uncle, he is father's cousin." Ian revealed, taking everyone by surprise. "His mother and my grandfather were siblings. Father and grandfather let him take the helm in MT Summit, a subsidiary of Lim Corp. Little did they know that he was using it as a front for illegal activities." Ian explained.

"He drove the nail in the coffin." Ian's father said with a sigh.

"Dad, you don't need to talk about this, I can do it." Ian told his dad with a concerned look.

"It's alright son." His father said. "The Lim's have been keeping this a secret for too long."

Ian simply nodded and let his father continue his story.

"My cousin, Rene, was not a good man. Neither was his wife, Sonia Ortiz." Ian's father said. At the mention of Rene's wife Cedric's friends all turned to him in shock.

"Please continue uncle." Cedric said with a nod, ignoring all of the stares. This was the story that needed to be told.

"We trusted Rene to manage some of the family assets, he was family after all. The thing about him is that he felt like he should have inherited the Lim fortune, not my father, but him. You see his mother was the eldest of three siblings, my father was the second." Ian's father explained.

"So he felt it was his birthright?" Miguel asked, to which the older Lim nodded.

"He wasn't satisfied with a few shares or a few companies, he wanted the whole thing, and in his greed he ended up ruining the entire clan." Ian's father said with a frown.

"When I was younger, I swore I would avenge dad and grandpa. I would go after the people that did this to them, and the first person I was going after was my uncle." Ian explained. "I was surprised to find out that uncle Rene and his wife Sonia had passed away in a freak accident, while his son, my cousin, had gone missing."

"You were avenged in a way." Jose Sebastian said. "Rene and Sonia kidnapped Katerina, that's what led to their deaths."

"Uncle?" Cedric asked, he was curious to find out the details.

"Maybe you should hear what happened between him and your uncle Benedicto first." Jose Sebastian said with a chuckle. "It would complete the story." He said with a shrug.

Cedric simply nodded in response and looked towards Benedicto Laurence.

"I knew Rene Ty was from the Lim family." Benedicto explained. "He took every opportunity to boast about it. We also knew he was dealing with illegal matters through MT Summit, so we simply kept an eye on how it was doing." He said with a shrug.

Everyone remained silent, listening to Benedicto's side of the story.

"Eventually we found out that he was caught and that Lim Corp. had fallen. Not only had Rene lost his backing, but he also lost his money as well." Benedicto explained.  "He was a heavy gambler, so he raked up quite the debt, he also tried investing in a lot of risky businesses, so he borrowed and borrowed money. Those that didn't know about Lim Corp. continued to lend him money, but eventually they realized he would never pay them back, so that's where we came in." Benedicto said with a shrug.

"The same policy as today?" Ray asked his father.

"The same. Pay up, if you don't we will go after you and everything you own." Benedicto explained. "At that time he still owned much of the properties he had bought when he was stealing from the Lims so we went after those. Eventually he had to sell them off, but we still went after him. It reached the point where he had to hide in the most unlikely places."

"That's when he had the brilliant idea of kidnapping Katerina." Jose Sebastian said with a frown. "Just as things are now, people didn't know that a Laurence was the king of the underworld. So Rene didn't think that kidnapping a senator's child would have such an impact on him."

"Katerina, I'm sorry. I didn't know." Alexi said as he looked at his sister with a guilty expression. "I should have known, I should have protected you."

"It was unexpected Alexi, and we were so young at the time you couldn't have done anything," Katerina said as she shook her head.

While everyone's attention was on Alexi and Katerina, Cedric observed Eric. It seemed he knew about Katerina's kidnapping. What Cedric wasn't sure about is if Eric knew the whole time or if Katerina just told him about it.

"So what happened?" Cedric asked, wanting to hear more of the details. He now understood Aiden's anger at the Lims and the Laurences, now he wanted to know what exactly happened between Aiden and the Sebastians.