My Milf Conqueror System novel Chapter 174

Chapter 174: WAR part 2

[Jake’s POV]

The cleanup of Apex Tower took exactly forty-seven minutes.

When you have four point two billion dollars in liquid capital and the Director of Enforcement for the SEC standing in your penthouse, you don’t call 911. You call private cleaners. Men who arrive in unmarked vans, wearing sterile suits, who know how to scrub blood from granite and make fifteen unconscious mercenaries disappear into the back of armored transports without asking a single question.

I stood in the ruined lobby, watching them work. The shattered glass of the reception desk had already been swept away. The bullet holes in the marble pillars were being temporarily filled with color-matched epoxy. The smell of cordite and Halon gas was slowly being cycled out by the building’s massive industrial purifiers.

Darius stood beside me, a fresh cup of black coffee in his massive hand. He had washed the blood off his face and changed into a clean, tailored suit, looking entirely unbothered by the fact that we had just fought a small war before breakfast. He watched the cleaners with the critical eye of a professional, occasionally pointing out a stray brass casing they had missed.

"Evelyn is moving," Darius rumbled, nodding toward the front doors.

Outside, a convoy of three black SUVs pulled up to the curb. Evelyn Cross walked out of the tower, flanked by four of my heavily armed Aegis private security contractors. She carried a locked, titanium briefcase containing the Ash Ledger. She didn’t look back. She stepped into the center vehicle, and the convoy sped off toward the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan.

"Half the financial district is going to be in handcuffs by noon," I said, taking a sip of my own coffee. "Evelyn said she has thirty-two sealed indictments ready to unseal the moment that drive is authenticated."

"And Charles?" Darius asked.

"Aurelia finished her conversation with him," I replied, my voice flat. "He’s in the trunk of Evelyn’s SUV. He’s going to a federal black site, assuming he survives the ride. Aurelia didn’t leave him with much dignity."

"He had none to begin with," Darius noted.

I turned away from the doors and headed for the elevators. The physical threat to the tower was neutralized, but the financial war was just beginning. Isabella Vane had failed to burn the Ledger, but she still had the European Central Bank in her pocket. If she realized her kill squad had failed, her next move would be to freeze my assets globally. She would try to starve me out before I could strike back.

I needed the shield. I needed Elena.

When I reached the penthouse operations room, the atmosphere had shifted from panic to cold, calculated efficiency. Nia was back at her monitors, rebuilding the firewalls Isabella’s hackers had damaged, her fingers flying across the keys in a blur. Claire was on the phone, coordinating with our European shell companies to ensure our remaining offshore accounts were locked down tight.

And sitting at the massive glass conference table were the two women who were about to change the landscape of global finance.

Dean Elena Vance sat on one side of the table, a stack of dense, university-stamped legal contracts resting in front of her. She looked immaculate, her green eyes sharp and focused, the very picture of academic authority.

Sitting across from her was Victoria Sterling.

Victoria had arrived twenty minutes ago, summoned by a single, encrypted text message from me. The Ice Queen of Vanguard Holdings wore a pristine white tailored suit, her blonde hair pulled back into a severe, flawless knot. To the rest of the world, she was a terrifying, untouchable billionaire CEO. She was the woman who broke companies for sport.

But when I walked into the room, Victoria immediately stood up. She didn’t speak. She didn’t demand an explanation for the armed guards in the lobby. She just lowered her eyes, a subtle, deeply ingrained gesture of absolute submission that only I could see.

"Sit, Victoria," I commanded softly.

She sat instantly, her posture rigid and attentive.

Elena watched the interaction, her perfectly arched eyebrow rising a fraction of an inch. She was a sapiosexual, a woman intoxicated by power and intellect, and watching the ruthless CEO of Vanguard heel to my voice sent a visible, heated thrill through her posture. Elena shifted slightly in her chair, her gaze moving from Victoria to me, a silent acknowledgment of the monster I had become.

"The paperwork is ready, Jake," Elena said, tapping the thick stack of contracts. "The University’s Board of Regents has pre-approved the creation of a specialized, tax-exempt global endowment fund. We are classifying it as a ’Strategic Economic Research Initiative.’ It provides absolute academic immunity to any funds placed within it."

I walked to the head of the table, resting my hands on the cool glass. "And the transfer?"

"Victoria just needs to sign," Elena said, sliding the contracts across the table. "The moment her signature hits the paper, Vanguard’s four point two billion dollars in liquid capital will be legally absorbed into the University’s endowment. It remains under your absolute control via a shadow-proxy trust, but on paper, it belongs to an untouchable academic institution. If Isabella tries to freeze it, she’ll be picking a fight with the United States Department of Education and every powerful alumni donor in the country."

I looked at Victoria. "Do it."

[Isabella Vane’s financial leverage has been neutralized.]

I pulled back from the kiss as Nia let out a sharp, triumphant shout from the computer banks.

"Gotcha, you Swiss bitch!" Nia yelled, slamming her hand on the desk so hard her empty energy drink cans rattled.

I turned, walking quickly over to the monitors. "What did you find?"

"Isabella’s cyber-team," Nia said, her fingers flying across the keyboard, pulling up lines of raw code. "When they hit our firewalls during the siege, they used a localized relay to reduce latency. They weren’t bouncing their signal from Zurich. They were bouncing it from a physical server hub right here in New York."

"She has a stateside operations center," Claire realized, stepping up beside me and looking at the screen. "A forward operating base."

"Exactly," Nia grinned, pulling up a satellite map of the city. A red dot was blinking furiously in an industrial sector of Brooklyn, right on the waterfront. "It’s registered as a high-end art storage facility. Owned by a shell company that traces back to the Vane Consortium. But the power consumption is off the charts, and the data packets I just traced lead straight to Isabella’s private network."

I stared at the blinking red dot.

Isabella had sent fifteen men to burn my tower. She had tried to kill Sofia. She had tried to bankrupt me. She thought she could wage a war on American soil and hide behind her Swiss borders.

"Darius," I said, my voice dropping to a cold, absolute register.

The massive bodyguard stepped out of the shadows near the elevator. "Yes, Jake."

"Call the armory. Tell them to load the SUVs with heavy ordnance," I ordered, my eyes never leaving the map. "Isabella wanted a war. We’re going to take it to her front door."