Chapter 26
The Black Lotus operative blanched slightly. His calm facade began to crack as he realized he had walked into a death trap, cornered hundreds of stories up, where his cries for help would be completely swallowed by the night wind. He tried to regain his composure, threatening with steely words that if he disappeared tonight, the Black Lotus would bring fire and blood to burn this entire city to the ground.
Brooke casually took a sip of champagne, the fine wine lingering on her tongue. She stepped closer to him, close enough for him to smell her expensive perfume mixed with a heavy aura of murderous intent. "You really overestimate your organization," Brooke smiled, a beautifully cruel smile. "Vance's cybersecurity system penetrated and neutralized all your offshore accounts the moment you walked through the door. Those snipers waiting in your catering van in the basement were quietly eliminated by Cole's men without making a sound."
The man's eyes bulged, cold sweat breaking out on his wrinkled forehead. He realized the young woman in front of him wasn't a spoiled heiress, but a true tyrant.
"You came here bearing an arrogant ultimatum," Brooke said, her tone sharp as an ice blade, "but you will leave here as a bloody message I am sending back to the Black Lotus."
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She waved her hand in command. The two guards immediately closed in, twisting the man's arms behind his back, preparing to take him to the secret holding area in the sub-basement hundreds of feet underground. "Interrogate him using the most extreme methods," Brooke ordered without looking back. "I want him to confess every single line of transaction code, every bank account that funded Garrett Hale's legal defense."
As the man's figure was dragged away in despair, Brooke used two slender fingers to pick up the black metal Black Lotus card, looking at it with absolute contempt, before dropping it to sink to the bottom of her champagne glass. The battle had now moved far beyond the boundaries of a divorce or corporate dispute; this was a war to assert total dominance, to prove to the entire underworld that the Vance empire was an impenetrable fortress.
