Chapter 466
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Chapter 466:
Ten minutes later, Bloomberg terminals across Wall Street erupted in red. The Collins Group had withdrawn from the European deal. Panic spread like a contagion. Within fifteen minutes, three additional major hedge funds pulled their capital to protect themselves. The three-billion-dollar deal disintegrated completely.
Inside Sterling Capital’s headquarters, alarms were blaring and traders were shouting across the floor. Victor Sterling stood alone in his glass conference room, his face the color of ash, a printed summary of the catastrophe in his trembling hands. He grabbed his phone and dialed Gaston’s private cell.
Gaston answered on the first ring, without a word of greeting.
“Mr. Collins, please!” Victor’s voice cracked with raw terror. “There must be a misunderstanding. You are destroying my firm p>
“Control your sister,” Gaston said. His voice came through the line like a guillotine blade.
Victor stopped breathing.
“If I do not see Isabelle kneeling in front of my wife to apologize by tomorrow morning,” Gaston continued, with absolute, unblinking finality, “the Sterling name will be erased from Wall Street. Permanently p>
He hung up and set the phone down on his desk.
𝗥eа𝘥 𝗐i𝘁ho𝘂𝗍 𝘪𝗇𝗍еrr𝘂𝘱𝘁𝘪оոѕ o𝘯
No one touched Jocelyn Wolfe and survived.
At ten o’clock the next morning, Jocelyn sat in her penthouse office at the Wolfe Hotel.
She was exhausted. Her eyes burned as she worked through the complex European merger documents, the physical toll of the financing war written plainly across her face.
The heavy double doors of her office were suddenly shoved open with force.
Victor Sterling marched in, his face dark with rage and humiliation, his hand clamped like a vice around his sister’s wrist. He practically dragged Isabelle across the carpet toward Jocelyn’s desk.
Jocelyn set down her pen. She leaned back in her leather chair, her eyes narrowing into icy slits.
Isabelle looked terrible — her face pale, her eyes red and swollen from what was clearly a brutal, sleepless night of screaming.
“Apologize,” Victor hissed through his teeth. “Right now.” He shoved Isabelle forward hard enough that she stumbled and caught herself on the edge of Jocelyn’s desk.
Isabelle bit her lower lip until it nearly bled. Hot, humiliating tears welled in her eyes. She forced herself to meet Jocelyn’s gaze.
“I am sorry, Ms. Wolfe,” she said, her voice shaking with suppressed rage and shame. “I should not have placed predatory terms in your financing contract. Sterling Capital will fully cooperate moving forward p>
Jocelyn studied her for a moment. Her mind connected the dots instantly — Victor Sterling was a proud, arrogant man, and the only force on earth capable of compelling him to drag his sister here like this was Gaston Collins. Gaston had detonated a financial nuclear weapon on her behalf.
“Apology accepted,” Jocelyn said coolly. “Get out of my office p>
Victor exhaled with visible relief, nodded sharply to Jocelyn, and turned toward the door. Isabelle followed — but stopped just short of the threshold.
The humiliation festering inside her curdled into something venomous. She turned back and looked at Jocelyn across the length of the room.
“Do you really think he did this because he loves you?” Isabelle whispered. Her voice was low and slithering.
Jocelyn’s fingers tightened against the edge of her desk. “I told you to leave p>