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Chapter 566
Chapter 566:
“Mr. Compton.” The lobbyist’s voice was barely holding together. “The SEC has just issued an emergency injunction. Your multi-billion-dollar defense contract with the Pentagon has been frozen pending investigation. They received a significant data package regarding the Cayman accounts. You are now under federal inquiry p>
The blood drained from Cole’s face and then rushed back in a deep, violent flush.
He knew exactly who had made the call.
“Crawford,” he said, barely above a whisper, the name coming out between his teeth like something he was trying not to swallow.
He set the phone down with deliberate care. Then he turned, picked up the Ming Dynasty porcelain vase from its pedestal — a piece worth more than most people earned in a lifetime — and hurled it with full force at the marble floor.
𝘍ind ոо𝘃el P𝖣𝘍ѕ 𝗈𝘯
The explosion of ceramic shards sent every executive in the room flinching backward.
Cole paced through the wreckage, his chest heaving, his vision edging with red. The defense contract was his most critical political leverage. Crawford had just driven a blade directly through it.
His Chief of Staff stepped forward with extreme caution. “Sir, we need to pause the short selling and redirect our legal resources to the SEC response p>
Cole lunged. He seized the man by his lapels and drove him backward into the wall.
“Pause?!” he said, his voice cracking under the weight of its own intensity. “He put his hands on my wife. I am going to bury him p>
He released the man and drove his fist down onto the intercom button on his desk.
“Get PR and Legal on the line,” his voice boomed through the building’s speaker system. “I want a total blackout on the Love Group. Pull every one of their advertisements from our Times Square billboards. Breach the contracts. I don’t care about the penalties — choke off their cash flow until there is nothing left to cut p>
The war had passed the point of no return. Two men who had long since abandoned rational calculation were tearing the city apart between them, each convinced the wreckage was the other one’s fault, neither one willing to be the first to stop.
By six o’clock that evening, the collateral damage was visible across the city.
In the heart of Times Square, three massive electronic billboards — prime advertising real estate leased by the Love Group — flickered simultaneously and went dark. The Compton Group had forcibly breached the leasing contracts, and a section of the most famous intersection in the world simply went black. On Wall Street, the VIX — the market’s fear index — spiked to a level that sent analysts reaching for historical comparisons. Retail investors were screaming. Billions of dollars were evaporating by the hour as two men conducted what amounted to a mutual act of financial self-destruction.
In a mahogany-paneled office on the Upper East Side, Julian pressed the heels of both hands against his temples and stared at his desk.