Chapter 484

As he spoke, the President glanced at the bathroom, but he didn’t see the Vice President.

If he were just peeing, he should be back by now.

He couldn’t be taking a shit, could he?

At this thought, an expression of displeasure, or perhaps discomfort, appeared in his eyes.

He didn’t like people shitting in his house. The smell would permeate the bathroom, and they would be sitting on his toilet, shitting in his toilet.

He didn’t like this, but it wasn’t convenient to say so. Every time a guest came to his house and used his toilet, he would give the cleaner a few extra dollars to spray disinfectant and clean it a few more times.

He didn’t actually have mysophobia, he just purely disliked anyone else interfering with his life.

The apartment was small, but it created an environment full of a sense of security for him. He didn’t want this place to be tainted with the scent of others.

His gaze returned from the distance and rested on Lance, waiting for his answer.

This was what he was most curious about. He understood these people’s operations. To be honest, they were very standard financial maneuvers.

Any company, once it loses all its liquid cash, is like a lamb on a chopping block, at the mercy of others.

Just find a creditor to sue for debt repayment, and if the company has no money, the court will either let it go bankrupt or let it auction off its assets to pay off the debt.

What gets auctioned is not necessarily decided by the company; it could also be decided by the court.

Who participates in the auction, and how much can be sold for, is decided by the gentlemen standing before the chopping block, sitting at the dinner table.

Something worth $10,000,000, they say it’s only worth $50,000, then it’s worth $50,000!

The bloody and cruel plunder of capital has always been naked. In the plunder of capital, there is no such word as “dignity.”

Neither for the predator nor the prey.

However, the current situation was not too bad for the President. As long as the company’s stock price kept rising, this “game,” they couldn’t possibly lose!

So, he was very curious. Their final “snipe” should have already failed. Why did this young man in front of him still seem so… unpanicked?

He didn’t understand.

Once January 15th passed, with some subsequent efforts from the company, the stock price would continue to rise and recover. Their conspiracy would simply not succeed, and they might even suffer a huge loss!

You have to know, until now, they were still shorting the company’s stock!

So he looked at Lance with a hint of inquiry and expectation, hoping he could give him an answer.

Lance held his wine glass and slowly swirled it. “That’s indeed a good question. It’s actually not difficult to solve. As long as we don’t let the stock price rise.”

“For example…”

The President repeated his words, “For example?”

Lance raised his wine glass and clinked it with the President’s. “The president of the Liji Group commits suicide?”

In an instant, the President felt as if he had been electrocuted. His whole body went numb!

Then a chill rose from the tips of his toes and quickly spread throughout his entire body!

He stood up abruptly. The legs of his chair made a harsh scraping sound on the floor, leaving marks.

He hated it when others did this, and he didn’t like these sounds, but now, he couldn’t care less!

His eyes, looking at Lance, were filled with fear and unease. Lance swallowed the wine in his mouth and put the glass back on the table.

At this time, the sound of a door opening came from the room. The Vice President stood outside the bathroom, having opened the door to the room.

Several men dressed in “renovation company” uniforms, wearing duckbill caps, walked in.

“Who are you!” His voice had changed. The Vice President glanced one last time at his partner of many years, sighed, left the apartment, and closed the door.

Lance picked up a dinner spoon and a serving fork and put some more pan-fried beef cubes on his plate, then poured some sauce over them from the sauce boat on the side.

He had added a small amount of cream to the sauce, which not only made the texture of the sauce-coated beef cubes better, but also made the milky aroma richer!

It had to be said that the President’s pan-fried beef cubes were indeed delicious, absolutely not a compliment.

Besides the excellent quality of the selected ingredients, which were top-grade beef costing dozens of dollars a pound, the seasonings he used were also very good, and the cooking time was just right.

It tasted delicious, and when paired with the side dishes, it filled one’s mouth with the aroma of beef and beef fat.

The room was left with only the President’s panicked breathing and the sound of Lance’s knife and fork accidentally scraping against his plate.

He had tried his best to avoid this, but sometimes… you know, you can’t always accurately avoid this kind of awkward situation!

The four young men walked past Lance and towards the panicked President. He shouted for help, trying to attract the attention of the neighbors.

But he had forgotten that this was a high-end apartment. During construction and renovation, soundproofing materials had been used.

Even if the speakers next door were playing music loud enough to kill someone, you wouldn’t be able to hear anything through the wall.

For the first time, the President hated that his room’s soundproofing was so good. He seemed to have forgotten that he had once praised the soundproofing measures here with the same intensity.

He was stunned for a moment, then rushed towards the window. If he stuck his head out and shouted, maybe someone would be able to hear!

In the city, a homeless man looked up at the outer wall of the apartment building. He seemed to have heard something, but it was fleeting.

In the end, he dismissed the sound as his own auditory hallucination. Who the fuck would be shouting in the middle of the night?

His attention was quickly drawn to a cigarette butt thrown by a passerby on the street. He picked it up without caring if it was dirty or not and started to smoke it directly.

Hiram grabbed the President’s hair, pulled his head back from the outside, and closed the window.

“Fuck, let go of me!” The President struggled with all his might, but what he got in return was a fist!

“Pain education” is the most direct and effective way for humans to learn the rules, whether it’s a child, an adult, an elderly person, or even a dog!

In the face of pain, they can quickly grasp what the person in control of the situation needs them to learn.

He was brought to the dining table. With a thud, his head was slammed onto the table.

The vibration of the table caused a piece of beef to escape Lance’s knife and fork and roll onto the tabletop.

Lance glanced sideways at Hiram, somewhat dissatisfied. “I’m not done eating, brother!”

Hiram was taken aback for a moment, then smiled. “I’ll treat you when we go out later.”

Lance sighed. “There’s a lot of food outside, but the beef cubes personally made by the President, this is the last meal.”

He picked up a napkin and wiped his mouth, then wrapped the escaped piece of beef in it and casually placed it by his side.

He looked at the President, whose head was pressed onto the table, and could only look at him sideways. He said with a laugh, “Now you know why the stock price will continue to plummet, don’t you?”

Lance lit a cigarette. Although he had only drunk a little wine, he was still a bit tipsy.

The smoke exhaled from his mouth made his vision a little blurry. The President, who had struggled a few times but couldn’t break free, looked at him, his face full of panic, not the playful mockery from before.

“I… I can quit!”

“I can transfer all my shares to you for free!”

“I can disappear immediately, go abroad, go anywhere. I promise I won’t appear in the Federation again!”

Lance shook his head. “That’s not what we want.”

The others had already started to clean up the traces in the room. Lance and his crew had sat in the living room for a while after they came, and then had come to the dining room. They hadn’t been to other places.

Including the Vice President. He had actually been standing in the bathroom all along, not sitting on the toilet.

They were very seriously cleaning up all the traces they had left, including the dishes they had used.

Lance pointed at the dishes on the table. “There’s too much here. It doesn’t look like a portion for one person. Take some away.”

A young man, using the President’s fork and knife, rearranged the four dishes on the table to make them look suitable for one person.

They took a bag and packed away a considerable portion of the dishes, and used a small deerskin cloth to wipe all the places that might have left fingerprints.

The President kept begging, even promising Lance countless money, but none of it could make Lance let him go.

“You must be very curious about my name.”

He looked at the panting President and said with a laugh, “I’m a small character, from Golden Port, named ‘Lance White’.”

“The same ‘Lance White’ whom you hired assassins for, but the assassins were not so professional and failed to kill.”

He pursed his lips. “So… good night, Mr. President!”

Lance flickered his fingers twice, then walked towards the outside. The room was filled with the President’s cries for help!

With the window being opened, he screamed wildly, his screams soon growing more and more distant.

The Vice President, sitting in the car, was a little uneasy. His gaze was scattered, constantly looking at everything around him. He knew what had happened upstairs, and he also knew what he would see next.

He thought he was mentally prepared, but at this moment, he still felt his heart pounding with fear!

A sudden “thump thump” sound made him shiver. He turned his head sharply and saw a homeless man with a fawning expression standing on the sidewalk by the car.

“Have a heart, sir. Just five cents. I haven’t eaten in two days.”

The Vice President was very dissatisfied. He had been startled. His expression when he looked at this homeless man was also not so friendly. “Get the hell away from me.”

The strange smell from the homeless man wafted in, but he didn’t leave. He still held his tattered fisherman’s hat with holes in it, his back bent. “Have a heart, kind sir. God will bless you…”

It was not clear what was going through his mind, but after a moment of silence, the Vice President took out a $5 bill from his pocket and handed it over.

Just as the homeless man’s eyes widened and he was about to say something, suddenly there was a “thud.” Both of them felt the ground shake.

Not far from them, a person was lying on the ground!

It was as if… he had been there from the very beginning. No one knew how he had appeared.

Blood splattered everywhere. The homeless man was stunned for a moment, and then he ran towards that “person.” The surrounding homeless people also rushed over.

When they turned the body over, the Vice President saw the shattered and twisted face.

The homeless people found a wallet from the body’s pocket and soon began to fight over its ownership.

The Vice President, sitting in the car in a daze, was in a daze for a while. Soon he saw Lance and the people around him coming out of the building.

They took different vehicles and left, while Lance got into the Vice President’s car.

“You can have your friends come over now. They will definitely like this news.”

The Vice President knew many reporters. As the vice president in charge of the company’s media and public relations, it was also one of his jobs.

He drove the car to a place a little further away, then wrapped the receiver with a handkerchief and began to dial a phone number.

Soon, the reporters arrived here before the police. They surrounded the body and took pictures frantically.

More than ten minutes later, the police cars came with their sirens wailing and dispersed the surrounding onlookers.

“Should we disperse these reporters?” the sergeant asked the police officer in charge of the on-site order as he got out of the car.

The sergeant shook his head. “Get their phone numbers. We might have a use for them.”

Sometimes reporters would record some clues that existed before the police arrived but were destroyed after they came, pictures and the like.

When he thought it was necessary, he would contact these reporters.

The apartment manager had already come out, his legs both trembling.

Someone had jumped from the apartment building. Whatever the reason, his job was probably finished.

“Do you know who this is?” the sergeant gave the manager a cigarette.

The manager at first hadn’t thought of smoking, but after he glanced at the shattered face, he couldn’t help but start to retch.

Fortunately, the sergeant helped him light the cigarette in time, which made him feel a little better.

“This… retch, this seems to be… Mr. …”

The sergeant had heard of this name, because not long ago, another gentleman who was just as famous as this name had died in an ice cave by accident.

He frowned. He realized that this case was not simple—

Of course it’s not simple. In less than three weeks, two absolute core figures of a listed company had died.

One was the chairman of the board, and one was the executive president. No one would believe that there was no connection between these.

He quickly called the sergeant who had been in charge of the chairman of the board’s case, and then just had people maintain order.

Before long, another police car arrived at the scene. After he recounted the events here, he left with a slightly schadenfreude and lucky expression.

Leaving only the other sergeant with a look on his face as if he had just eaten shit, standing there with his hands on his hips, angrily looking at the scene.

“Fuck, what are you all standing around for, get to work.”

He shouted, his head aching.

The next morning, all the newspapers in Golden State reported this news—

“Liji Group Executive President Dies in Fall”

They didn’t say whether it was suicide, an accident, or murder.

The scene had been cleaned up spotlessly. They couldn’t find any trace of a second person’s presence.

Because they couldn’t find any traces, they couldn’t determine whether this was just an accident, or if it was a murder.

If this was an accident… this was clearly the best result at present. No one would have any trouble.

Whether it was the sergeant in charge of this case, the police chief, or those hidden executors in the shadows, or the black hands hiding behind the scenes…

They would not have any trouble. Everyone would have no conflict. Everything would be as quiet and peaceful as every day in the past.

But if this was a murder case, then the case of the chairman of the board falling into the water, which had already been closed, would have to be reinvestigated.

Along with his two big-shot friends, they would also be included in the investigation list.

This was very troublesome.

But no matter how troubled the sergeant was, how troubled the police chief was, it couldn’t change the fact that the Liji Group’s stock had plummeted again when the market opened.

This time, the situation was even worse.

The high-level executives of the Liji Group had had one accident after another, which had already caused the public, who were already supporters of conspiracy theories, to boil.

No one would have the thought that “they are encountering a conspiracy and persecution, so we need to buy their stock to help them get through the difficulties.” Most people’s thoughts were to get away from them as soon as possible.

Including the stock investors. The massive sell-off at the opening of the market caused the stock to plummet.

At the same time, in the morning, the Supreme Court gave its verdict, upholding the first trial verdict of the Golden Port city court. The Sky Garden Trading Company had won, and the original verdict was upheld.

In view of the fact that the Liji Group had interfered with judicial fairness on multiple occasions, the court issued a punitive fine of $45,000,000. Including the penalty for breach of contract and the late fee for the penalty, the total was a little over $50,000,000.

Really just a little bit, just over a hundred thousand more.

But the destructive power it brought was unimaginable to people.

The Liji Group held an emergency board meeting and a shareholders’ meeting. Everyone gathered together to discuss how to get through this difficult time.

However, from their pessimistic expressions, it could be seen that everyone no longer held any hope of getting through this safely.

Pop…

Not a bang, but a pop. The cork of the champagne bottle was pushed out by the constantly increasing air pressure. The foamy liquid flowed out from the mouth of the bottle. The faces of the people in the room were all filled with smiles.

Lance stood in the corner, holding a champagne flute in his hand. Tom stood by his side.

“In a few days, our friends will announce the gambling agreement to the outside world. The entire industry will face a high-level reshuffle.”

Lance glanced at him. “They’ve already been beaten to death.”

Tom nodded and said, “So that money will be converted into shares, and a very large amount of shares at that. There are also some other operations. In short, the Liji Group is finished.”

He paused as he spoke. “Actually, it’s not correct to say that. It will still exist. After all, it can bring huge profits.”

“As long as there are still profits to be squeezed out, they will not allow it to fall.”

This is the Federation, this is capital politics. When capital and politics are highly combined, they will become the most terrifying thing in this world.

The golden champagne, under the colorful light refracted by the crystal chandelier, exuded a sacred brilliance, reflecting on every excited face.

“Cheers!”

(End of chapter)

The novel has already been fully translated up to the last updated chapter. You can access it on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair