Chapter 16 - The Counteroffensive
Julian’s sudden intrusion in my office was the exact mistake I had been waiting for him to make.
He was growing desperate, the pressure from his European creditors forcing him to act recklessly.
I met Silas in a secure underground parking garage the following midnight, my armored SUV hidden in the shadows.
Silas handed me a heavy metal briefcase containing the ultimate weapon against Julian's extortion plot.
It was not fifty million dollars, but a collection of highly encrypted hard drives stolen directly from Julian's warehouse.
Silas had bypassed the mercenaries while Julian was busy threatening me at my corporate office.
The drives contained concrete proof of Julian embezzling millions from the ruthless European crime syndicate.
It included bank transfers, recorded phone calls, and forged ledgers that tied Julian directly to the stolen funds.
If this information reached the bosses overseas, Julian would be hunted down without mercy.
I smiled in the darkness, the cold steel of the briefcase feeling incredibly satisfying in my hands.
I instructed Silas to leak a tiny fraction of the data to a known European cartel fixer operating in the city.
I wanted the syndicate to know that Julian was hiding in their territory, but I did not want them to kill him just yet.
I needed Julian alive long enough to legally surrender his parental rights in front of a federal judge.
The next morning, Marcus filed an emergency motion in court, requesting a private mediation session with Julian's lawyers.
We claimed that I was ready to negotiate a private settlement to protect the children from further media scrutiny.
Julian took the bait immediately, assuming my encounter in the office had successfully broken my resolve.
We scheduled the secret mediation for midnight at a neutral location—a private hangar at the edge of the city airport.
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Julian thought he was walking into a room to collect fifty million dollars and secure his freedom.
He had absolutely no idea that he was stepping directly into a steel trap that I had personally designed.
