Chapter 270: A Third Party

Chapter 270: Chapter 270: A Third Party

At Sterling International, Silas Thorne suddenly leaned over his terminal, his eyes narrowing as a massive new bid order registered on the main exchange.

"Mr. Rivers! A fresh liquidity block just hit their buy-wall," Silas reported, calling up the transaction footprint. "It’s not offshore Sheele money this time. The routing origin is NEG’s central corporate reserve account. Richard Newman just dumped his company’s entire internal cash reserve—one billion marks—straight onto the line."

A few quantitative traders on the floor paused, exchanging surprised glances. Pushing an entire company’s operational cash reserves onto a live trading floor to defend a plummeting share price was the ultimate act of desperation. It was a suicide gamble.

Jake stood by the glass window of the master desk, looking down at the red and green tickers cascading across the main screen. A thin, cold smile curled on his lips.

"He’s betting his entire life on a shield that doesn’t exist," Jake said softly, his voice carrying through the quiet room. "He thinks Stuart Sheele is going to save him."

Jake turned back to Silas, his tone completely flat, devoid of any hesitation.

"Authorize a twenty-billion-mark liquidity line from Golden Investments’ primary vault."

Silas froze, his hand hovering over his headset. Even for a floor that handled institutional titans, hearing a single individual call for twenty billion marks in immediate short allocation was enough to send a chill down his spine.

"Twenty... twenty billion, Mr. Rivers?" Silas confirmed, double-checking the command.

"They brought a single billion to a war," Jake said, his eyes reflecting the cold red light of the wall screen. "Show them what happens when you cross Golden Investments. I don’t want a single bid order left on that ladder by noon. Sweep their entire reserve into the dirt."

Silas felt a surge of adrenaline hit his chest. He turned to the floor, his voice echoing with absolute authority.

"YOU HEARD THE MAN! TWENTY BILLION MARKS UNLOCKED! ALL DESKS, MAXIMUM EXECUTION SPEED! WIPE THEIR BUY-WALL OFF THE BOARD!"

The floor erupted into a frenzy. The final, merciless phase of the battle had begun.

---

The master trading floor at Sterling International Bank did not resemble an institutional office anymore; it felt like the nerve center of an artillery strike.

Sixteen quantitative desks operated in terrifying unison, execution algorithms firing tens of thousands of localized sell blocks per second. With Golden Investments’ staggering twenty-billion-mark allocation unlocked, Jake’s traders didn’t just place short orders—they deployed a relentless, automated wall of capital designed to crush every bid in its path.

On the central wall monitor, the live depth-of-market ladder for NEG turned into an absolute crimson waterfall.

"DESKS ONE THROUGH FOUR, CROSS-ROUTE THROUGH OFFSHORE DARK POOLS!" Silas shouted into his headset, his eyes wide as he tracked the sheer volume moving through the exchange. "DESKS FIVE THROUGH SIXTEEN, OVERWHELM THEIR RESERVE BIDS AT $120.00! DO NOT LET THEM BREATHE!"

The single billion marks Richard Newman had desperately scraped from his company’s central liquid reserves didn’t even form a temporary bottom. The moment Golden Investments’ twenty-billion-mark wave smashed into the order book, the $120.00 floor didn’t just crack—it vanished instantaneously.

$120.00... $108.50... $92.00... $74.30!

In under six minutes, over eight hundred million marks of Newman Enterprise Group’s central cash reserves were swallowed whole, transferred directly into the market’s void as execution prices collapsed past historical support lines.

Inside the top-floor suite of the Newman Group tower, the silence was suffocating, punctuated only by the mechanical beep-beep-beep of automated margin failure alerts screaming from Finn’s laptop.

Finn sat frozen, his hands hovering inches above his keyboard, his face completely drained of color. His eyes stared blankly at the central reserve balance indicator on his monitor.

[CENTRAL LIQUID RESERVES: 0.00 MARKS

MARGIN CALL WARNING: SEVERITY CRITICAL]

"Dad..." Finn whispered, his voice cracking into a high, hysterical thread. "It’s gone."

Richard stood behind him, staring at the screen. His bloodshot eyes didn’t blink. "What do you mean, it’s gone?"

"The reserve... the entire billion marks..." Finn choked out, tears finally spilling down his trembling cheeks. "It... it didn’t even stop the price drop for ten seconds. They hit us with a sell wave so massive that the exchange algorithms didn’t even process our bid order blocks sequentially. They swept the entire ledger at market execution! We have zero liquid reserves left! Zero!"

Ray collapsed backward onto the leather sofa, burying his face in his hands as a violent shudder ran through his frame. "We’re finished... We’re completely finished..."

Richard stood like a marble statue, his lungs burning as he fought to take a single breath of air. The room spun around him. His family’s century-old empire, a titan of industry valued at over one hundred and forty billion marks just hours ago, was being systematically dismantled on live television.

"Call Sheele," Richard rasped, his voice barely audible, sounding like dry gravel dragging across concrete. "Call him again..."

"Dad, stop!" Ray yelled from the couch, pulling his hands away from his face, his eyes red and frantic. "Can’t you see?! Stuart Sheele was never going to save us! He gave us five hundred million just to watch us burn our own reserves into the market so he could pick up our carcass for pennies! He played us!"

Before Richard could speak, the double oak doors of the executive suite were slammed open with violent force.

Heavy, furious footsteps echoed against the polished marble floor as the entire executive board—led by Mary Newman and Joe Dane—marched into the room. Behind them stood four uniformed private security guards and two senior legal compliance officers carrying sealed white folders.

Joe Dane’s face was flushed dark red, his suit jacket unbuttoned, his breathing heavy with pure, unadulterated rage.

"Richard!" Joe roared, his voice shaking the glass windows. "What have you done?!"

Richard slowly turned around, his hands trembling at his sides. "Joe... Mary... please, listen to me. This is a temporary market anomaly—"

"A MARKET ANOMALY?!" Mary Newman shrieked, thrusting a printed financial statement directly into Richard’s chest. "You bypassed board authorization and wired one billion marks of our central operational cash reserves directly into a failing buy-wall! The main bank accounts for our construction and manufacturing divisions are completely frozen! Our suppliers are filing breach-of-contract liens against us as we speak!"

"The stock is trading at $45.00!" Joe stepped directly into Richard’s personal space, pointing a shaking, furious finger at his nose. "In two hours, you lost ninety billion marks in enterprise market capitalization! You committed a clear, undeniable breach of corporate fiduciary duty and illegal embezzlement of company reserves!"

"I did it to save the company!" Richard screamed back, his composure finally snapping into raw, ugly desperation. "If I didn’t defend the order book, Rivers would have shorted us to zero!"

"You didn’t save anything, Richard," Mary said coldly, her tone dropping into a icy, lethal calm. "You handed our blood to the shark on a silver platter."

Joe turned to the legal compliance officers behind him. "As of 10:15 AM, by unanimous emergency consensus of the executive board, Richard Newman is hereby stripped of his title as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Newman Enterprise Group. All corporate accounts, voting proxies, and executive clearances under his name are frozen immediately."

"You can’t do this!" Richard yelled, taking a step forward, but two security guards instantly stepped between him and the board members, their arms folded, blocking him completely. "My father built this company! My family controls the majority of the voting shares!"

"Your family controls nothing," Marcus spat bitterly, pulling a tablet from his briefcase and flashing a live notice on the screen. "Because fifteen minutes ago, while you were throwing our reserves into the fire, the Sheele group acquired an additional twenty-one percent of outstanding voting shares directly from distressed secondary institutionals at fire-sale prices."

Richard felt the ground under his feet completely give way. The room tilted.

"Stuart Sheele... holds twenty-one percent?" Finn stammered, looking up from his desk in pure horror.

"Yes," Mary said, looking at Richard with absolute disgust. "And he doesn’t look like he’ll be stopping anytime soon. Once he gets more than thirty-five percent, he’ll own us, Richard. And when he decides to call a board meeting, you won’t even be allowed to sit at the table."

Joe motioned to the security guards. "Escort former Chairman Newman and his sons out of the building immediately. Collect their badges and clear their desks."

"Get your hands off me!" Richard shouted as a guard grabbed his arm, but his resistance was weak, pathetic, and completely broken.

As he was dragged out of his own corner office, Richard looked past the security guards at the wall monitor one last time. The ticker symbol NEG flashed red, the stock price plummeting toward single digits, while the news crawl at the bottom of the screen updated in real time:

[EMERGENCY BOARD ACTION: RICHARD NEWMAN REMOVED AS CEO... NEWMAN ENTERPRISE GROUP HAS FALLEN TO A VALUATION OF $45.00 ...]

Inside Sam Newman’s private penthouse, the TV screen flickered with images of Richard, Ray, and Finn being escorted out of the Newman Enterprise tower by private security, surrounded by a sea of flashing news cameras and screaming reporters.

Sam stood paralyzed in the middle of his living room, the empty crystal glass slipping from his fingers and shattering against the hardwood floor.

Beside him, Julian Croft calmly buttoned his double-breasted suit jacket, placing his tablet back inside his leather document case.

"It’s over," Julian said quietly, his voice devoid of any pity. "Your father’s reign is finished. The board has turned, the reserves are gone, and Jake Rivers owns the company."

Sam stared at the screen, watching his father’s broken, humiliated face as reporters shoved microphones toward him. The rage that had consumed Sam for days suddenly dissolved into a hollow, terrifying void.

"What do we do now?" Sam asked, his voice barely a whisper. "Julian... what do I do?"

Julian adjusted his silk tie, looking at Sam with a cold, detached professional glare.

"If I were you, Sam," Julian murmured, walking toward the private elevator, "I would hire a very good criminal defense attorney. Because when Jake Rivers is done with the stock, the first thing he’s going to do is file corporate audit lawsuits against every single member of the Newman family."

---

The elevator doors chimed and slid closed, leaving Sam entirely alone in the quiet, rain-slicked apartment.

Back at Sterling International, the deafening noise on the trading floor had gradually quieted down to a low, satisfied hum.

Silas Thorne walked up to the master desk where Jake stood, holding a finalized execution summary on his tablet. Silas’s eyes were filled with profound, reverent awe.

"Mr. Rivers," Silas said, his voice quiet with respect. "The offensive wave has concluded. Newman Enterprise Group’s stock closed the morning session down 82% at $25.60 per share. Their central reserves are exhausted, their operational credit lines have been revoked by primary lenders, and Richard Newman has been officially ousted by his board."

Jake didn’t smile. He slowly buttoned his dark suit jacket, his calm, composed expression unchanged, as if destroying a century-old corporate empire was merely another item checked off his daily schedule.

"And our voting position?" Jake asked calmly.

"Twenty-one point three percent," Silas reported promptly. "We only managed to snatch fourteen percent from Stuart Sheele’s mouth."

Jake walked toward the glass exit doors, stopping briefly to look back at the master screen displaying the broken, blood-red ticker of Newman Enterprise Group.

"I wonder what he intends to do by buying a dying company," Jake said smoothly, stepping out onto the private elevator. "But I won’t make it easy for him."

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