Chapter 273: Infinite Liquidity

Chapter 273: Chapter 273: Infinite Liquidity

The heavy mahogany doors of the 50th-floor boardroom clicked shut behind Jake’s legal team, sealing off the muffled roar of the media horde five hundred feet below.

Inside, the silence was suffocating.

Jake sat at the head of the long oval table, his hands resting comfortably on the polished wood. To his right sat Silas Thorne, already unlatching his leather briefcase; to his left, the empty space felt like a void pressing down on the shattered Newman family.

Sylvia Sheele took a deliberate, measured sip of her espresso, setting the porcelain cup down onto its saucer with a faint, precise clink.

"An impressive entrance, Mr. Rivers," Sylvia said, her voice smooth, refined, and laced with the casual authority of someone who had never known a day without power. She leaned back in her high-backed leather chair, steepling her long fingers. "Though taking the Chairman’s seat before a motion is officially put to the floor is a bit eager, don’t you think?"

Troy Newman’s jaw worked furiously, his face flushed red. "He has no right to sit there! He’s a hostile raider—"

"Quiet, Troy," Richard Newman cut in, his voice completely hollowed out. He didn’t even turn his head. His eyes remained glued to the table, staring at the invisible ruin of his life’s work.

Sylvia didn’t bother looking at Troy either. She didn’t look at Richard, Sam, or any of the Newmans. They were invisible to her.

"Let’s cut through the theater," Sylvia continued, gesturing slightly to her senior attorney, who slid a thick, leather-bound dossier across the mahogany toward Jake. "The reality of our situation is simple. Golden Investments controls twenty-one point three percent of Newman Enterprise Group. The Sheele Group controls nineteen point seven percent. Together, our voting block sits at forty-one percent—far outstripping the thirty percent held by Richard and his fractured alliance."

She smiled—a sharp, pristine expression that held no warmth whatsoever.

"When I saw panic hitting the secondary markets yesterday, I stepped in and picked up that nineteen point seven percent from scared board members and institutional investors for roughly one billion marks. A steal, considering what this company used to be worth. Without our stake, Mr. Rivers, you cannot pass a special resolution to liquidate, restructure, or remove the current board. You are four percent short of a simple plurality against the remaining members, and nowhere near the seventy-five percent supermajority required for absolute control."

’So she’s alone in this,’ Jake thought, his face an unreadable mask. ’She thinks this is a standard corporate standoff. She should have asked Marcus before wasting a billion.’ ℴℴ𝘮

"So what’s your play, Miss Sheele?" Jake asked, his voice low and untroubled.

Sylvia tapped a single manicured finger against her leather folder, speaking directly in front of the Newmans as if they were nothing more than furniture in the room.

"A Joint Restructuring Agreement," Sylvia said plainly. "The Sheele Group and Golden Investments form a joint executive coalition. We strip the Newman family of their operational voting rights entirely, take total control, and dress up NEG’s core assets. With both of our names attached to this firm, the market confidence will surge. The stock will rebound higher than its peak. In three years, we flip the company or cash out our dividends with a three-fold return. We dress the pig, slaughter it at peak valuation, and walk away with billions."

Across the table, Troy let out a shaky breath, hope suddenly flaring in his bloodshot eyes. A joint coalition...’ Troy thought frantically, his pulse hammering. ’If Sheele backs the company, the stock climbs back up! We survive!’

Finn Newman sat frozen, staring at Jake’s eyes. ’She doesn’t get it,’ Finn realized, a cold, sickening horror twisting his stomach. ’She thinks everyone operates on pure profit like her. She has no idea what Jake actually came here to do.’

Jake didn’t touch the dossier. He didn’t even glance down at it.

Instead, he turned his head slowly toward Samuel Carter.

"Samuel," Jake said softly. "Read the debt covenant report on NEG’s core subsidiary, Newman Logistics Holdings."

Samuel opened a thin black folder, pulled out a single sheet of paper, and adjusted his glasses.

"At six fifteen this morning," Samuel read in a dry, clinical tone, "Golden Investments acquired ninety-two percent of the senior distressed debt obligations of Newman Logistics Holdings from Apex Commercial Bank at a sixty percent discount. Attached to those debt obligations is Clause 14-B: a cross-default trigger tied directly to NEG’s parent company market capitalization."

Samuel looked up, his voice echoing in the dead silence. "Because Newman Enterprise Group’s stock fell over eighty percent in yesterday’s trading session, Clause 14-B was breached at zero eight hundred hours today. Golden Investments, as the primary debt holder, exercised its right to demand immediate full repayment of eight hundred and forty million marks."

Sylvia’s razor-thin smile faltered for a fraction of a second. Her brow furrowed slightly. "An operational default on a subsidiary is routine. We can absorb eight hundred and forty million through a short-term credit facility—"

"It won’t be absorbed," Jake interrupted, his voice dropping into a register so cold it cut through the room like a blade.

Jake leaned forward, resting his forearms flat on the table.

"You didn’t buy equity in a turnaround project, Sylvia," Jake said, his dark eyes locking onto hers. "You bought shares in a company that owed me eight hundred and forty million marks by eight o’clock this morning. And ten minutes ago, when NEG failed to wire those funds, Samuel filed for involuntary Chapter 11 liquidation of Newman Logistics Holdings in the High Commercial Court."

A collective gasp echoed across the Newman side of the table. Richard’s head snapped up, his face deathly pale.

"You... you liquidated Logistics?!" Troy shrieked, half-rising from his chair, his eyes bulging. "Logistics generates Sixty-five percent of our gross cash flow! If you freeze Logistics, the parent company has zero revenue!"

"That’s the point, Troy," Jake said without even turning his head.

Jake kept his gaze fixed entirely on Sylvia Sheele.

’I guess she doesn’t like the sound of that,’ Jake thought, watching the subtle tightening around her eyes as the trap snapped shut.

"Newman Enterprise Group has no cash reserves," Jake continued smoothly. "Its primary cash-generating arm is now under court-ordered asset freeze. In less than forty-eight hours, default notices will cascade into NEG’s secondary holdings—their real estate, their shipping leases, their tech patents. Every single one of those debts is held by Golden Investments."

Sylvia’s posture remained rigid, but her espresso cup sat completely forgotten on the saucer. Behind her, her legal team was frantically tapping screens, pulling up debt registry files, and whispering in hushed, panicked tones.

"You’re destroying the whole company," Sylvia said, her smooth, elegant voice losing its polish, turning sharp and cold. "Your twenty-one point three percent equity will be wiped out to zero right alongside mine. You’re setting fire to billions of marks just to burn their house down."

"My equity was paid for by shorting their stock from one hundred and forty marks down to twenty-five," Jake said, a faint, terrifying smirk touching his lips. "I made over sixteen billion in pure profit from shorting with twenty billion. My position in NEG didn’t cost me a cent. It paid for itself."

He leaned back in the Chairman’s seat, resting his chin on his steepled fingers.

"Your nineteen point percent, on the other hand... cost the Sheele Group one billion marks on the open market yesterday afternoon."

The silence in the boardroom slammed down like a vault door.

A heavy, staggering shock rippled through every person sitting around the mahogany table.

’Sixteen billion marks in profit...?’ Richard’s breath hitched in his throat, his blood running completely cold. ’He threw twenty billion marks into a single short barrage just to eradicate us? Was he even afraid of losing it?! How much liquid capital does this kid actually command?!’

Joe Dane’s hands began to tremble visibly on the table. ’Twenty billion marks...’ That wasn’t just corporate leverage; that was the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike. The Newmans had treated Jake like a minor nuisance, then an aggressive rival, only to realize he had been holding an bottomless war chest all along.

Even Sylvia Sheele felt a faint chill creep down her spine. Her dark eyes widened by a millimeter as she digested the sheer scale of the operation. ’Twenty billion marks deployed on a short campaign against a mid-tier group...’ She stared at Jake, her mind rapidly recalculating. It wasn’t just boldness—it was financial insanity backed by overwhelming, terrifying wealth. ’He hadn’t just short the company; he had flooded the entire market ecosystem to guarantee their absolute demise.’

Sylvia stared at the young man across the table. ’He must have known someone would try to buy the dip. He left the equity carcass out as bait, waited for a scavenger to bite, and then severed the debt neck.’

"You knew we were buying," Sylvia said softly, her sharp eyes narrowing.

"I saw your buy algorithms sweeping up secondary blocks at two PM yesterday," Jake replied casually. "I could have stopped you by taking those blocks myself. But I let you buy them. Because I wanted whoever stepped through those doors to understand something very clearly."

Jake leaned over the table, his shadow stretching across the polished mahogany toward her.

"This isn’t a joint venture. This isn’t a corporate flip. I didn’t come here to make a profit with the Sheele Group. I came here to bury the Newman family. And if you stand between my shovel and their grave, I will bury your one billion marks right alongside them."

Across the room, Ray Newman buried his face in his hands, trembling softly. Troy collapsed back into his leather chair, staring blankly at the ceiling, his mouth agape.

Sylvia Sheele sat motionless.

For the first time in her life, she was looking at someone who genuinely did not care about profit margins, board prestige, or corporate deals. He had built a guillotine, and no amount of money was going to buy off the executioner.

Slowly, deliberately, Sylvia closed her leather folder with a dull thud.

She leaned back, her face hardening into a cold, unyielding mask of sharp disappointment.

"I’m truly disappointed, Mr. Rivers," Sylvia said, her voice dropping into a chill, venomous register. "I heard a lot about your rise, and I actually thought you had a real business mindset. But you’re being controlled by petty emotions over a minor grudge that didn’t even affect your bottom line. You’d rather burn a fortune than make one."

Jake didn’t flinch. He met her gaze with a calm, faintly amused expression.

"I’m more than happy to collaborate with you, Miss Sheele," Jake said smoothly, leaning back in his chair. "But you chose a very bad time and a very bad company. I still hope we can do business together in the future."

Sylvia stared at him for two long seconds, recognizing that no amount of leverage or rhetoric could break his iron resolve.

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