Chapter 851:

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“Ready to flood the wires, sir. The narrative is locked: ‘Koch Industries, confident in its robust fundamentals, views the current market volatility as a strategic buying opportunity.'”

Dallas smiled. It was a predator’s smile.

“Gideon thinks he’s a shark, smelling blood in the water. He doesn’t realize he’s just a minnow swimming into the mouth of a whale.”

He looked back at the screen as the final ten-second countdown to the opening bell began.

“He wants to bleed us,” Dallas said softly, to himself as much as to the room. “Let him. We’ll let him short the stock into the ground. We’ll let him empty his coffers betting on our collapse.”

The countdown hit zero. A loud, electronic bell chimed through the room. The market was open, and KCI instantly plummeted.

“Execute,” Dallas ordered.

On the screens, a wave of green began to fight back against the sea of red. Massive buy orders, placed by Koch-controlled shell corporations, began to absorb the sell-off. It wasn’t enough to stop the fall, not yet. It was designed to create a floor, a point of resistance.

“He’s taking the bait, sir,” the analyst said, his voice tight with excitement. “He’s doubling down, pouring more capital into the short positions to break through our buy wall.”

“Let him,” Dallas repeated. “Every dollar he spends is a dollar he can’t use somewhere else.”

While Dallas fought his war in numbers and algorithms, Eliza was fighting a different battle. She sat in her own office, the coordinates from the Solomon Protocol glowing on her screen. She was cross-referencing the location with flight manifests, shell corporation registries, and encrypted medical supply chains, a web of dark data her father’s network had given her access to.

𝘕𝗼𝘷𝖾𝗅ѕ 𝗂n 𝗍re𝗇𝖽 o𝗻 𝗀𝖺𝗅𝗇𝗼𝗏e𝗹𝘀.соm

She found it. A series of payments, routed through a dozen offshore accounts, all led back to a single entity: a private surgical clinic in Zurich, run by a disgraced plastic surgeon known for his “identity reconstruction” services. It was the same clinic that had received a massive influx of funding three months ago.

From Mateo Sterling.

Eliza leaned back as the pieces clicked into place. Savannah wasn’t just a contingency. She was an active project. Gideon wasn’t just planning to replace her. He was building her replacement.

Her phone rang. It was an unknown number, blocked and untraceable. She hesitated for a fraction of a second, then answered and put it on speaker.

“Is this the woman who wants to dismantle a god?”

The voice was old and raspy, filtered through a heavy electronic scrambler. It was the voice of Solomon, the faceless head of her father’s network.

“It is,” Eliza said.

“Gideon Sterling is not a man. He is an idea. An infection,” the voice rasped. “You cannot kill an idea with bullets or money. You must poison its roots. We have found a root for you, Eliza.”

A file appeared on her screen. It was a single audio recording, heavily encrypted.

“This is a recording from four days ago,” the voice continued. “Between Gideon Sterling and your husband’s aunt, Josephine Koch.”

Eliza’s blood ran cold.

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