Chapter 163
Chapter 163
Celestria, the Bourbon family headquarters castle.
An antique vase worth millions of dollars shattered into pieces.
Ulysses's face—usually maintaining elegance and nobility—now twisted like a demon's.
A complete humiliation!
The globally-watched wedding of the century hadn't become his stage to humiliate Thaddeus—instead, it had become the Bourbon family's biggest joke in a hundred years.
The bride was a murderess full of lies; and he, the groom, had been publicly exposed for swapping a dead infant and imprisoning and abusing the Getty family heir in a shocking scandal.
What made it even more unbearable was that Scarlett had taken that "mute child" he'd spent five years breaking and escaped right under his nose.
“Thaddeus! Scarlett!” Ulysses snarled through clenched teeth, his eyes blazing with murderous intent. "Since you're looking for death, I'll grant it!"
Deep within the castle, in a sunless underground chamber.
The air reeked of mold and the pungent smell of blood.
A crisp whip crack shattered the silence, accompanied by a woman's piercing scream.
"Ulysses, stop! Please, stop hitting me!"
Lavinia—once held high, celebrated online as an "inspirational goddess"—now curled on the floor like a dying dog.
The million-dollar custom wedding gown lay in shreds, torn by the whip and soaked in dark red blood..
Ulysses toyed with a barbed leather whip in his hand, looking down at Lavinia convulsing in pain on the ground, a cruel smile curving his lips.
"Beg me?" Ulysses grabbed Lavinia's disheveled hair, forcing her head up. "You useless fool! You let someone record that damning evidence! Do you know how much you've cost the Bourbon family?"
"I... I didn't know... it was all... all that bitch Scarlett framing me..." Lavinia sobbed.
"Still trying to shift blame?" Ulysses laughed coldly. "You think I actually wanted to marry you? You were just a toy I used to disgust Thaddeus!"
A toy...
She'd schemed so desperately, even taken lives, fled from Thaddeus's side to Ulysses's—only to find an abyss more terrifying than hell.
Wave after wave of pain hit. Curled in the basement, Lavinia dug her nails into the rough floor, as if trying to anchor herself.
She wasn't reconciled!
She hated so much!
This was all because of Scarlett! If that bitch Scarlett hadn't played that recording at the wedding, if she hadn't taken Arthur—how would she have ended up in this living hell?
"Scarlett..." Lavinia let out a ghostly growl, her bloodshot eyes shooting out insane hatred. "Even as a ghost... I won't let you go..."
Silverlight City, Getty Group headquarters building.
The atmosphere in the top-floor conference room was suffocating, so tense it seemed ready to explode..
Over a dozen Getty Group veterans and core major shareholders—every face ashen—slammed tables and roared.
"What the hell is going on? Sixty billion in market value evaporated overnight! Sixty billion!"
"International capital predators are maliciously shorting us!"
"Where's Thaddeus? The company's about to go bankrupt—where's our CEO?"
A balding veteran shareholder jumped up, roaring furiously. "This is all because of him! He angered the Bourbon family at that damned wedding, and now they're retaliating! He must be held accountable!"
"Right! Remove him! We must elect a new CEO and seek peace with Mr. Bourbon, or we'll all go down with him!"
Faced with enormous interests, years of friendship and the Getty family's dignity were all tossed aside. They only wanted to throw Thaddeus out to appease Ulysses's fury and protect their own fortunes and lives.
The conference room door was suddenly kicked open violently from outside.
Thaddeus strode in, an icy aura of violence surrounding him.
He walked to the head of the conference table and sat. "Want to remove me?"
Thaddeus leaned back slightly, his gaze sharp as a knife sweeping over the loudest shareholders, a cold smile curving his lips.
"Cruz," he called out the balding veteran, "you took kickbacks on that southern district project, falsified accounts, and embezzled one point seven billion from the company. Axel, evidence of your overseas money laundering is sitting in my inbox right now."
Several shareholders' faces turned deathly pale. Their legs went weak and they collapsed back into their chairs.
"Aiden." Thaddeus didn't look at them anymore.
Aiden, who'd been waiting outside, immediately rushed in with over a dozen fully armed bodyguards in black and slammed a stack of documents on the conference table.
"Gentlemen, those pitiful shares you hold were forcibly frozen by me last night." Thaddeus stood, bracing his hands on the table like a tiger ready to devour. "Today, anyone who dares say one more word of nonsense—I'll not only bankrupt them but make sure they rot in prison!"
Deathly silence filled the room, only gasps audible.
With the most thunderous methods, Thaddeus suppressed all internal rebellion within the Getty Group in ten minutes—they didn't dare even breathe.
"Pass my order." Thaddeus turned toward the massive electronic display showing rapidly plummeting candlestick charts, his eyes burning with a suicidal madness. "Open all fund accounts. However much they dare dump, we'll catch it all!"
"But Mr. Getty..." The CFO stood on trembling legs. "We don't have nearly enough liquid capital to catch everything! This... this is a bottomless pit!"
"If there's no capital, package those non-performing assets as collateral! Ten times leverage—hedge against them!" Thaddeus's voice held no hesitation.
Everyone thought Thaddeus had gone mad.
He was filling a hole with the Getty Group's century-old foundation!
But only Thaddeus knew that the Getty Group's cash-generating companies had been secretly stripped and transferred to Scarlett's name last night.
The current Getty Group was just a massive "shell"!
What Thaddeus wanted was to lock down the hundred billion Ulysses had mobilized!
Business was war. No matter how wealthy Ulysses was, once that hundred billion was trapped in a quagmire and couldn’t be liquidated in time, the Bourbon family’s capital chain would begin to collapse.
Thaddeus was seeking death!
But he'd drag Ulysses to hell with him!
Meanwhile.
Hundreds of miles away, in a hidden estate.
Finnian sat at a console, holding a cup of black coffee, his sharp eyes fixed on constantly jumping data on the screen.
Behind him was the Clifford Group family's top trading team.
"Mr. Clifford, Mr. Getty has successfully drawn all of Ulysses's firepower. Ulysses's major foreign funds have fully entered the field." The trader reported.
"Good." Finnian set down his coffee cup. His usually gentle face now showed the decisive ruthlessness of a business tycoon.
"Pass the order." Finnian's gaze fixed on a distribution map of shipping and rare metal mines on screen. "According to the Clifford family and our allied hidden capital overseas, immediately launch reverse strikes against Ulysses's foreign suppliers, ports, and raw material mining companies."
"I want him to suddenly discover, while he's locked in battle with Thaddeus on the front lines, that his home base has been taken out."
A business war that shocked the global financial world erupted fully on this smokeless battlefield.
On one side was Ulysses's insane capital crushing; on the other, Thaddeus's desperate death grip; plus Finnian's assistance from the shadows.
In just three days.
The Getty Group's market value evaporated by nearly seventy percent. Like a riddled ship in raging winds and waves, it teetered on the brink of sinking at any moment.
Ulysses's side wasn't faring well either.
A hundred billion in capital was locked tight in Silverlight City's stock market with no escape. His foreign operations repeatedly sounded alarms. Supply chain breakdowns meant even the Bourbon family's home base began showing cracks.
Mutual destruction.
When this news reached Sapphire Hill Estate— Scarlett was staring at the document folder in her hands.
She looked at the continuous rain outside the window, remembering the man who'd knelt on one knee and signed his name.